Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Flash Animations Live Forever at the Internet Archive

blog.archive.org

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

191–200 of 265 posts

Re: Flash Animations Live Forever at the Internet Archive

#191

Post by omegote »

echelon wrote: post #96
boarnoah wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The mid 2000s era was a really magical time for me growing up. Just the sheer amount of interesting games and videos available on places like NewGrounds and Kongregate was something else. It was kind of crazy how easy it was at the time to get at least some attention to any proof of concept project simply by posting onto said sites. Something that has definitely gotten much harder over time despite the more advanced…

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.

Comparing the creativity of youngsters doing voice-overs in TikTok to that of early 2000's teenagers creating full-fledged games and entire films with Flash is... I don't know.

As you said in your last paragraph, Flash _raised up_ a generation of engineers by _lowering_ the entry barriers to a minimum. TikTok is just a showcase for attw's.

Re: Flash Animations Live Forever at the Internet Archive

#192

Post by saagarjha »

abdusco wrote: post #166
aYsY4dDQ2NrcNzA wrote: post #152

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…

Unrelated, but is there a meaning to your username? Or is it just a random string?

Wonder if it says anything about the account's password.

Re: Flash Animations Live Forever at the Internet Archive

#193

Post by ghaff »

zxcmx wrote: post #156
ghaff wrote: post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Content creator is a vanishingly small lottery winner occupation now and in the future unless it’s connected to a product in some way.

How much of every corporate job is communicating / consensus vs doing?. Arguably "content creation" is core to every > middle class job now - you have to get people onboard to get things done. Personally I still think writing is more valuable but perhaps the knowledge creation and sharing (_inside_ companies) of tomorrow will be done by making and watching videos. I very much do not want to be part of that future, bu…

>will be done by making and watching videos.

Arguably, it's the case today to some degree with company meetings/team meetings/etc. typically recorded for people who couldn't attend live. But it's pretty low bandwidth for most purposes to communicate basic facts in the absence of interaction. I for one rarely listen to recordings of meetings I miss and I assume I'm pretty typical. For many purposes I'd much prefer a 1 page email.

It's like all the how-tos on the Internet that don't really have a visual component but are a video anyway.

Re: Flash Animations Live Forever at the Internet Archive

#194

Post by saagarjha »

ArtWomb wrote: post #77
jonah-archive wrote: post #2

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…

Realm of the Mad God requires a server to run, doesn't it? It might be difficult to preserve…

Re: Flash Animations Live Forever at the Internet Archive

#195

Post by WJW »

omegote wrote: post #191
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.

Comparing the creativity of youngsters doing voice-overs in TikTok to that of early 2000's teenagers creating full-fledged games and entire films with Flash is... I don't know. As you said in your last paragraph, Flash _raised up_ a generation of engineers by _lowering_ the entry barriers to a minimum. TikTok is just a showcase for attw's.

Don't be an old curmudgeon. :) There were a couple of absolute gems in the Flash era but there was an absolute boatload of crap as well. The most creative TikTok-ers are absolutely innovating storytelling and filmography just as the most creative Flash creators were innovating in their own medium.

It's just that when we look back we remember the gems but not the river of crap, but when we look at the present we see the river too.

Re: Flash Animations Live Forever at the Internet Archive

#196

Post by krageon »

zxcmx wrote: post #156
ghaff wrote: post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Content creator is a vanishingly small lottery winner occupation now and in the future unless it’s connected to a product in some way.

How much of every corporate job is communicating / consensus vs doing?. Arguably "content creation" is core to every > middle class job now - you have to get people onboard to get things done. Personally I still think writing is more valuable but perhaps the knowledge creation and sharing (_inside_ companies) of tomorrow will be done by making and watching videos. I very much do not want to be part of that future, bu…

> How much of every corporate job is communicating / consensus vs doing?

From experience as the corporation gets larger communicating and communicating-adjacent activities approach 90-95% of the time. The remainder is doing.

Re: Flash Animations Live Forever at the Internet Archive

#197

Post by afiori »

blub wrote: post #168
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…

You love Flash from the bottom of your heart, but you're happy it's dead? Could it be that you're hiding your true feelings to be more in line with the expectations of the community? The modern web development establishment has managed to convince people that it has merit, when in fact it's a case study in accidental complexity. Every now and then some poor soul realizes what a mess they're in and writes a blog about…

merit is not a scalar quantity, rather it has quite a few dimensions.

Re: Flash Animations Live Forever at the Internet Archive

#199

Post by daniel-s »

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…

What replaced flash? Was it SVG + JavaScript?

Re: Flash Animations Live Forever at the Internet Archive

#200

Post by Snitch-Thursday »

i wish i could buy a perpetual license of Adobe Animate, any version that can take actionscript and such and compile it to an HTML5 video. I don't know if those HTML5 things still count as Rich internet applications (interactive? idk), but there is definitely a void left behind in terms of ease of content creation that lives on the web, at least not without 5 billion npm packages and JS frameworks.
Post reply on HN