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Show HN: Thoughts on Flash in 2023, in Flash, in 2023

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Re: Show HN: Thoughts on Flash in 2023, in Flash, in 2023

#91

Post by rchaud »

whywhywhywhy wrote: post #66
mclightning wrote: post #53

I was a huge Flash nerd, all the way since Macromedia Flash 5. I learnt programming with Flash 5 and action script. I have been at it until Flash 8. Then I stopped putting effort to keep-up and eventually Flash died. Something was lost in the internet culture. Flash was the language of web art. I don't know what is the new language for that anymore. If anyone knows, please do tell me. WebGL? Any WebGL-powered framewo…

> Flash was the language of web art. I don't know what is the new language for that anymore P5, which while excellent and better than flash for many reasons it’s not the same thing. The true beauty of flash was seeing the cool games and animations online a kid could pirate a copy of flash and then the way the tech worked it lulled you in with simple animation tools but you were forced to interact with code to control…

p5.js is to Flash....what D3.js is to making a bar chart in Excel. Here is the code required to just render a circle in p5:

>function draw() {

> stroke(50);

> fill(100);

> ellipse(x, y, 24, 24); }

In Flash you would just click the Oval icon and draw one.

Re: Show HN: Thoughts on Flash in 2023, in Flash, in 2023

#92

Post by egypturnash »

rickdicker wrote: post #8
saurik wrote: post #3

Is the concept of authoring with Flash actually dead/deprecated? I've been trying to understand--and maybe you're willing to help answer this--whether Adobe Animate is just a newer version of Adobe Flash that can target things other than the deprecated Flash web player/plugin.

That's pretty much it - though it's been able to target other platforms since long before the "Animate" name change. I believe it still has a small-but-significant market share in the animation industry (mostly TV stuff) (hence the name!), but there's waning support for anything else. That said, Ruffle ( https://ruffle.rs/ ) is keeping flash alive on the web, preserving the legacy of flash and enabling people to make…

Last I heard, my buddy Pringle was still using it to do Teen Titans. He picked it up along with me when we were at Spumco doing web stuff and ended up at Cartoon Network, doing stuff like Foster's Home For Imaginary Friends.

I think the last I heard from him was like a decade ago, so who knows, maybe he and his crew finally moved on to some other tool. But it definitely persisted in the animation industry long after the browser plugin got killed off. Adobe's still cranking out new versions every year, too, so it's not like you're stuck using ancient operating systems to run it.

Re: Show HN: Thoughts on Flash in 2023, in Flash, in 2023

#93

Post by rchaud »

woogley wrote: post #69
mclightning wrote: post #53

I was a huge Flash nerd, all the way since Macromedia Flash 5. I learnt programming with Flash 5 and action script. I have been at it until Flash 8. Then I stopped putting effort to keep-up and eventually Flash died. Something was lost in the internet culture. Flash was the language of web art. I don't know what is the new language for that anymore. If anyone knows, please do tell me. WebGL? Any WebGL-powered framewo…

There is nothing like Flash IMO. Closest we have in the modern day is Unity and Godot

Tumult Hype on Mac as well. Point-and-click, drag 'n drop animation and website design. Also supports custom HTML/CSS/JS.

Re: Show HN: Thoughts on Flash in 2023, in Flash, in 2023

#94

Post by rchaud »

mclightning wrote: post #53

I was a huge Flash nerd, all the way since Macromedia Flash 5. I learnt programming with Flash 5 and action script. I have been at it until Flash 8. Then I stopped putting effort to keep-up and eventually Flash died. Something was lost in the internet culture. Flash was the language of web art. I don't know what is the new language for that anymore. If anyone knows, please do tell me. WebGL? Any WebGL-powered framewo…

> Flash was the language of web art. I don't know what is the new language for that anymore.

Nothing. Flash left a gaping void in Internet creativity that has gone unfilled. We don't call it 'art' anymore, we call it 'content', aka grist for walled-garden mills of Youtube and Instagram and Tiktok.

