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Flash is dying a death by 1,000 cuts, and that's a good thing

theguardian.com

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Re: Flash is dying a death by 1,000 cuts, and that's a good thing

#11

Post by fenomas »

greggman wrote: post #4

I'm not 100% sure the death of Flash is a good thing. Maybe the death of "flash the buggy proprietary plugin" is good but there are tens of thousands if not hundreds of thousands of devs that are productive with flash and not likely to be as productive in HTML5. It would be nice if somehow Flash could export to HTML5 directly. That said, Flash still has features that are missing from HTML5. 1. One file distribution.…

I've always felt that Flash's influence on paving the way for the modern web gets overlooked. Against the backdrop of a web that was painfully fractured and deficient of features, Flash basically innovated the hell out of all the worst parts, and then slowly but surely browsers and web standards adopted the best innovations (and ignored a few missteps). People talk about Flash dying or being killed, but I think of it more as having served its purpose, in a good way - if the open standards are no longer deficient, then there's no need for proprietary solutions that work around them.

So in that vein, I think the features you've listed are basically the last few good bits that haven't been adopted (or covered by frameworks) yet. But I suspect 1-3 are kind of the same problem - that HTML's never had a good container format.

Re: Flash is dying a death by 1,000 cuts, and that's a good thing

#12

Post by francisl »

greggman wrote: post #4

I'm not 100% sure the death of Flash is a good thing. Maybe the death of "flash the buggy proprietary plugin" is good but there are tens of thousands if not hundreds of thousands of devs that are productive with flash and not likely to be as productive in HTML5. It would be nice if somehow Flash could export to HTML5 directly. That said, Flash still has features that are missing from HTML5. 1. One file distribution.…

Flash developer can use haxe (http://haxe.org/)

More gear towards games though.

Re: Flash is dying a death by 1,000 cuts, and that's a good thing

#13

Post by distances »

hacker_9 wrote: post #9
PretzelFisch wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"on top of that I can easily block flash. I can't block HTML5 so much" Disabling javascript is probably equivalent?

Not really. Thesedays disabling javascript would likely render any webpage unusable.

I'm using RequestPolicy [0] for selectively disabling JavaScript based on domains. It's usually a bit of clicking to allow crucial sources when I visit a new site, but I think it pays back with the reduction in distracting UI elements and loading times.

[0] https://requestpolicycontinued.github.io

Re: Flash is dying a death by 1,000 cuts, and that's a good thing

#14

Post by wtbob »

hacker_9 wrote: post #9
PretzelFisch wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"on top of that I can easily block flash. I can't block HTML5 so much" Disabling javascript is probably equivalent?

Not really. Thesedays disabling javascript would likely render any webpage unusable.

> Thesedays disabling javascript would likely render any webpage unusable.

Not any web page, and not completely unusable, but it's getting worse every single day.

It makes me sick to see the open web perverted so badly. Web pages should be documents to be read, not programs to execute!

Re: Flash is dying a death by 1,000 cuts, and that's a good thing

#15

Post by hacker_9 »

sobkas wrote: post #8
hacker_9 wrote: post #2

Just because it's popular to hate on Flash everyone forgets about the good times it brought. Back in school, flash games were all the rage and you could bet if we were on the computers for a lesson 90% of the time would be spent on the helicopter game or motorbike sport!

How it's even relevant? Just because some people enjoyed flash in the past doesn't changes the fact that now it is a menace and everyone would be much better without it. So pack you misguided nostalgia and put it next to your Sonic the Hedgehog figurines(they are dolls and you know it).

'menace' is a bit too strong of a word. Alternatives for development are a good thing, just look at the native world and the constant innovation that goes on there (go, rust etc). This idea that everything on the web should be shoehorned into html + javascript is hugely flawed because the ideas behind those technologies are so antiquated. The web model is completely broken but everyone just keeps on ignoring the root problem and just patch over it with 'innovative' frameworks like angular or react...

