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Flash Animations Live Forever at the Internet Archive

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181–190 of 265 posts

Re: Flash Animations Live Forever at the Internet Archive

#181

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"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.

I sponsor a couple of folks on Patreon and Github, and none of them create porn. I think there's a future where long tail art can be funded on an artisanal level by patrons, and the network will connect consumers to artists that satisfy their interests. Are you interested in an alternate history Oregon Trail where an alien invasion forces westward migration? Or perhaps a time travelling Jacques Cousteau serial where…

Same for me. It's much more natural for me to pay an actual person ten bucks a month for what they do then to subscribe to a streaming service for the same amount of money. It's nice to know one's contribution actually makes an impact to someone whom I appreciate, that it's not just a drop in a gigantic bucket like a Netflix or Prime or Disney+ subscription.

Re: Flash Animations Live Forever at the Internet Archive

#182

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

For most of Flash's lifespan, laptops and smartphones were not really a thing.

Smartphones maybe but laptops?

Re: Flash Animations Live Forever at the Internet Archive

#183
post #51

I'm glad to see The Internet Archive doing this. There's a flash animation I used to enjoy back around 2000 and I have been looking for it for almost as long. It was basically a showcase animation sequence done by what I think was a Japanese designer. I don't remember the full sequence but it was an anime style animation and at the end was a girl standing on a cliff with her hair blowing in the wind. I'm really hopin…

Was it "Yukino" perhaps? https://www.nicovideo.jp/watch/sm31167703

That is the one that I still remembered so vividly that this post motivated me to download a Flash player and look through my folder of SWF files for the first time in probably at least 15 years.

Re: Flash Animations Live Forever at the Internet Archive

#184
This motivated me to download SWF File player (http://www.swffileplayer.com/) and get some serious nostalgia hits looking through my folder of archived SWF files, probably for the first time in 15 years. Awesome stuff, some of it aged surprisingly well thanks to vector graphics.

Re: Flash Animations Live Forever at the Internet Archive

#185
post #83

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…

Yes, there is nothing like the flash IDE available today.

I had a manager in the late 2000's who was giddy with the possibilities of HTML5 "It can do everything we do with flash!" Whilst that may be technically true, in practice bloated libraries like D3 are required for even the most basic vector manipulation and coding every tiny detail of an animation feels like groping in the dark when there used to be a source of illumination.

I'm not sad about the demise of Flash, but I think there is a gap in the market for a more graphical keyframe based approach, where things can be rapidly prototyped, resulting in clean code.

Re: Flash Animations Live Forever at the Internet Archive

#186

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For most of Flash's lifespan, laptops and smartphones were not really a thing.

Smartphones maybe but laptops?

Flash came out in the mid 90s. I'd say there was a decade before they became practical and cheap enough to outnumber desktops

Re: Flash Animations Live Forever at the Internet Archive

#187

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…

In fact, Google used to index Flash files and marked the corresponding search results with "[swf]", similar to how they do with PDF files now. I don't recall at what point in time they stopped doing that.

[Edit] A quick search reveals that Google stopped indexing SWF files fairly recently: https://searchengineland.com/google-to-stop-indexing-flash-c...

Re: Flash Animations Live Forever at the Internet Archive

#188

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

> "Content creators" almost universally only make significant money when the content they create are ads or porn.

Don't go into creating porn with that mindset, it's not a guarantee you'll make significant money. It's still better than creating advertisement though.

Re: Flash Animations Live Forever at the Internet Archive

#190

In a certain sense, I created the very first Flash animation. I was working at Macromedia and happened to be in the office earlier than usual that morning. Our SVP came to my boss and said basically “We bought Futurewave, we’re announcing it today, and we’re renaming FutureSplash to Shockwave Flash. I need somebody to throw a quick animation together for the press gathering, and none of the creative services people a…

In a way that's beautiful
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