Re: Show HN: Thoughts on Flash in 2023, in Flash, in 2023

#95

Post by rchaud »

BoppreH wrote: post #80
mclightning wrote: post #53

I was a huge Flash nerd, all the way since Macromedia Flash 5. I learnt programming with Flash 5 and action script. I have been at it until Flash 8. Then I stopped putting effort to keep-up and eventually Flash died. Something was lost in the internet culture. Flash was the language of web art. I don't know what is the new language for that anymore. If anyone knows, please do tell me. WebGL? Any WebGL-powered framewo…

My feeling is that we won't see another Flash because the artists went to video platforms[1], and the developers are trying to make money on the app stores[2]. Flash was the most attention grabbing medium at the time (because of bandwidth constraints), and making money was not the expectation, so the two groups flocked together and created all those wonderful animations and games for free. I don't see Flash, or anyth…

Regarding the Play store, I just see waves and waves of the exact same game with different character textures applied.

The difference with Flash was that it was usually the work of a solo developer of a very small team, so they could be unique in what they made (not dismissing that Flash game had clones too). The mobile app landscape is different in that conformity = $$$. These apps are soulless, they have no incentive to build something that's not a Clash of Clans / Temple Run / Candy Crush type game that's inundated with microtransactions.

Re: Show HN: Thoughts on Flash in 2023, in Flash, in 2023

#96

Post by rchaud »

saurik wrote: post #3

Is the concept of authoring with Flash actually dead/deprecated? I've been trying to understand--and maybe you're willing to help answer this--whether Adobe Animate is just a newer version of Adobe Flash that can target things other than the deprecated Flash web player/plugin.

Adobe Animate is not the same as Flash. Flash could do things that the HTML/CSS spec simply did not support before 2010, like . Even now, Adobe Animate cannot do a 3D shooter because it is limited by what the browser supports.

Re: Show HN: Thoughts on Flash in 2023, in Flash, in 2023

#97

Post by grishka »

pixelrevision wrote: post #90
grishka wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nothing. The ease with which Flash allowed one to create all these web experiences, with little to no programming, is still unmatched to this day.

Unity is a really good alternative. Flash kinda went sideways and started really trying to lean into the Java crowd with flex. Unity is more like what would have happened if Flash heavily leaned into what it did well.

Unity is a bad alternative because it requires programming. It's also much more complex since it's a game engine, not a scriptable vector animation thing.

With Flash, you could just follow some tutorials and make something nice in no time, fully understanding what you're doing.

Flash didn't "lean into" Flex. Flex was an Eclipse-based IDE and a set of libraries that some people used for some projects. It was specifically aimed at building apps. There were layouts, controls and all that. There was a list view with cell reuse, in 2008! It was much more like Android layout system then what the web had and still has. Flex was a tool that's very good for some jobs and completely unfit for others — like any other tool, really.

Re: Show HN: Thoughts on Flash in 2023, in Flash, in 2023

#98

Post by bryceneal »

It's fascinating to observe the dramatic shift in perceptions around Flash on Hacker News over the past 5-10 years. As I recall, discussions mentioning Flash were once dominated by near-unanimous complaints about its flaws, and there was an overwhelming sense of relief when it was announced that it would be deprecated.

Now, the narrative has evolved to appreciate the unique creative value Flash provided and the distinct niche it occupied at the intersection of art and code. Maybe it took us some time to recognize this, or maybe it's possible for both sentiments to hold true simultaneously.

Re: Show HN: Thoughts on Flash in 2023, in Flash, in 2023

#99

Post by rchaud »

jtbayly wrote: post #85

It's 2023, what are my thoughts on Flash? It still doesn't work on mobile. That's my only thought. My phone is more powerful than my computer was when Flash died. Makes no sense.

Only if "mobile" equates to "iPhone". And even then, it ran; it was the rendering engine for the old iPhone Youtube app. Lord Jobs simply didn't let it into the App Store for fear it would displace all the native games like iBeer.

Flash ran on Android natively; even ran on Windows Mobile 6.5, for those who remember it. It was Adobe that ended support for it, as Google also didn't want them competing against the Play Store.

Re: Show HN: Thoughts on Flash in 2023, in Flash, in 2023

#100

Post by rchaud »

bryceneal wrote: post #98

It's fascinating to observe the dramatic shift in perceptions around Flash on Hacker News over the past 5-10 years. As I recall, discussions mentioning Flash were once dominated by near-unanimous complaints about its flaws, and there was an overwhelming sense of relief when it was announced that it would be deprecated. Now, the narrative has evolved to appreciate the unique creative value Flash provided and the disti…

I think it comes down to those that categorize Flash's use cases as either white-hat or black-hat.

Some will remember Flash-based banner ads and video sites, that often had malware; that's black-hat Flash.

Many others will remember Flash for the games, cartoons and experiences that were non-commercial in nature and thus were malware-free.

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