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HTML5 still doesn't replicate what mattered about Flash

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Re: HTML5 still doesn't replicate what mattered about Flash

#71

Post by danShumway »

larsiusprime wrote: post #67
danShumway wrote: post #65

I have some sympathy, but not a lot, because I don't feel like this is a problem with the web. Honestly, just based on what I used Flash for, the big thing I miss has nothing to do with Actionscript or any of its code or distribution. Distributing SWF files was no easier than it is today to distribute an HTML directory in a zip file, in either case the only reliable way to share your stuff was to link it on a website…

This is a really good point. It PAINS me that when somebody wants to upload a friggin' cartoon on the internet they have to render it out to 100X the native size and introduce compression artifacts. We were more sophisticated than this in 1999!

I mean, it's kind of crazy to think about, but forget distribution and even games entirely for a sec. What is the current standard for making vector animations, just in general?

There isn't one. Why? Flash clearly showed that people like to make animations with vector art. It compresses well, you can do nice things with scaling. And independent of everything else, there just isn't a clear best tool for that today.

I honestly feel like some of this comes down to, somebody needs to look at Flash and say, "hey, having nested timelines inside of symbols that can be edited on the fly is a really good idea, and maybe some program somewhere should do that." I don't understand why that hasn't happened anywhere.

Re: HTML5 still doesn't replicate what mattered about Flash

#72

Post by larsiusprime »

danShumway wrote: post #68
larsiusprime wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My experience was to upload to Newgrounds and Kongregate and send it to my mom on an ancient computer and she'd run it just fine. I am sorry for oversimplifying but I do think many people had the same experience as I did.

But your mom was on Windows, right? And probably running a pretty mainstream browser that was updated regularly. If your only requirement is that you should be able to put your code on a website and your mom should be able to visit a link and run it, then the web is already significantly ahead of where Flash was. Of course, the accessibility of creation is a problem, but if you send someone a link to a canvas-based a…

My mom was on windows, using an old version of IE. Never had any problems. Flash player compat wasn't perfect but it was more than enough to create vibrant scenes like Kongregate, Newgrounds, and ArmorGames. Anecdotal sure, but it was good enough for the scene to exist.

The main thing about the single-file thing is that it afforded the flash portal ecosystem. It was really easy to share your work as a creator without a lot of technical experience.

> but if you send someone a link to a canvas-based animation, they are more likely to be able to play it today than they ever were in the days of Flash. They can even play it on mobile.

Yeah but the problem is creating that canvas-based animation is insane, so there aren't any canvas-based animations, compared to the output of flash cartoons.

Nowadays everybody bakes out their animations to 100x the size with compression artifacts and stick them on Youtube with LESS features than flash had, a direct consequence of the decline of Flash and HTML5's inability as a platform stack to fill the gap.

I love Linux and the open web, I'm glad they exist and I want things to work on them. I just wish HTML5 as a platform had actually delivered on its promises by not missing the forest for the trees.

Re: HTML5 still doesn't replicate what mattered about Flash

#73

Post by duxup »

ogre_codes wrote: post #12

The author is right. But Jobs was also right, Flash was fundamentally to resource intensive for mobile and arguably still is. Without mobile, Flash was doomed. Flash also has a bunch of other issues in terms of security and performance on PCs which were never really addressed.

Yeah it is sad to see that ecosystem lost....but Adobe didn't seem to care to fix its warts either.

Re: HTML5 still doesn't replicate what mattered about Flash

#74

Post by larsiusprime »

worik wrote: post #66
ramraj07 wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I call a bit of BS about this. In the end, the code that creates js or HTML5 equivalent (poorer versions in fact) end up being far more resource intensive and buggy than flash was. Importantly, this is after millions of man hours were put into optimising the hell out of the js engines. Further, apple itself ended up optimising it's processor architecture to allow faster JS execution. What would have happened if Steve…

Do you not recall that flash was a the worst of the closed source rubbish. It never played well on any system I cared to use. The tools to generate it were unavailable to the likes of me and a lot of people here, who back in the day were second class citizens. Also it tried to make the the Web TV before there was anywhere enough processing power at the ends nor bandwidth in the middle. Designers on their expensive po…

Seriously like 90% of the flash content creators I knew were using pirated versions at some point in their careers, for what it's worth.

Re: HTML5 still doesn't replicate what mattered about Flash

#75

Post by jchw »

This is true but it is a common misunderstanding imo. Nobody is arguing a tool like Flash shouldn’t exist; it should. People are arguing a runtime like Flash shouldn’t exist, and that HTML5 has all of the components that are needed to be that runtime and then some. A tool should give us what Flash did but with the HTML runtime.

