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Without Flash the current web tech stack might look different

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Re: Without Flash the current web tech stack might look different

#121

Post by tjalfi »

fenomas wrote: post #87
theamk wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have a feeling that if Adobe would publish detailed Flash file format specs when Flash started to decline, there would have been separate player implementations and Flash might still be alive today. Of course, this also means alternative editor implementations, and this decreases business value. This is also a lot of work. And at some point, it became too late -- if format would be published today, very few people…

The SWF format has been open since 2008. Here's the current spec (PDF): http://wwwimages.adobe.com/content/dam/Adobe/en/devnet/swf/p... (edit: removing a now-obsolete comment wondering why I'd been downvoted)

Iggy[0] is a third-party Flash implementation.

[0] http://www.radgametools.com/iggy.htm

Re: Without Flash the current web tech stack might look different

#122

Post by j45 »

pjmlp wrote: post #110
m-j-fox wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think security was not fixable, at-least not to the user's and browsers liking. You had to disable flash for safety and stopping the most annoying ads. The other issues could be left to consenting adults. But browsers and IT departments turned against plugins in general. Now even Java is almost gone (from browsers) for the same reason.

They will be back, just let WebAssembly mature.

Very true. No one has built better tooling since. If webassembly can be the better endpoint..

Re: Without Flash the current web tech stack might look different

#123

Post by j45 »

matt4077 wrote: post #106
lokedhs wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When I read your first sentence, I honestly believed that you were describing the current, flash-less, world. I readily agree that Flash was horrible, but none of the things you mentioned has improved with the demise of Flash, at all.

Despite all the complaining, the situation today is a vast improvement over the internet ca. 2000 or so. Just a few points: - There are four different browser engines, but no website ever asks you to install a different one (except some Google Cloud stuff tsktsktsk ) - You can develop a complex javascript application and, at the very end, discover that it works in all browsers. - You can develop a complex javascript…

- Netscape, IE, Opera.. Firefox started to emerge around that time too.

- The javascript complexity that can run in browsers is an achievement. Relatively speaking, flash was the one runtime Java promised to be, and Java applets however clunky looking back were as futuristic as today's tools are in some use cases.

- Responsive flash apps were perfectly possible if you wanted. Most never learnt that though. That resolution was painful tho.

- Ajax apps are the original JavaScript apps. It was possible to build desktop apps in the browser just fine. 1999, Outlook web app was one of the first complex JavaScript apps in 2000.

- Flash also developed the ability to index content. Same flaw though can exist in js apps too.

I don't want to guess how much of the stuff you wrote about you have used, but those were my experiences in that time. A lot of bleeding edge stuff much like today. I'd still take today though because there's so many more folks online.

It does feel like there has been a lot of constant reinvention and a loss of forward progress. We just keep rebuilding browsers, flash as webassembly, and no shortage of frameworks to extend programming languages to the web, and recreating libraries. I like choice and being a polyglot as much as the next person but at a certain point it seems like our tools are getting broader instead of deeper.

Flash was far from perfect but probably could have stuck around for a few more years while the future of progressive apps matured. They never really got their security game together, but flash lite powered graphical guis on more mobile phones than anyone knew and it was possibly a threat to iOS as no other rich experience existed in mobile.

Instead we all had to wait painfully for JavaScript apps to mature to what flash could do 10 years ago with flex and air (although I wasnt a fan of either they laid a lot of ground work for the rich internet application space.)

Granted it probably helped push things along that flash wasn't around as a crutch...

Some would argue developing mobile and js apps as as painful in the past 5 years as web dev was in the 90s.

I'm just pleased to see the ubiquity and js apps on any medium continue to converge. Hope the high level tooling is coming next to create a whole new segment of beginners.

Re: Without Flash the current web tech stack might look different

#124

Post by NTripleOne »

cpeterso wrote: post #102
Brajeshwar wrote: post #93

Ah! Flash! I started my career as a programmer but always had a mind for creative designs. When I discovered Flash around 2002-2003, I was all over it. ActionScript was my ultimate weapon to make Flash sing and dance to all my tunes. I was so involved then, Macromedia picked me as one of their "Professional Expert" or something in that line. Those were the times when I made good money, lots of friends, clients, met f…

Thanks for sharing! That's a blast from the past. I used to work on the Flash team at Macromedia and Adobe in that very office. :) I believe "Lego" was the code name for Flex Builder aimed at developers. "Duplo" was the unfortunate code name for a corresponding Flash authoring application aimed at designers who didn't write ActionScript.

Hahaha, Lego and Duplo for developers and non developers, fantastic!

