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Flash Animations Live Forever at the Internet Archive

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Re: Flash Animations Live Forever at the Internet Archive

#71
post #18

While mini retro consoles are still all the rage, a retro console that has a flash emulator, with a keyboard, mouse, and a vast database of classic SWFs, would be awesome.

Could perhaps get it working on a RasPi 400; gets you a nice all in one package and I'd assume a raspi has the horsepower for most SWFs.

Re: Flash Animations Live Forever at the Internet Archive

#72

What’s with the criticism of Steve Jobs letter? Apple was completely right.

Yes and back then everybody invoked "web standards". Well look at "web standards" now. Apple isn't at the forefront of implementing them anymore, they love their "native apps" and the billions they are making virtually for free with their store...

Haxe lives and does compile for IOS on though, the irony (or the power of open source).

https://haxe.org/

Re: Flash Animations Live Forever at the Internet Archive

#73
post #68
post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A Flash player is a lot more like a Java virtual machine + libraries or a Web browser than it is like a video codec. I have not heard that rumor about Shumway. As a former Mozilla distinguished engineer, I think I would have. Thanks for pointing out Lightspark is progressing. I thought it had stalled, but I was wrong. Still, if Lightspark is doing well it's not ideal to split efforts into multiple projects.

I recall being able to play .swf files in Media Player Classic a decade ago.

Sure, you can embed Adobe's Flash or a JVM in a media player.

But what I said is still true in terms of implementation effort.

Re: Flash Animations Live Forever at the Internet Archive

#74
post #14

There's an enormous cache of historic SWFs hosted here [1] and it would be awesome if the Internet Archive could archive them, so they won't get lost. However, there are far too many to individually add. My personal favorites would be the Demented Cartoon Movie [2], Weebl and Bob's transdimensional portal [3] (which is located under the stairs) and of course The End of the World [4]. They all load perfectly in Ruffle…

I still joke about TDCM with some of my friends, but sometimes I wonder about Brian Kendall. Imagine if the most impactful artwork of your career was a dumb flash movie you made when you were a kid?

The archive only has a single animutation too, which is a bit sad. Some of them are uploaded to youtube, but that loses any hidden interactivity that some of them had. Hopefully someone can find the original SWFs and upload them.

Re: Flash Animations Live Forever at the Internet Archive

#75

Really excited about this, and so happy we were able to roll it out before Flash's official deprecation at the end of the year. If you have old SWFs you'd like to share, these are the directions for uploading them so that they'll be emulated in-browser: https://bluemaxima.org/flashpoint/datahub/Uploading_SWFs_for...

I wish there was a way to get 2Advanced SWFs from somewhere.. Those sites were IMO the ultimate displays of what Flash could do visually.

Re: Flash Animations Live Forever at the Internet Archive

#76
post #69

What’s with the criticism of Steve Jobs letter? Apple was completely right.

While everyone loves Flash games and Homestar Runner and everything, let's not forget that Apple's war was against horrendous Flash websites, which were never going to be reasonably accessible on a touchscreen phone.

> which were never going to be reasonably accessible on a touchscreen phone.

I mean you could say the exact same thing for most websites that weren't fit for mobile and touch screen either. It had nothing to do with Flash, it was 100% a developer's problem, not a tech problem.

Flash problems are: proprietary/closed source VM, performances and security, which was all on Adobe side, not Flash developers.

In fact, Flash apps did run on Mobile including IOS via Air. https://www.adobe.com/products/air.html

So Steve Jobs was wrong initially. Let us remember that Jobs didn't want native apps on IOS, he wanted people to write web apps and Native apps to be solely the prerogative on Apple, until he changed his mind. Now you be that Apple prefers developers to write native apps, since it makes Apple a substantial amount of money.

Re: Flash Animations Live Forever at the Internet Archive

#77

Really excited about this, and so happy we were able to roll it out before Flash's official deprecation at the end of the year. If you have old SWFs you'd like to share, these are the directions for uploading them so that they'll be emulated in-browser: https://bluemaxima.org/flashpoint/datahub/Uploading_SWFs_for...

GemCraft, Desktop Tower Defense, RoboKill, Line Rider, Crush the Castle, Kingdom Rush, Realm of the Mad God ... all classics, all significant, all worth preserving.

Trying valiantly like many to replace my current affairs media diet with something more substantive, and Internet Archive has proven invaluable. Currently enjoying a first edition pdf scan of an E M Forester novel from 1920s. And it's transporting to dive into the yellowed pages, modernist fonts, and random errata. Thanks for all your important work ;)

Re: Flash Animations Live Forever at the Internet Archive

#78
post #22

What I don't understand is why google is intentionally excluding .swf results from search results. Okay, fine, you don't want it in Chrome that's your choice. But not indexing .swf in your search engine product because you don't support it in your browser product is crazy. It's going out of their way, doing more work, to hurt people. I guess this is just another example of being unable to count on profit motivated co…

What would Google index? Can you even decipher the contents of a SWF to get keywords out of it?

[deleted]

Re: Flash Animations Live Forever at the Internet Archive

#79

Really excited about this, and so happy we were able to roll it out before Flash's official deprecation at the end of the year. If you have old SWFs you'd like to share, these are the directions for uploading them so that they'll be emulated in-browser: https://bluemaxima.org/flashpoint/datahub/Uploading_SWFs_for...

The ultimate source would be if you could figure out how to archive the sites that TheFWA used to link to. That was the pinnacle of cutting edge Flash work.

Re: Flash Animations Live Forever at the Internet Archive

#80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They are not supported in most browsers. Most users are going to have a bad experience if they load a page with Flash, and it makes sense to down-rank pages that will deliver a bad experience.

Most file types are not supported in browsers. Only a few are. A "download file" dialog is not a bad experience. Treating .swf like a normal file type would both be easier and better in all ways.

> Most file types are not supported in browsers

And does Google index/show any of them in a search result? You usually have to get them indirectly from pages, but the search links themselves never directly link to any unsupported file type AFAIK

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