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chumbysphere forum → Chumby.com → What happens when Flash is no longer supported?
more and more browsers have been dropping support of Flash. A lot of Widgets require Flash to make your custom settings (i.e. Zip Code, etc.) How will subscribers be able to setup/modify new or existing devices?
Thanks -
That's a good question, which I don't really have a perfect answer for.
Most of the chumby-authored widgets typically allowed configuration from the widget directly in addition to configuration from the website. Most of my personal widgets behave the same way. Third-party widgets, not so much, and there's little I can do about that.
Back in the early days, one of the plans was to offer the ability to provide HTML-based widget configuration as alternatives to the Flash-based configuration (the server keeps a mime type for the uploaded files to keep track of that). The central problem was that such a configuration would typically require several files (html, css, js, images, etc) as opposed to the simple single-file method used with Flash, and it wasn't totally clear how to host those files properly in a way that was manageable, secure, and safe.
I will look to see if there are any remnants of that in the old server source code - however, even if implemented, third parties would have to go back and revise their widget configuration apps to the new method. I don't know how much appetite they have for that.
Blue BuddyNow that we have finally reached this state and none of my browsers support Flash, is there any way I can manually adjust the configuration of some my my widgets that have to be set up from the Chumby website? Might it be possible for the Chumby itself to run the configuration for the widget, or for some other code running on the Chumby to access and set the configuration data? I can can write Perl code if that helps, and even hand-edit XML files in an ssh session if necessary...
I'm particularly interested in configuring the ImageURL widget http://www.chumby.com/guide/F3549C3C-A7 … EF4/widget since I have a number of those in my channels, and of course the websites they're currently pointing at have all broken over the new year. I guess another option might be if there are any alternative widgets that will load, scale and display an image from an URL that can be entered on the Chumby itself.
I think there are only two widgets I have left running now which still present useful information — the NOAA Weather widget on our I8, and a clock on my bedside C1. The rest are pretty but not informative.
Just to add to the discussion 
You may try ruffle.rs for the configuration. It is an open source flash emulator. I don't know how it is working with input fields, but it is worth a try. As far as i know it is just loading the ruffle.rs file and the flashes should be working again.
I think it will work fine, but i only just trowed a danny.swf to it and it ran fine... It would be awesome if the configuration will ran again.
Here is a screenshot from it.
files.dev0.de/dannyswf.jpg
Cheers,
Torsten
PS: I cannot post links, so i removed the hxxp and the other stuff from both urls... If anyone can upgrade me please to post links also... I'm not a spam bot, i'm real 
Yes, i know i haven't written much stuff, but i'm registered since 2009
We are currently a sponsor of Ruffle - there are some functions currently missing in Ruffle to make configuration widgets work, and we've filed a bug for them. We're waiting for these to be implemented. I'm also experimenting with other options.
Thanks for the update on the issue.
What other options do you mean? I'm myself a professional developer and i haven't seen any other option currently.
When ruffle would be working later and you need help to make the page a little more responsive, i may help you out in my free time with some css magic.
Cheers,
Torsten
I'm also looking at swf2js - fortunately, configuration widgets aren't typically very complicated, but they do tend to use networking functionality which is often an afterthought for folks just trying to get games and cartoons working.
I've update the website to support Ruffle - it works for previewing a number of widgets, however, it's not perfect:
1) There is a known (and long-ago filed) bug that makes it not function correctly for configuration widgets.
2) Because it's not a full-fledged plugin like Flash Player was, Ruffle is constrained by Javascript's security rules, so it uses CORS rather than crossdomain.xml for cross-site security. Many widgets that would normally load third-party content, such as RSS-based widgets, may not be able to do so. This is something I'm working on for some of these widgets, but no guarantees. The devices themselves use the old rules, so a widget that fails on the website may still work on the devices.
Please consider this a work-in-progress both on my part and Ruffle. Any financial support you can throw their way (at ruffle.rs) would help.
chumbysphere forum → Chumby.com → What happens when Flash is no longer supported?
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