HTML5 still doesn't replicate what mattered about Flash • Hacker News Board

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

#321

Post by dragonwriter » Thu, Dec 31, 2020, 3:02 PM UTC

cogman10 wrote: post #320

EamonnMR wrote: post #303

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We'll there we have it: we lived in a world with good tooling for creative works but a bad runtime, and we replaced the runtime without replacing the authoring tools. I think that's a shame.

The web is different now. Back in the days of flash, "platforms" weren't really a thing and social media was pretty much "whoever has figured out how to host a webpage". We don't live in that era anymore (and I sort of miss it :( ). We live in an era of SaaS and major platforms. For 90% of "custom webpages" wordpress covers it. For the 9% not covered, flash wouldn't really be a good fit. The loss is for that 1% of cr…

> Back in the days of flash, "platforms" weren't really a thing and social media was pretty much "whoever has figured out how to host a webpage".

The “days of flash” included the rise to dominance of Facebook (Facebook games were largely, maybe entirely, Flash), and even moreso included the entire MySpace era of social media.

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

#322

Post by Pentamerous » Thu, Dec 31, 2020, 3:05 PM UTC

dleslie wrote: post #130

chrisweekly wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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?

There is no "Newgrounds as it was at Flash's peak" for HTML5.

I don't think this is true at all. itch.io and Gamejolt are very popular platforms for indie artists. You submit a zip instead of a swf but the end result is the same, your work is online and playable by anyone. Be it games or animations. They might have not had a big cultural impact like Newsgrounds but they're serious platforms and they definitely fit the requirements (host arbitrary html5 content with ease)

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

#323

Post by boomboomsubban » Thu, Dec 31, 2020, 3:43 PM UTC

mulmen wrote: post #313

boomboomsubban wrote: post #309

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They are using "boomer" similarly to how the word is used in "baby boomer," as in a sudden growth. Netscape was the hot new browser. Probably one of those words on its way out, but they aren't being ageist.

Ah, yeah, that reading does make more sense. Guess I have a raw nerve.

I'm less positive of it after rereading the post to be honest. Netscape in 99 was just starting it's plummet, so it's hard to say it was booming but it also wasn't really outdated either. I probably should have thought my post through more, sorry.

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

#324

Post by koonsolo » Thu, Dec 31, 2020, 3:50 PM UTC

velcro wrote: post #240

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…

My experience with Flash is completely opposite to yours - I'd say we're for the most part pretending that by letting Flash die we're better off today. My fans spinning up every time I open a random website definitely disagree with you. Wasn't that the #1 argument for getting rid of Flash? I started developing Flash websites in Flash 3 in school, transitioned into Actionscript 2/3 and did some complex projects over t…

I can't upvote this enough. Anyone who developed in that ecosystem loved it, including myself.

When you read negative comments, it's always someone who didn't really use it.

It worked for developers, it worked for gamers. My guess is that the haters are just very loud in their hate.

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

#325

Post by mgkimsal » Thu, Dec 31, 2020, 3:56 PM UTC

RcouF1uZ4gsC wrote: post #158

ryandrake wrote: post #116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Reminds me of a conversation with a coworker in around 1999: Me: “I wish [our product] was cross platform. It would be more enjoyable to develop.” Him (without a shred of sarcasm): “It IS cross platform! It runs on NT and 95!”

> It would be more enjoyable to develop In my experience, cross-platform is less enjoyable to develop. Yes, it might be more valuable to users for a program to be cross-platform, but it is definitely more enjoyable to develop something that just has to run on a single platform. For cross-platform work, you have to use languages, runtimes, and libraries that are supported across multiple platforms. When you are doing…

It might be 'more enjoyable' to develop, but certainly not to test, which... for many people, seems to be something wholly separate from 'development'.

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

#326

Post by recursive » Thu, Dec 31, 2020, 4:06 PM UTC

dsego wrote: post #242

recursive wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Not if it has local dependencies, like js or css, then you would need to bundle those as well, in an archive perhaps.

For the purposes of email inclusion, there's really no reason not to inline all that stuff.

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

#327

Post by bmcahren » Thu, Dec 31, 2020, 4:11 PM UTC

larsiusprime wrote: post #9

bmcahren wrote: post #3

Is he ranting that Adobe Animate doesn't exist? Because it does and seamlessly exports HTML. I'm pretty sure if they aren't already you could get a bundler configuration for webpack that would build a single file data uris and all.

I'm well aware the Adobe Animate still exists, a fact I'm glad for. I'm well aware that it can export to HTML5, and even Haxe/OpenFL, an open source project I've personally invested a ton of time and money into. It's great those initiatives exist, I've spent years of my career supporting them, but at replicating what Flash did in its prime, it's still not quite the same. The abstraction leaks around the edges and the…

I was really into action script and flash development back in the early 2000s. I can't think of anything I couldn't do today better using an animation framework.

Killing flash had to be done. Your complaint is misplaced because you're complaining about the quality of the alternatives. If there was a market for a seamless alternative it would exist. I think that market is gone. I think that market has been replaced by Unity and UE4.

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

#328

Post by samyem » Thu, Dec 31, 2020, 4:24 PM UTC

There are alternatives to Flash today that does fairly decent job of what Flash bought:

* https://atomisystems.com/saola-animate/

* https://webdesigner.withgoogle.com/

* https://tumult.com/hype/

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

#329

Post by sofixa » Thu, Dec 31, 2020, 4:26 PM UTC

fendy3002 wrote: post #271

HeckFeck wrote: post #268

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As an avid Linux user, I can't help but agree with the core of your argument. Open is always better, especially for posterity. But the aspect of Flash that hasn't been fully replicated by HTML5/JS/whatever is the fully integrated workflow. That took away much of the underlying woes with environments and configurations. All you did was install Flash, make your game or animation, and a SWF was produced. This ease of be…

I have zero experience on both. What's stopping someone / org to develop a workflow framework on HTML5 that's working similar with flash?

Adobe did. Dreamweaver, Animate kinda try to do the same

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

#330

Post by dandare » Thu, Dec 31, 2020, 4:35 PM UTC

creata wrote: post #270

dandare wrote: post #261

The 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?

Shapes of the same color are added to a single shape, shapes of different colors are extracted from each other. Lines (of any colors) can (but don't have to) split shapes. A simple rectangular selection with mouse can add a bezier point to a shape, simple aligning of the bezier point with its curve will erase it. If you know how to use the editor is is super efficient.