Re: Flash is dying a death by 1,000 cuts, and that's a good thing

#16

Post by dredmorbius »

greggman wrote: post #4

I'm not 100% sure the death of Flash is a good thing. Maybe the death of "flash the buggy proprietary plugin" is good but there are tens of thousands if not hundreds of thousands of devs that are productive with flash and not likely to be as productive in HTML5. It would be nice if somehow Flash could export to HTML5 directly. That said, Flash still has features that are missing from HTML5. 1. One file distribution.…

On HTML5 blocking: FILE BUGS ON BROWSERS. Autoplay, animation, inconsistent video controls, etc.

Existing browser devs have been quite resistant to these suggestions.

Another approach: blocking advertising and annoyances hosts via /etc/hosts or dnsmasq. Latter will block entire domains. It also reads /etc/hosts.

Re: Flash is dying a death by 1,000 cuts, and that's a good thing

#17

Post by digi_owl »

distances wrote: post #13
hacker_9 wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not really. Thesedays disabling javascript would likely render any webpage unusable.

I'm using RequestPolicy [0] for selectively disabling JavaScript based on domains. It's usually a bit of clicking to allow crucial sources when I visit a new site, but I think it pays back with the reduction in distracting UI elements and loading times. [0] https://requestpolicycontinued.github.io

Been using Noscript for a number of years, and it seems to do pretty much the same as Requestpolicy.

Re: Flash is dying a death by 1,000 cuts, and that's a good thing

#18

Post by juggernautq »

Please help me understand this obsession about building a secure software.

I understand there are sensitive information like bank account, email address(maybe? if you are important). But most of stuff on your computer is crap for, I'd say, 99% of the users(me included). And for an average user the convenience trumps everything.

All of this is fine if there is a perfect replacement for flash. No, there isn't. I don't like Html5, for one thing it is not as smooth, if you use progress bar to drag and drop, you can feel the difference.

Hence.. I really don't appreciated some security fanatics in mozilla disable flash weeks ago. I appreciate that you assume we are all Hillary Clinton. Really dude, I don't care my computer got hacked, there is all crap on it. Take a look yourself. Now if you excuse me, I'd like to watch some dancing cat.

Re: Flash is dying a death by 1,000 cuts, and that's a good thing

#19

Post by ludamad »

greggman wrote: post #4

I'm not 100% sure the death of Flash is a good thing. Maybe the death of "flash the buggy proprietary plugin" is good but there are tens of thousands if not hundreds of thousands of devs that are productive with flash and not likely to be as productive in HTML5. It would be nice if somehow Flash could export to HTML5 directly. That said, Flash still has features that are missing from HTML5. 1. One file distribution.…

http://mozilla.github.io/shumway/ is something that is sorely needed, I feel

Re: Flash is dying a death by 1,000 cuts, and that's a good thing

#20

Post by codeshaman »

While I agree that it might be time for Flash (the proprietary plugin) to be retired, I'm totally against dancing on it's grave, as is the tone of this article.

We have to respect it for what it brought to the world.

Flash has enabled many technologies and companies, like online video (youtube?), music playback (....) , games, cartoons and so on.

I remember how amazed I was by the perfection of the first flash website that I've seen. You could interact with spheres, it made high quality sounds and had cool animations and transitions. That was in Netscape Navigator 4.

This was absolutely impossible with HTML back then. It's still pretty difficult to achieve the same results with HTML5 today.

Flash enabled artists. Nearly all my artist friends have started or played around with flash. Some became animators, some game designers, some UX designers, etc.

I know programmers who were artists playing around with flash and then they got interested in ActionScript and are now full time programmers.

It was their digital classroom.

So let's not forget all this good stuff when talking about the old man. Let him live his final years of retirement in peace.

And who knows, maybe if Adobe open sources it, it might even rejuvenate and have a spectacular come back ?

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