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Flash Is Responsible for the Internet's Most Creative Era

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Re: Flash Is Responsible for the Internet's Most Creative Era

#31
When I was a teenager I wrote a couple flash games with actionscript. I think the biggest thing about flash, asides from running consistently on all platforms, was how simple it was to build functional stuff on it. Adobe's Flash Professional had a nice monolithic IDE that worked out of the box and included visual design aids.

Re: Flash Is Responsible for the Internet's Most Creative Era

#32
post #4

Removing Flash from the web was done with good intentions. It was a propitiatory system plagued with security holes. Instead of replacing it with similarly capable open standards, we've got a propitiatory Encrypted Media Extensions (EME), flaky HTML5 calls that differ between browsers, and webassembly. It's a shame that HTML5 never really reached the ability of flash. And it's also a shame that Adobe didn't simply re…

This comment is pretty misleading. The parts you complain about have little to do with what made Flash a creative sandbox. The parts that do matter have long been replaced with Canvas/WebGL. But the web as a whole has changed. Just like we don't have as many fun quirky geocities-like websites. The issue isn't the lack of Flash, it's that the web as a whole has grown up and changed.

Re: Flash Is Responsible for the Internet's Most Creative Era

#33
post #4

Removing Flash from the web was done with good intentions. It was a propitiatory system plagued with security holes. Instead of replacing it with similarly capable open standards, we've got a propitiatory Encrypted Media Extensions (EME), flaky HTML5 calls that differ between browsers, and webassembly. It's a shame that HTML5 never really reached the ability of flash. And it's also a shame that Adobe didn't simply re…

Flash died because of Apple, and before Adboe bought Macromedia, it was an incredibly small runtime; way better than Java at very specific forms of 3D rendering. Old Flash can be upscaled to 4k. A youtube video is pre-rendered and stuck at that resolution forever.

Re: Flash Is Responsible for the Internet's Most Creative Era

#34
post #2

You can set up a video chat lecture with text chat and pretty good video with the free red5 java server and something like Avchat.com . That's 20 year old tech and works today, but will be removed from the net in a year. There is no HTML5 alternative. Why? I think Tech took a weird turn somewhere around 2010. Things became more homogeneous, designes became bland without rough edges, literally with rounded corners. Op…

I threw up a livestreaming setup + chat with nginx-rtmp-module, Prosody, Converse.JS and a few lines of javascript in a weekend. I'm not really sure what you're talking about tbh.

i tried converse.js but it hard to integrate in existing userbase, and being xmpp it is introducing unnecessary complication (don't need the pesky @ adresses, groups were impossible to integrate). have not used nginx-rmpt so i dont know how it scales with connections. converse seems to be set up for specific use cases and not very flexible.

Re: Flash Is Responsible for the Internet's Most Creative Era

#35
post #4

Removing Flash from the web was done with good intentions. It was a propitiatory system plagued with security holes. Instead of replacing it with similarly capable open standards, we've got a propitiatory Encrypted Media Extensions (EME), flaky HTML5 calls that differ between browsers, and webassembly. It's a shame that HTML5 never really reached the ability of flash. And it's also a shame that Adobe didn't simply re…

What can flash do that modern browsers can't?

When flash was dominant there was an abundance of vector animations. There isn’t a technical reason this couldn’t still be the case, however we’re in the graphics dark ages right now. Everything is a raster. Everything that isn’t is static or on a very light fixed loop that takes an absurd amount of resources to animate.

Re: Flash Is Responsible for the Internet's Most Creative Era

#36
Home Star Runner!!!

Go to the old homestarrunner site, grab a flash file and play it (in the browser if you still have support, or using a rendering library) on a UHD screen. Yes, you can render that ancient 2000s era video .. in 4k. Flash is dead as a door nail though, and Homestar will now only be at the resolution of when they rendered it for YouTube.

Re: Flash Is Responsible for the Internet's Most Creative Era

#37
post #4

Removing Flash from the web was done with good intentions. It was a propitiatory system plagued with security holes. Instead of replacing it with similarly capable open standards, we've got a propitiatory Encrypted Media Extensions (EME), flaky HTML5 calls that differ between browsers, and webassembly. It's a shame that HTML5 never really reached the ability of flash. And it's also a shame that Adobe didn't simply re…

I feel like you can do pretty much everything with HTML5 and JavaScript that you could with Flash and ActionScript. The IDE for Flash had some nice UI abstractions but there's no reason that couldn't happen in a web IDE in 2019. Distributing your website like a flash file/app as a binary is one missing feature I suppose?

> Distributing your website like a flash file/app as a binary is one missing feature I suppose?

Lots of solutions to this:

* SickBeard ran a local web server and the UI ran in your browser.

* Electron / Nwjs

* Whatever Microsoft has planned for Electron (Electron Runtime?)

* That Microsoft compiled HTML format thats defunct mostly (chtml).

As much as everyone hates on the web. Its a consistent UI platform. Not 100% consistent every single time but you can get pretty darn close.

Re: Flash Is Responsible for the Internet's Most Creative Era

#38
post #16

I had a formative experience with Flash as a middle schooler. I loved Albino Blacksheep, Newgrounds, etc. I thought the videos were hilarious and the stick-figure-style animation was approachable. So I acquired Flash, and I was blown away by how easy it was to create these silly animations. Automatic tweening was a miracle to me. Since then I've done a lot of video editing with different tools, but I still think back…

I know a lot of early Adult Swing shows were made with Flash (I think Aqua Teen?). What are studios using today? Is there anything equivalent today that matches the power of Flash for young animators?

Re: Flash Is Responsible for the Internet's Most Creative Era

#39
post #4

Removing Flash from the web was done with good intentions. It was a propitiatory system plagued with security holes. Instead of replacing it with similarly capable open standards, we've got a propitiatory Encrypted Media Extensions (EME), flaky HTML5 calls that differ between browsers, and webassembly. It's a shame that HTML5 never really reached the ability of flash. And it's also a shame that Adobe didn't simply re…

What can flash do that modern browsers can't?

Tooling. I don't think anything fully replaced it. OTOH, while not web things per se, I think Twine, Unity and RPG Maker scratch similar itches for many (but definitely not all) people potentially interested.

Re: Flash Is Responsible for the Internet's Most Creative Era

#40
post #16

I had a formative experience with Flash as a middle schooler. I loved Albino Blacksheep, Newgrounds, etc. I thought the videos were hilarious and the stick-figure-style animation was approachable. So I acquired Flash, and I was blown away by how easy it was to create these silly animations. Automatic tweening was a miracle to me. Since then I've done a lot of video editing with different tools, but I still think back…

I know a lot of early Adult Swing shows were made with Flash (I think Aqua Teen?). What are studios using today? Is there anything equivalent today that matches the power of Flash for young animators?

ToonBoom is very popular.
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