“We will stop updating and distributing the Flash Player at the end of 2020” • Hacker News Board

Re: “We will stop updating and distributing the Flash Player at the end of 2020”

#291

Post by n-gauge » Tue, Jul 25, 2017, 8:50 PM UTC

evincarofautumn wrote: post #261

hansjorg wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are several open source player implementations, but they're quite incomplete so far: * Lightspark http://lightspark.github.io/ * Shumway http://mozilla.github.io/shumway/ * Gnash https://www.gnu.org/software/gnash/

I used to work at a company called Spaceport.io (now defunct) where we had a nearly complete implementation. It included an impressive GPU-accelerated renderer and an optimising compiler from AS3 to JavaScript—we could run on mobile, desktop, and even WebGL, and do neat things like update over WiFi instead of USB during development. It was intended for Flash game development , and worked pretty well for that purpose.…

I see one of the investors was the BBC - so that's where my licence fee goes :)

" neverending treadmill of having to implement obscure features that they didn’t even know they were relying on,"

I been coding emulators for fun (i.e. NES, Scratch) and it's been an interesting journey with all the gotcha's involved - however I don't think I have the motivation for any flash based ones, the only exception I've worked on my scratch2apk emulator (javascript) which has plenty of games going for it!

Re: “We will stop updating and distributing the Flash Player at the end of 2020”

#292

Post by omg_ketchup » Tue, Jul 25, 2017, 8:51 PM UTC

Someone wrote: post #57

lj3 wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not since they bailed on stage3d. That was the beginning of the end.

I thought this was the beginning of the end: https://www.apple.com/hotnews/thoughts-on-flash/

Only because Adobe decided to lay down and die after someone said something kinda mean and kinda true.

They could have fixed most of it. Instead they were like "Nah, fuck it"

Re: “We will stop updating and distributing the Flash Player at the end of 2020”

#293

Post by [deleted] » Tue, Jul 25, 2017, 8:52 PM UTC

0xffff2 wrote: post #97

ash_gti wrote: post #6

I wonder what the major use cases are for Flash Player these days? I assume some of the 'Farm Ville' style web games are probably in Flash still these days.

HBO Now is still using a (terrible) Flash-based player.

[deleted]

Re: “We will stop updating and distributing the Flash Player at the end of 2020”

#294

Post by petetnt » Tue, Jul 25, 2017, 8:52 PM UTC

Joeri wrote: post #172

simion314 wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And AS3/FLex is still better then JS/and any JS framework

I worked extensively with flex, and I think you give it too much credit. Typescript beats AS3, and modern complete frameworks like angular or ember are just as good as flex.

Same. My first programming job was doing Flex stuff (Adobe Air desktop apps in an enterprisy way) and after that I did tons of Edge Animate work (in an environment where things needed to run in IE9 at best). I am glad those helped me to kickstart my career, but modern JS libraries, frameworks and paragdims are so much ahead what we had then I can only wonder if I have truly forgotten something really magnificient.

Re: “We will stop updating and distributing the Flash Player at the end of 2020”

#295

Post by baby » Tue, Jul 25, 2017, 8:52 PM UTC

mulmen wrote: post #287

favorited wrote: post #286

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But surely "we" includes Macromedia, if Adobe itself included Macromedia after the acquisition?

That's disingenuous. Adobe didn't invent Flash, they bought the company that did. Adobe's strategy is based on them having resources to acquire, not create.

This letter might have been written by one of the guy in the original Macromedia team.

Re: “We will stop updating and distributing the Flash Player at the end of 2020”

#296

Post by CuriousCosmic » Tue, Jul 25, 2017, 8:53 PM UTC

nardi wrote: post #265

kbenson wrote: post #221

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's definitely not what that phrasing means, and I find it hard to believe that it would have been accidentally overlooked in a PR piece like this. To me that means the likely explanations are that either it actually caused Macs to crash (which I seem to recall from experience it could, at least occasionally), or that Jobs is purposefully trying to shift OS instability blame to an application, which I think is pos…

As is common, Apple uses the term “panic” to describe the OS itself failing. “Crash” is reserved for applications.

I believe that also applies to most UNIXes and UNIX-likes.

