The best thing that happened to the business the last 20 years was the end of flash. I am not sure why is this even a discussion.
HTML5 still doesn't replicate what mattered about Flash
291–300 of 372 posts
Re: HTML5 still doesn't replicate what mattered about Flash
#292The Flash "editor" software was a work of a genius. The combination of vector graphics editor, symbol library, layers, animation tools and code was super powerful yet super approachable at the same time. I have learned AS2 just by toying with the examples. Over time I learned AS3, then HTML and TypeScript, in this order. One more shout out to the vector graphics editor - the way you did boolean operations with shapes…
> the way you did boolean operations with shapes based on their color has not been bested since by any other editor. Can you expand on this? How did it use colors to help us work with boolean operations on shapes?
If I recall correctly (I've only ran Flash, the program, once):
It has automatically merged shapes of same color into one. So to add or remove to a shape, you just had to paint in the same (or a different) color.
For what it's worth, I've found it super confusing.
Re: HTML5 still doesn't replicate what mattered about Flash
#293Totally agree! Flash and Actionscript were great and allowed both coders and non-coders to produce polished applications/animations/simulations quickly. I would choose Actionscript over Javascript any day of the week for that matter.
Re: HTML5 still doesn't replicate what mattered about Flash
#294Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
That was how Microsoft put it, too.
Re: HTML5 still doesn't replicate what mattered about Flash
#295>> To this day, I am super mad at all the people who put for the codswallop that HTML5 was this perfect replacement for Flash. I'm curious about this turn of phrase that I hadn't heard before, "put for the codswallop". I can find "put in for" used or explained on the internets, but not "put for" (and "put in for" doesn't seems to be relevant). Could someone explain? What does "put for" mean, where does it come from a…
It's a typo for "put forth the codswallop". In fact, I didn't even notice that it was a typo until you pointed it out, since my brain autocorrected it as I was reading. To put forth means "to offer an opinion; to argue for something". Codswallop is a rare, somewhat archaic slang term meaning, basically, "bullshit". Thus "to put forth codswallop" means "to argue for bullshit".
Oh, right you are. Thanks. I guess "put forth" was autocompleted as "put for the". Hah.
I use "codswallop" often myself. Beautiful word :)
Re: HTML5 still doesn't replicate what mattered about Flash
#296Earlier quoted context omitted.
The author argues that a tool like Flash the authoring software should exist, but makes no argument about Flash the runtime. An authoring software just like Flash could exist for the HTML runtime -- it isn't the nature of HTML which is the problem. Thus it's not HTML which has to "catch up", but vendors of authoring software.
> The author argues that a tool like Flash the authoring software should exist, but makes no argument about Flash the runtime. Yes, this is what I meant. Sorry, I didn't clarify this in the replied comment. > it isn't the nature of HTML which is the problem It is in some degrees. The same html/js code might run some differently in different browsers, from either behaviors or performance aspects. On the other hand, Fl…
> On the other hand, Flash runtime only presents some small behavior differences on different OSes or with different CPU architectures. And for different OSes/browser combos with the same-power CPUs+GPUs, there is almost no performance differences.
Really? Last time I used Flash, a few years ago when it still mattered, it used 100% CPU just to play video on Linux. The Windows version didn't seem to have this problem and I deduced that Adobe just didn't care about Linux.
Re: HTML5 still doesn't replicate what mattered about Flash
#297The 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…
Honest question: why does it matter if it's one file or not? For example if you're deploying to a web server, it doesn't seem a big deal if you're uploading one file or several... so why the issue?
It depends on how you're deploying. If you're uploading (or downloading) via a web front end (like someone else has mentioned) then obviously one file is easier. I don't recall emailing too many swf files like the twitter poster said but if you were, emailing one file is clearly easier than emailing a set of files.
Also as soon as you have more than one file you can run into path issues.
Re: HTML5 still doesn't replicate what mattered about Flash
#298This is, in some sense, like comparing a factory to a product. HTML5 is the barebones of technological tools necessary to build something that does what flash can do, not the flash itself. Being content-first is up to YOUR SDK, not HTML5. Regarding single-file apps, when did the ability to use inline scripts and style vanish? Nothing prevents a tool to generate genuinely cross-platform "single-file" htmls. Don't blam…
I think people aren’t blaming HTML5, but the people who said that HTML5 would do everything flash can do.
Like you said, that’s a bad comparison since they’re fundamentally different things. And killing flash without a replacement for the studio existing leaves a hole where it used to be. And it may be possible that Flash was a product of its time, and such a well integrated studio isn’t going to be made again for decades.
Which isn’t to say that Flash didn’t need to die. The security issues existed and I suspect that Adobe would have slowly killed it from neglect regardless. But HTML5 is not a replacement for what Flash was.
Re: HTML5 still doesn't replicate what mattered about Flash
#299I increasingly find positions about flash are not based in first hand experience, believing ones experiences summarizes all experiences, or anecdotal knowledge based in popular belief about what we heard about something but might not have used ourselves.
With all the progress in tooling, it's completely reasonable that more and more folks might not remember how broken browser compatibility was between multiple browsers on the same computer in the age of Flash. It was nothing like today with shared engines and even shared runtimes like Webassembly. Browsers were young, at war and didn't lean towards being compatible on their HTML interpretation.
I spent as much time focusing on HTML compatibility, if not more, as Flash pains.
Flash helped cover some and even smooth of those gaps between web browsers where the same features didn't exist in each browser, or they did not implement HTML tags, or even Javascript in the same way.
Flash based technologies like Flex and Air really shed some light on what rich internet applications could do, and it's one area where HTML5 and JS have been able to provide some alternatives and evolution.
From a mobile perspective, it seemed like flash couldn't do much there...the same until I discovered Flash Lite. It quietly powered the GUI on many more devices than I ever imagined in its time.
Nokia adopted it and it was quietly embedded in far more devices to provide custom functionality than I realized around the world. It makes me consider Steve Jobs letter against flash at a time when he was also against custom apps and app stores in a different light.
Flash lite even appeared to power the internet channel on the Nintendo Wii.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adobe_Flash_Lite
Much of my flash exposure was to integrating with educational content, and in that way I has a direct exposure to many of the things thst simply weren't possible in its time. It wasn't perfect by any means, but I think today's environment of tools takes for granted how few tools there were during Flash. I truly had to create identical experiences in multiple browsers, and where avaikable, operating systems.
I also worry that new closed digital experience tools are simply trying to replace Flash with another closed garden.
Flash in some small ways delivered on the write one deploy anywhere promise made by Java, but for the average user. This should not be diminished in its age of Java applets, and many security issues with alternatives as well.
Flash helped me get my start and imagine and help deliver interactive digital experiences in a time when everyone was anchored in compact disc based rich experiences. Flash, and broadband internet helped move mountains forward.
I still look forward to find the set of solutions that completely replace what flash could do. While a closed source tool, it was uniquely democratizing and accessible.
Re: HTML5 still doesn't replicate what mattered about Flash
#300The 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.
Well why would you when you can just export it to a video and have it accessible to mobile users as well? Most devices even have hardware acceleration for h264 video, so its a nicer experience too.