So why doesn’t that tool exist?

Well... as far as I know it does. I’m pretty sure this is exactly what Adobe Animate is meant to be:

https://www.adobe.com/products/animate.html

So why isn’t it causing a Flash-style revolution?

In my opinion... Because of YouTube. Twitter. Etc.

Before everyone had heaps of bandwidth, you needed to consume smaller files. A full 1080p video was unfathomable with the codecs, compute and network bandwidth available in the early 2000s. Swf files however were small and easy to distribute. The perfect storm occurred due to the structure of early internet, and communities like Newgrounds flourished.

I honestly think Flash just got a bit stale. It stopped being new and exciting, and for animations video sites were probably going to win out anyways. For games, a lot of indie devs now target PCs and game consoles. Unity and Construct export to HTML5. People wanted to do more advanced things to the point where Flash itself started doing things like 3D rendering, at which point the appealing aspects of Flash started to make less sense anyways.

Many seem to argue passionately, probably from an emotional place, that Flash was killed. Honestly, I just don’t agree. Flash was dying either way. Everyone just gradually decided to cut off the life support.

The era it ushered in will be missed, though.

Re: HTML5 still doesn't replicate what mattered about Flash

#76

Post by duxup »

jcfields wrote: post #19
ogre_codes wrote: post #12

The author is right. But Jobs was also right, Flash was fundamentally to resource intensive for mobile and arguably still is. Without mobile, Flash was doomed. Flash also has a bunch of other issues in terms of security and performance on PCs which were never really addressed.

My experience was that Flash ran like garbage on anything but Windows/Intel. Linux/Intel? Trash. Mac/PPC? Trash. The web at the time was unusable on my PowerBook G4 without FlashBlock. Maybe Flash would still be around if Adobe bothered to make it run well on anything but one platform.

Even in windows I remember flash was often a resource hog and crashed the browser regularly or would freak out and I'd have to restart it.

Re: HTML5 still doesn't replicate what mattered about Flash

#77

Post by Latty »

devwastaken wrote: post #27

The proof is in the pudding. Nobody makes webgl+javascript 2d animations hostable anywhere. There's little to no websites that will host arbitrary content like they could with swfs. Luckily browsers don't matter, and newgrounds has their own flash player you can launch content with.

Is it "web platform animation is that bad", or is it "web platform video is that good"?

I think a large part of the flash animation scene being as big as it was was simply that it was the only real way to do video at the time, and so it was popular because video is engaging, and animation was the way to do it when video was big, bandwidth was limited, and browser support was bad.

Now that YouTube exists and video hosting is free, bandwidth is plentiful, and when everyone has a smartphone camera and can shoot some video super easily, the cost of animation is much higher than the alternative. If you do want to put in the effort, you go where the eyes are and render the animation to video and upload to YouTube.

Web platform games very much did replace flash games over time. I'm not saying that it being bad isn't a part of it, of course, but I don't think it is the lone factor.

Re: HTML5 still doesn't replicate what mattered about Flash

#78

Post by gruez »

devwastaken wrote: post #27

The proof is in the pudding. Nobody makes webgl+javascript 2d animations hostable anywhere. There's little to no websites that will host arbitrary content like they could with swfs. Luckily browsers don't matter, and newgrounds has their own flash player you can launch content with.

>Nobody makes webgl+javascript 2d animations hostable anywhere. There's little to no websites that will host arbitrary content like they could with swfs.

codepen?

github pages?

Re: HTML5 still doesn't replicate what mattered about Flash

#79

Post by paulryanrogers »

hackmiester wrote: post #43
paulryanrogers wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As what, MHTML?

No, just, like, an HTML file. Put the JS in elements, and the CSS in elements, all within the HTML (in the , or at the end, as appropriate).

Fair enough, I thought it was in reference to pages created by others.

Re: HTML5 still doesn't replicate what mattered about Flash

#80

Post by recursive »

olyjohn wrote: post #11

The tweet mentions that you could 'just' send an SWF file to someone and it played. Well, if anybody had to fix a computer, or hosted anything Flash-based during that era, then they would know that's bullshit. Sure maybe with the standalone Flash player it worked allright, but that's not how people really used Flash. Even in my experience, a single SWF running locally didn't always work across all versions of Flash p…

That point is very curious, since you actually can email someone an .html file, and it will "just work".
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