I really like that terminology though, it makes quite a bit of sense. When you witness a crash(you are not part of the crash, you were simply witnessing/interacting with the thing that crashed. You are not necessarily harmed), it is not like the whole world is falling apart. There was a crash, it is horrible and now you have to save what you can. This applies both digitally and in real life. Think crashing a drone or watching a plane crash. You rush to the scene and call for help, but you are not harmed.

Now when the OS fails, it stops everything and can potentially result in significantly more data loss than a standard application crash. Much like when a person is in an accident involving a vehicle. It is no longer just a crash, it is now a panic. When you end up in an accident you don't think "oh ya that crash" you think panic, not the word, the feeling.

Sorry for the rambling on, it kinda just happened. But ya that terminology is great.

Re: “We will stop updating and distributing the Flash Player at the end of 2020”

#297

Post by pm215 » Tue, Jul 25, 2017, 8:53 PM UTC

WalterBright wrote: post #239

macspoofing wrote: post #200

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't know about MS-Paint, but there are a number of licensing issues with simply open sourcing Flash.

If the product is dead, that means the licencors are likely to no longer make any money off it it. This means they will likely be open to open sourcing the code for free or next to free. Open sourcing dead projects do have advantages for the licencors: 1. nobody likes the code they worked hard on to be dead 2. it's valuable free marketing for their brand name 3. they can charge for support

Flash player might be dead, but that doesn't mean $THIRD_PARTY_LIBRARY that it uses isn't still being profitably licensed by its original developers. Or maybe the player uses a library that Adobe have a perpetual binary license to, but the original company that owned that library went bust a decade ago and nobody knows who owns the copyright on it now to allow a relicense. Open sourcing things does have a cost, and a big chunk of that is in running down these legalities.

Re: “We will stop updating and distributing the Flash Player at the end of 2020”

#298

Post by jchw » Tue, Jul 25, 2017, 8:53 PM UTC

amitt wrote: post #107

End of an era. We built the FarmVille-engine using AS3 and I still think it's one of the best programming languages I've ever used. Static typing, access modifiers, and performant. Low friction for new users (most people had the plugin, we could stream the main binary and assets) 0% chance we could have built the game using any other client-side tech stack available at the time.

I wish we could take the best of AS3, ESNext, and TypeScript, and make it into one WebAssembled language...

Well okay. That's insane. But there's a part of me that wants to know how far it would go.

Re: “We will stop updating and distributing the Flash Player at the end of 2020”

#299

Post by vsphereclientpm » Tue, Jul 25, 2017, 8:54 PM UTC

Karunamon wrote: post #121

syshum wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sadly yes... VMWare is one large one. I know of a very large company that has been over the last couple of years moving from Java to Flash, so it will be amusing to what their reaction will be to this news.

Supposedly upgrading the vSphere web interface to HTML5 is on the roadmap, but I'm not sure when. I'm just happy that they give you an external console app now.

We've been working on it publicly for over a year now. Have you had a chance to try the new HTML5 based #vsphereclient? 6.5.0b: https://blogs.vmware.com/vsphere/2017/03/first-vsphere-clien... or the Fling: https://labs.vmware.com/flings/vsphere-html5-web-client

Re: “We will stop updating and distributing the Flash Player at the end of 2020”

#300

Post by baby » Tue, Jul 25, 2017, 8:54 PM UTC

This makes me sad.

The internet used to be less "flat". Every website was interactive, animated, had sound, had dimensions to it. Everything was a theme park. Maybe you had to learn a new UI every time but I was amazed a lot back then.

I learned a lot of programming with Action Script, it wasn't the best, but it was easy to get into.

I did my fare share of animating, just because it was so easy to get into. Xiaoxiao was just amazing to me (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hw4wzwYeZ0Y).

I did my fair share of games as well, there were so many of them and publishing a game on internet had never been so easy. Orisinal is beautiful (http://www.ferryhalim.com/orisinal/).

Now where do people find such mini games? On mobile. The big mini-game market has shifted and we now have to pay, we now have to download each game individually.

I understand Flash has had a bad track of security vulnerability, but the internet used to be magical, it's the end of an era.

As methodover says it here:

> The tools for 2D animations and games in Flash are far beyond anything else out there from a creative standpoint. There isn't a product on the market that comes even close. Everything now is too technical, too specialized.