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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

#81

Post by 8organicbits »

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…

In terms of sending a single SWF file to someone: The HTML equivalent would be to inline your CSS and Javascript, and use data URLs to inline images/assets. Now you have a single, self contained HTML file you can send around and it will "play" when you double click it.

I suppose the point may be that no one has written a tool to package a HTML5 app up like that? Seems possible to build under certain constraints.

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

#82

Post by chrisweekly »

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.... no websites that will host arbitrary content.... browsers don't matter....

Huh? Sorry, I can't make head or tail of your comment. Is it intended as sarcasm?

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

#85

Post by aazaa »

The points don't make a compelling argument to me.

> 1) For 95% of applications you can just distribute a single SWF file

A single HTML file can hold HTML, CSS, and JavaScript.

> 2) You have a robust authoring tool that is animation/graphics-first and newbie friendly

Hard to believe that there are literally no options that fit into that category for HTML5. An example of the next-best-thing would be helpful.

> 3) You can send a link to your mom and she can just play it w/ no issues

Same with HTML5. Send a link and no problems, unless she's one of the vanishing few still running IE6.

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

#86

Post by larsiusprime »

danShumway wrote: post #39
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…

Agreed. As someone who learned games programming in Flash, and loved Flash, and benefited quite a bit from it -- no, you couldn't just email someone an SWF. That never worked. Nobody had a standalone Flash player installed that wasn't in a browser, and when I moved to newer versions of Flash, I would regularly run into problems where someone would have a Flash player that didn't support the stuff I was trying to do.…

> no, you couldn't just email someone an SWF. That never worked.

C'mon I never emailed people SWF's, seriously. We uploaded them to flash portals and sent links to our friends. The single-file aspect was important because it made it easy to share (for both you and the flash portal). Also crucially it made it easy for competing flash portals to "steal" your game and spread it even further.

> as someone who uses Linux today

I get what you're saying and I love Linux and go out of my way to support it, but I don't think the Linux audience in 1999-2008 was exactly who most of us were targeting, nor did it have particularly much market share among desktop computers then or now.

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

#87

Post by anonymousiam »

I have a 3-year old Dell/Nutanix cluster with VMWare 5 on it. It's never been updated, and all of the web tools require flash. Fortunately there are some dedicated desktop apps that can still be used (even though they are no longer available for download from VmWare).

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

#88

Post by mgkimsal »

danShumway wrote: post #39
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…

Agreed. As someone who learned games programming in Flash, and loved Flash, and benefited quite a bit from it -- no, you couldn't just email someone an SWF. That never worked. Nobody had a standalone Flash player installed that wasn't in a browser, and when I moved to newer versions of Flash, I would regularly run into problems where someone would have a Flash player that didn't support the stuff I was trying to do.…

> Flash was only ever "cross platform" on Windows

"Cross platform" to many meant Windows 98, XP, 2000 and NT5. You could work across that, you had the 'enterprise' market apps people using 2000 and NT which could then also be used by employees at home using Win XP. What more could you want?

I'm guess I'm being only half-sarcastic here.

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

#89

Post by larsiusprime »

Latty wrote: post #77
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 hos…

"Web platform animation is that bad" and "Web platform video is that consolidated" would be my vote, personally.

Tech affects community affects affordances affects distribution pipelines.

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

#90

Post by jan_Inkepa »

gfxgirl wrote: post #44
jan_Inkepa wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Lars is a game developer, so is presumably talking about interactive/multimedia content rather than pure animation. I fully agree with him that JS doesn't hold a candle to Flash even now (for rich media apps in the browser). But I don't think Flash could exist nowadays online anyway in the same way - the hardware ecosystem is much more diverse, you can't make a keyboard/mouse game and call it quits so easily, because…

People still do this even without flash. Lots of people post tiny online games that require dragging the mouse with the left mouse button pressed and it's clear they forgot/ignored that the majority of people are on laptops

That's true, though for me the different isn't as great as with pure touchscreens, and I always was willing to accept that as a downside of using a laptop rather than blaming the game itself. I guess nowadays that would be a harder psychological position to maintain with the ascendency of laptops.

The cruellest thing for macbook users are games that require clicking both mouse-buttons simultaneously :P

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