GNU Gnash 0.7.2 review

GNU Gnash is a Flash movie player

License: GPL (GNU General Public License) File size: 0K Developer: Rob Savoye

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GNU Gnash is a Flash movie player. Till now it has been possible to play flash movies with proprietary software.

While there are a few free flash players, none supports anything higher than SWF v4 at best. Gnash is based on GameSWF, and supports many SWF v7 features.

Here are some key features of "GNU Gnash":
Runs standalone
Gnash can run standalone to play flash movies.
Firefox plugin
Gnash can also run as a plugin from within Firefox.
SWF v7 compliant
Gnash can play many current flash movies.
XML Message server
Gnash also supports an XML based message system as is documented in the Flash Format specification.
High Quality Output
Gnash uses OpenGL for rendering the graphics.
Free Software
Gnash is 100% free software. For more information on the GPL, go to the Free Software Foundation web site.

Building Gnash:

To build Gnash, you currently need the Mozilla or Firefox development packages installed. I have added the basic Mozilla SDK files, so at least you don't need the full Mozilla/Firefox sources. You can tell if you have these packages installed, because either a firefox-config or mozilla-config should be present. If neither of these aren't present, the plugin won't be part of the build.

If these are present, then when you install the plugin, it gets installed in the plugin directory of the same firefox that's in your path.

You can also specify explicit paths to the Mozilla SDK by using the --with-firefox, --with-firefox-libraries, or --with-firefox-headers options at configure time. You'll also want the OpenGL development package and the SDL development packages installed as well.

Currently the plugin renders a hard coded OpenGL graphic in the allocated window within the browers. You'll have better luck with the standalone version, gnash. Development of the plugin is continuing, however, now that much of the basic creation of this new project is done.

I'm using the Mozilla plugin API, so although the functionality of the plugin is limited at this time, it has worked in a variety of different versions of Mozilla and Firefox.

What's New in This Release:
A new GUI abstraction layer supporting GTK2, KDE, SDL, and a bare framebuffer.
Movies are parsed by a background thread, so they start playing while still loading.
The plugin supports Web navigation and starts playing while the stream is loading.
A new AntiGrain (AGG) 2D backend has been added for framebuffer devices without OpenGL support.
There is a new Framebuffer GUI for devices without X11.
Sound now works using ffmpeg, Gstreamer, or libMad.
This release supports cross-configuration and cross compiling for embedded targets.
A whole slew of minor bugs that kept various movies from playing have been fixed.