Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

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

blogs.adobe.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

391–400 of 508 posts

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

#391

Post by govg »

omg_ketchup wrote: post #275
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.

Hot damn, an actual Farmville developer. My big plan fresh out of college was to make a Farmville-esque game with some action elements. Got WAY further along than I rightly should have, and I have AS3 to thank for that. It's a shame it's going away. Glad the pros from that time feel the same way I do about it.

Did you actually end up developing a game like that? Otherwise, Stardew Valley might be something you're interested in.

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

#392

Post by penpapersw »

slackingoff2017 wrote: post #339
boubiyeah wrote: post #323

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, I used AS3 and Flex while it occupied a useful niche and at the time it was SO much better than the web platform. BUT, AS3 was not a great language. The VM was pretty slow (that GC! I'm sure you game devs optimized the hell out of it with object pools and all, but still, modern JS VMs could run circles around Flash's), the static typing was extremely limited: you could only type "Function", not the actual arg a…

God Typescript is glorious after dealing with JS for so long. Just needed to say that.

I tried TypeScript yesterday and while I really love the language, the tooling was wayyyy too complicated and confusing. All I wanted was to make a dead simple hello-world node app that let me write it in VS Code, and recompile the TS to JS every time I saved. Suddenly I had to learn about tsconfig.json, had to install nodemon and have a process running in the background that I'm sure to forget to kill later, and I have no idea how either tsc or ts-node plays into any of this... in the end I just decided to go with ES2016 and be done with it. Too bad, because I really like having type information available, especially for catching bugs. I enabled VS's "pretend JS is TS" setting so it catches some errors, but it's pretty hacky and not thorough, and I don't get to specify types in my program. Really wish I could get a dead simple TS app figured out.

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

#393

Post by exodust »

baby wrote: post #303
dalbasal wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Failure is a bit strong, IMO. Flash played a role, and now it is done. Meanwhile, it was (as you say) years ahead of standards and the most ubiquitous non-standard standard on the web. In early years it let web designers expirement. Most of those expirements went badly, but many ulitmately preceded and shaped the web of the "future." Animated interactive UIs, video, audio, rounded corners.... These appeared as flash…

> rounded corners I don't see this as being a flash thing. You could do that in paint, photoshop or fireworks or ...

Rounded corners as in on the fly rounded corners, as in vector rounded corners. Flash was first on the web for rounded corners that weren't pre-created bitmaps.

It's not a big deal, but it's a fact.

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

#394

Post by exodust »

TheCoreh wrote: post #131
BLanen wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Adobe now has "Adobe Animate" though.

Yeah, the Flash creation tools will remain in development, simply rebranded as "Animate". The plugin is no longer needed, since Animate can export to HTML/JS/SVG or to video files. This is by far the best outcome: We get to keep the awesome creation tools, but it exports on free/open formats.

You're forgetting that Flash had a lot more than animation at heart. What about the components? They were very useful for both animators and casual developers to easily create interactive animation - which was the whole point. Static animation was only the beginning. The best Flash was interactive.

A huge variety of components from the Flash community. You were presented with an interface within Flash where you could configure the component's options, and very little code was needed to get professional results quickly.

Adobe Animate has nothing like that, and besides Adobe only makes their CC stuff available by subscription which is unappealing to a lot of people.

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

#395

Post by exodust »

greggman wrote: post #308
methodover wrote: post #12

I say this every time someone brings up Flash's failure, but ... It's a tragic failure on Adobe's part. 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. There are lots and lots of artists and developers out there who learned Flash's toolset and g…

I don't have any numbers but my impression is the number of people making games in unity dwarfs the number of people who ever made games in flash. it's ridiculously easy now. any coffee shop I visit I see several people in unity.

Yet try to find Unity games on the web to play right now, and you won't find many, and oh look you need to download a plugin to play them.

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

#396

Post by exodust »

eridius wrote: post #358
Joeri wrote: post #266

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The security argument was convincing. The battery argument was weak and I'm sure Jobs knew. Video was a significant chunk of flash's use case, but not the only part, and flash was much more battery efficient than HTML5 at all the other stuff it did. Even today you can't do buttery smooth flash-style animations in javascript without some major hacks (like using webgl). Even simple effects like full-screen fade-in that…

The battery argument was not weak. It was actually one of the strongest arguments. Flash was a battery hog. Disabling flash on a laptop could double your battery life.

That's an outdated statistic. There's way too much javascript and unwanted video and other effects on the web today that your battery is still getting hammered. Turn off javascript today and you'll probably get huge battery savings.

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

#397

Post by curryhowardiso »

penpapersw wrote: post #392
slackingoff2017 wrote: post #339

Earlier quoted context omitted.

God Typescript is glorious after dealing with JS for so long. Just needed to say that.

I tried TypeScript yesterday and while I really love the language, the tooling was wayyyy too complicated and confusing. All I wanted was to make a dead simple hello-world node app that let me write it in VS Code, and recompile the TS to JS every time I saved. Suddenly I had to learn about tsconfig.json, had to install nodemon and have a process running in the background that I'm sure to forget to kill later, and I h…

Will this be fixed when a "canonical" docker container comes out for it? Or perhaps two containers - 1 for dev & dev dependencies and 1 for "prod"?

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

#398

Post by RhodesianHunter »

penpapersw wrote: post #392
slackingoff2017 wrote: post #339

Earlier quoted context omitted.

God Typescript is glorious after dealing with JS for so long. Just needed to say that.

I tried TypeScript yesterday and while I really love the language, the tooling was wayyyy too complicated and confusing. All I wanted was to make a dead simple hello-world node app that let me write it in VS Code, and recompile the TS to JS every time I saved. Suddenly I had to learn about tsconfig.json, had to install nodemon and have a process running in the background that I'm sure to forget to kill later, and I h…

You could always just opt for a typed language.

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

#399

Post by evmar »

penpapersw wrote: post #392
slackingoff2017 wrote: post #339

Earlier quoted context omitted.

God Typescript is glorious after dealing with JS for so long. Just needed to say that.

I tried TypeScript yesterday and while I really love the language, the tooling was wayyyy too complicated and confusing. All I wanted was to make a dead simple hello-world node app that let me write it in VS Code, and recompile the TS to JS every time I saved. Suddenly I had to learn about tsconfig.json, had to install nodemon and have a process running in the background that I'm sure to forget to kill later, and I h…

1) tsc --init # creates a tsconfig.json, no need to edit it

2) tsc --watch # rebuilds every .ts file on save

There is no step 3.

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

#400

Post by stevenjgarner »

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.

Surely they're not alone. Aren't many media/news/entertainment companies in the same boat? e.g. go.cnn.com
Post reply on HN