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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

#141

Post by p1mrx »

ehsankia wrote: post #80
superkuh wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

I think you're right. Weird text formats like filetype:cpp work fine, but filetype:bmp does not, and that could be considered analogous to swf.

Re: Flash Animations Live Forever at the Internet Archive

#142

Post by Brajeshwar »

Here is a small anecdote which a handful of people from the Flash/ActionScript community is privy to. This account and the gist of the story is correct to the best of my knowledge.

It was the summer of 2005, we were gathered at Macromedia’s Townsend Building in San Francisco, waiting for the session starting with Gary Grossman, the man who created ActionScript.

There was someone showing us a map-ish thing on a web-browser, of what I think, was a Flash-powered real-time track of one of the attendant on his boat and soon to dock, and eventually attend the sessions. I thought it was super awesome and I was too timid to ask more about that.

I also remember we talked a lot about Macromedia to Open Source SWF, but soon learnt that Adobe was acquiring them. After about spending 3-4 years of deep-dive into Flash, 2005-2006 was the time I realized Flash isn’t something I wanted to pursue further.

Re: Flash Animations Live Forever at the Internet Archive

#143

Post by Sunspark »

echelon wrote: post #83
breakfastduck wrote: post #66

Flash as a technology should never be used now unless for artistic purposes. However, it's preservation to be able to run & archiving of flash media are an absolute cornerstone of any attempt to archive the 2000s internet. Flash introduced & inspired countless people who have no doubt gone on to build amazing things in other technologies. I love flash. I'm glad it's not used anymore, but I truly love the content it p…

> Flash as a technology should never be used now unless for artistic purposes. Nothing filled the gap left by Flash. It was easy, accessible, and drew so many young people to create. Flash had security issues, but they could have been fixed. Macromedia and/or Adobe could (and should) have published an open source standard and realized their tooling would always be ahead of the game. They didn't see the incredible opp…

You are romanticizing Flash. One legitimate reason for it's eventual demise was due to the fact that it was very power hungry to run. On laptops that was bad, and on smartphones it would have been a non-starter. Though curiously, I remember that some smartphones did used to come with Flash like the Blackberry Z30 which had it through 10.2 and then it was taken away out of the hands of the device owners in 10.3

Re: Flash Animations Live Forever at the Internet Archive

#144

Post by ilyagr »

echelon wrote: post #83
breakfastduck wrote: post #66

Flash as a technology should never be used now unless for artistic purposes. However, it's preservation to be able to run & archiving of flash media are an absolute cornerstone of any attempt to archive the 2000s internet. Flash introduced & inspired countless people who have no doubt gone on to build amazing things in other technologies. I love flash. I'm glad it's not used anymore, but I truly love the content it p…

> Flash as a technology should never be used now unless for artistic purposes. Nothing filled the gap left by Flash. It was easy, accessible, and drew so many young people to create. Flash had security issues, but they could have been fixed. Macromedia and/or Adobe could (and should) have published an open source standard and realized their tooling would always be ahead of the game. They didn't see the incredible opp…

There are game libraries that try to be similar to flash, such as http://www.openfl.org/learn/.

Re: Flash Animations Live Forever at the Internet Archive

#145

Post by egypturnash »

acqq wrote: post #99
egypturnash wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> as it's drawn with vector graphics (I guess?) Yeah, Flash was fundamentally a vector format for much of its life. It started adding bitmaps after a while, I wanna say in the Flash 5 era? It's been a long time and I've deliberately put a lot of my time with Flash in the mental vault, as it was also mostly time working under John K. Anyway. I spent a lot of time hand-optimizing autotraces of scans of ink drawings, an…

Thanks. I knew about Flash in general, I just haven't checked yes if the 600 KB swf looked good full screen -- yes it does, with real Flash player. With Ruffle, the lines are thicker. I still don't know, how are we going to be able to watch the old content with the native Flash player, at least on our desktops? Depending on the new emulations can result in missing or differently presented content (like these thicker…

I think Adobe Animate still comes with Windows and OSX executables for the Flash Projector. Drop a local copy of the SWF on there and enjoy.

Re: Flash Animations Live Forever at the Internet Archive

#149

Post by paulie_a »

echelon wrote: post #83
breakfastduck wrote: post #66

Flash as a technology should never be used now unless for artistic purposes. However, it's preservation to be able to run & archiving of flash media are an absolute cornerstone of any attempt to archive the 2000s internet. Flash introduced & inspired countless people who have no doubt gone on to build amazing things in other technologies. I love flash. I'm glad it's not used anymore, but I truly love the content it p…

> Flash as a technology should never be used now unless for artistic purposes. Nothing filled the gap left by Flash. It was easy, accessible, and drew so many young people to create. Flash had security issues, but they could have been fixed. Macromedia and/or Adobe could (and should) have published an open source standard and realized their tooling would always be ahead of the game. They didn't see the incredible opp…

Nothing filled the gap left by flash?

I see that as a good thing. Flash was a power hungry, slow and obnoxious technology. Not to mention it was a security nightmare.

I'm glad the barrier to entry to make pointless animations is atleast slightly higher

Re: Flash Animations Live Forever at the Internet Archive

#150

Post by adrianN »

gogopuppygogo wrote: post #110
echelon wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think today's creative youth are on Twitch and TikTok. I'm not sure if they're building the same kind of future capital and skill sets that we did, but maybe it'll turn out well for them. Especially if there's an explosion in the creative economy. Still, it's incredibly hard to beat a technology that teaches kids to program as a side effect. Flash and early web raised up a generation of engineers.

Seems reasonable that being a content creator is a viable career for young people as automation and globalization continue to eat jobs. TikTok is probably teaching vital skills for their futures.

"Content creators" almost universally only make significant money when the content they create are ads or porn. It's also about as viable a career choice as "becoming a pop star" was a while ago.
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