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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

#421

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've enjoyed Web Components; using LitElement (a WC subclass) feels like writing React with native browser APIs. Working with the browser instead of hacking around it.

Good to hear, I was thinking about using Vue for a new project, but now decided to give Web Components (LitElement) a try. I didn't really need all the SPA functionality anyway, just wanted small and fast components.

Ping me on Twitter (@hunterloftis) if you have questions while working on your project. The community around WC/LitElement is small relative to Vue/React but amazingly responsive.

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

#422

I might have missed a few names, but I'd like to contribute a list of folks and sites from the old Flash community who seemed like rock stars (in order of how much I idolized them). Once I typed it up, I realized it was all dudes, so let me first link to https://flashgoddess.com/spotlight/ , who shone a spotlight on the women who worked in the same space. (Shoutout to Lisa Larson-Kelley, fellow alumnus of FlashCoders…

All of that and no 2Advanced

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

#423
post #311
post #204

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> Where can I send a kid to learn to play with software and not have it all break six months later, rendering the learning useless? If you had a Pentium 1 PC, would you not still be able to run DOS and BASIC on it? Software "breaking" only happens if you let it - you can still use Windows 95, or XP, and run all those old programs that no longer work. If you have a copy of Flash 4 you can still run that on supported h…

> Software "breaking" only happens if you let it I don't think this is realistically true in the age of cloud services and forced, automatic updates. Maybe it is if you painstakingly stick to decades-old software or FOSS - but this will mean you're missing out on a lot of progress made in modern software. (edit:) > ...and probably still have people with modern Flash installations be able to play it back? Even if you…

> My suspicion is that in 20 years, many of today's games will be forgotten but people will likely still play FFIV on emulator - not because some artistic quality were better but simply because you can.

Inn 20 years, emulators will probably progress enough that the (non-server-based) games people still care about will be playable -- anything where there's no server, or the server is just a DRM check and all the gameplay happens clientside. Some of the servers will probably be replicable locally for single-player or small-group play, too; I think there's already reverse-engineered server emulation for some online-multiplayer DS games, some of it even having been made before the official servers went offline.

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

#424

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Canvas/WebGL may replace Flash to end users. I'm not aware of creator tools that allow people to put things together as easily as they could using Flash.

Adobe Animate is literally Flash, except it uses standard web technologies like Canvas, JS and WebGL. What's not to like?

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

#425
post #415
post #412

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In case you missed it, he was discussing Flash in the context of a mobile device . There is simply nothing positive to say about it. Nothing. Everything he did mention, from power consumption to terrible security and poor usability has since been proven true. I don't know of a single reputable technologist, or tech journalist, who would dispute that. Do you? Here's a write up of why Flash failed on Android. Notice an…

I can tell you've never used the flash authoring tool or you wouldn't be making snarky remarks about this. Nobody is disputing that the runtime had problems and it was never good enough for prime-time on mobile on older devices. But a blanket ban on Flash was anti-competitive behavior that means Adobe never got the chance to prove it could work.

Flash Lite worked perfectly fine on loads of ancient mobile phones: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adobe_Flash_Lite

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

#426
post #415
post #412

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In case you missed it, he was discussing Flash in the context of a mobile device . There is simply nothing positive to say about it. Nothing. Everything he did mention, from power consumption to terrible security and poor usability has since been proven true. I don't know of a single reputable technologist, or tech journalist, who would dispute that. Do you? Here's a write up of why Flash failed on Android. Notice an…

I can tell you've never used the flash authoring tool or you wouldn't be making snarky remarks about this. Nobody is disputing that the runtime had problems and it was never good enough for prime-time on mobile on older devices. But a blanket ban on Flash was anti-competitive behavior that means Adobe never got the chance to prove it could work.

>Adobe never got the chance to prove it could work

Wait, what? They had years to demonstrate it working well on Android. They failed. Spectacularly. Why are you ignoring widely accepted fact of tech history? Are you implying that is also Apple's fault?

Look, if you want to discuss Apple being anti-competitive I'm all ears. I more or less agree. But using Flash as an example does nothing to help your argument. That's because everything Apple claimed about why Flash wouldn't work on mobile was later proven to be true. Everything.