Re: Without Flash the current web tech stack might look different

#125

Post by elorant »

dyarosla wrote: post #13

I think what Flash (the program) really excelled at was giving creators the ability to draw, animate and program interactive objects, all wrapped in a single neat package . I would contest that no other software, even today, has come close to being able to do these three so seamlessly at once (Really, I encourage you to try to name one!) Sure, when it came down to it you can say it had poor performance, security, fil…

The problem with Flash is that at some point people started using it to build websites. And then all hell broke loose. You had content which couldn't be indexed, broken browser functionality, severe usability issues, big load times (let's not forget that bandwidth wasn't always ample as it is today), security vulnerabilities, and a variety of other issues that made the whole experience pretty lame. So while Flash did indeed offered some unique capabilities in a friendly and frictionless package, it also hurt the web in so many ways.

Re: Without Flash the current web tech stack might look different

#126

Post by jondubois »

I also started with ActionScript 2 and moved to ActionScript 3 soon after.

Then I did Java, C++, Python and all the others before going to JavaScript. I've been using mostly JavaScript for the past 5 years.

I actually don't miss any of the other languages, not even ActionScript 3.

I think that you don't really need classes, private methods, protected methods, abstract classes, inheritance, etc... For web-related stuff.

Games are a bit different because, in a game, unusual edge cases happen all the time (a game can be in a practically infinite number of states), so static type checking can help take care of a lot of issues. That said, with automated testing, you can also get similar stability without having types.

Re: Without Flash the current web tech stack might look different

#127

Post by aidos »

zwetan wrote: post #92

About the open source AVM2, there are in total 3 versions: The tamarin project on Mozilla mercurial with tamarin-central [0] and tamarin-redux [1] Then after the project got abandoned, Adobe renamed it to avmplus and moved it to github [2] and made a couple updates. Later on, they moved it to another repo [3], updated it on December 2015 to the equivalent of Flash Player v19.0 and updated it again on Mars 2016 to the…

Interesting.

I wrote a uploader in flash for our photo hosting website many years ago using alchemy. From memory I wrote a wrapper for libjpeg that could do the resizing in C which was then compiled into flash bytecode. That could then be imported into the swf that would handle multiple files drag-drop resize / upload. That all interfaced with the page through some sort of JS bridge.

I'm amazed any of it worked to be honest, somehow it managed to chug along for a decade without issue.

Re: Without Flash the current web tech stack might look different

#128

Post by tomelders »

dyarosla wrote: post #13

I think what Flash (the program) really excelled at was giving creators the ability to draw, animate and program interactive objects, all wrapped in a single neat package . I would contest that no other software, even today, has come close to being able to do these three so seamlessly at once (Really, I encourage you to try to name one!) Sure, when it came down to it you can say it had poor performance, security, fil…

Was anything "amazing" every created in Flash? It's obviously subjective, but things that would merit the "amazing" tag for me would be things like, Wikipedia, Google (the Search Engine), Facebook (love it or hate it, it's an awesome success), Google Maps, stuff like that.

All I remember from the Flash days, and I was a flash developer bear in mind, was clunky, contentless, CPU hammering folly. None of which I think I miss.

Re: Without Flash the current web tech stack might look different

#129

Post by Macha »

tomelders wrote: post #128
dyarosla wrote: post #13

I think what Flash (the program) really excelled at was giving creators the ability to draw, animate and program interactive objects, all wrapped in a single neat package . I would contest that no other software, even today, has come close to being able to do these three so seamlessly at once (Really, I encourage you to try to name one!) Sure, when it came down to it you can say it had poor performance, security, fil…

Was anything "amazing" every created in Flash? It's obviously subjective, but things that would merit the "amazing" tag for me would be things like, Wikipedia, Google (the Search Engine), Facebook (love it or hate it, it's an awesome success), Google Maps, stuff like that. All I remember from the Flash days, and I was a flash developer bear in mind, was clunky, contentless, CPU hammering folly. None of which I think…

YouTube couldn't have started when it did without flash, even if it's moved on to html5 now.

Also lots of indie game devs (e.g. team meat of super meat boy or binding of Isaac) got their start there, a lot of the early "upload your flash game here" might have paved the way for getting so many games on the app store model when it got going.

Re: Without Flash the current web tech stack might look different

#130

Post by andybak »

tomelders wrote: post #128
dyarosla wrote: post #13

I think what Flash (the program) really excelled at was giving creators the ability to draw, animate and program interactive objects, all wrapped in a single neat package . I would contest that no other software, even today, has come close to being able to do these three so seamlessly at once (Really, I encourage you to try to name one!) Sure, when it came down to it you can say it had poor performance, security, fil…

Was anything "amazing" every created in Flash? It's obviously subjective, but things that would merit the "amazing" tag for me would be things like, Wikipedia, Google (the Search Engine), Facebook (love it or hate it, it's an awesome success), Google Maps, stuff like that. All I remember from the Flash days, and I was a flash developer bear in mind, was clunky, contentless, CPU hammering folly. None of which I think…

> Was anything "amazing" every created in Flash?

Not so many practical tools spring to mind but on the arts and creative side of things most definitely.

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