Flash on Android was a disaster. Ignoring that fact to claim it could have worked on iOS (because... magic?) is nothing but revisionist anti-Apple zealotry.

Never let facts get in the way of a good Apple-bashing I guess.

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

#427
post #251

During 1999-2000, I helped hundreds of people learn how to use Flash. I was, looking back now, probably one of the top experts on Flash 4 at the time in the world. The twist - I was a 15 year old living in a tiny African country called Lesotho. Lesotho is pretty isolated from the world. Nobody even knows it exists. Living there, Silicon Valley might as well be on Mars. However, we used to get issues of Wired Magazine…

Where are all the creatives flocking to nowdays? HTML5?

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

#428
post #289
post #121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why are you rewriting history? Apple didn't just decide not to embrace Flash, they actively decided to kill it. Apple banned flash based apps in their review guidelines and Adobe didn't see a way forward since Job's had decided everything but native apps were to be purged from the app store. Html 5 isn't a replacement for what flash offered, it wasn't then and it isn't now. Here is the Jobs quote from when this happe…

You seem to be doing a little re-writing of history yourself right here: > Instead Jobs decided business wise he could lock devs into developing native apps in the iOS ecosystem, scapegoat performance and security for the ban, and gain a competitive advantage at the same time Steve Jobs never even envisioned the App Store model when he decided against supporting Flash in Safari. From https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/App…

>... prior to its unveiling in 2007, Apple's then-CEO Steve Jobs did not intend to let third-party developers build native apps for iOS, instead directing them to make web applications for the Safari web browser. However, backlash from developers prompted the company to reconsider, with Jobs announcing in October 2007 that Apple would have a software development kit available for developers by February 2008

Let me translate that:

Steve Jobs did not intend to let anyone else profit from iOS, instead directing them to make web applications for the Safari web browser that would provide subpar experience.

They released a publicly accessible SDK in less than 4 months? And you believe it wasn't in their plan at all to allow anyone else to develop on it? They clearly planned to have a way to sideload app on it. Itunes already existed since 2001, it wasn't anything new for them. The only things they decided to change was to allow everyone to access it.

Flash would have been a way to allow everyone to access much more powerful feature. This is why they avoided it. The app store was an alternative that allowed them to keep control of it.

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

#429
post #403
post #402

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Same here, been wanting this for a long time. I even started a project called Hypermedia Canvas, but didn't have the skills or collaborators to get it started. I would be interested to give it another attempt, if I could find someone to help with some parts, like keyframing or tweening. The goal would be to create a fully open source studio to produce rich hypermedia productions using web standard technologies (HTML,…

E.g. the CreateJS toolkit might be a good basis: https://createjs.com/ I'm not clear how to build a keyframe timeline or bezier graph for property tweening, nor am I sure whether shape tweening is possible with CSS or SVG.

The Scene.js Timeline seems foundational to making keyframe animations using JS/CSS:

https://github.com/daybrush/scenejs-timeline

Granted, Scene.js seems oriented towards short animations.

Building a hypermedia studio, even with Scene.js as a component, that could produce something as elaborate as Homestar Runner would need considerable effort.

The idea here is basically an open source, web standards-based alternative to Adobe Animate.

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

#430
post #405
post #402

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Same here, been wanting this for a long time. I even started a project called Hypermedia Canvas, but didn't have the skills or collaborators to get it started. I would be interested to give it another attempt, if I could find someone to help with some parts, like keyframing or tweening. The goal would be to create a fully open source studio to produce rich hypermedia productions using web standard technologies (HTML,…

Also, while Canvas, SVG, etc. imply 2D or 2.5D (excluding the timeline) there are a couple of WebGL projects that could serve as the basis for a Flash/Hypercard-esque web standards studio: https://github.com/jagenjo/webglstudio.js https://github.com/tentone/nunuStudio

WebGLStudio.js uses the litegui.js framework to build the UI

https://github.com/jagenjo/litegui.js

It looks like litegui.js is capable of producing UI widgets similar to Adobe Animate, and other desktop animation software.

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