Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Your ePub Is fine

andreklein.net

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

261–270 of 322 posts

Re: Your ePub Is fine

#261

Post by rufo »

GreyStache wrote: post #156
tjoff wrote: post #149

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The best feature of flash was that it was so easy to disable. Because 99% of the use was annoying ads that pinned your cpu at 100%. And that was Jobs argument, that it was too resource intensive. Predictably though, now that annoying crap moved to "newer" tech (javascript) and now we can't disable it as easily or without as little consequence. Just as resource intensive though...

I never bought the benevolent technical angle for not supporting flash. I'm pretty sure Apple strategists knew the value of the gate-kept platform, the app-store revenue stream. The pivotal point was that flash would break this stronghold by allowing rich applications that are reasonably self-publishable. (Excuse me while I go rinse that sentence out of my mouth)

I would buy this argument if Flash as a browser plugin had been proven to perform well on a mobile device of the time, but it never was, on Android or any other platform.

Even AIR apps - think Electron, an application shell for Flash apps - were on the edge of usable on desktop Macs of the era.

Re: Your ePub Is fine

#262

Post by spider-mario »

eichin wrote: post #77
fdgfikgfv wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Flash had its problems but as a user, it looked sharper and smoother than even current websites. And its editor gave non-tech users ability to create amazing animations, interfaces, and even games.

wasn't some of that smoothness because it ran at a 100hz tick without any way of adapting it (and still running existing code)? That was the complaint I kept hearing from people attempting to make flash on phones viable (this led to ludicrous battery consumption)

That’s not at all how I remember it (having used it in the Macromedia Flash 8 era, around 2006 or so). You would set your animation’s framerate and that would determine how often your `onEnterFrame` would run.

Re: Your ePub Is fine

#263

Post by GoblinSlayer »

Someone wrote: post #232
tjoff wrote: post #149

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The best feature of flash was that it was so easy to disable. Because 99% of the use was annoying ads that pinned your cpu at 100%. And that was Jobs argument, that it was too resource intensive. Predictably though, now that annoying crap moved to "newer" tech (javascript) and now we can't disable it as easily or without as little consequence. Just as resource intensive though...

> And that was Jobs argument, that it was too resource intensive. One of his arguments, and not the most important one. Looking at https://newslang.ch/wp-content/uploads/2022/06/Thoughts-on-F... , he says the most important reason is that Apple doesn’t want Adobe to be in control of a major API on iPhones (he buries that’s the main reason somewhat by mentioning it last because, I think, he knew that argument is more…

>Flash isn’t open

Angry proprietary sounds from a walled garden.

Re: Your ePub Is fine

#264

Post by TheOtherHobbes »

thisislife2 wrote: post #151
echelon wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Flash is still unsurpassed as the easiest publishing medium. JavaScript build system layer cake and "web standards" are a million times harder than just drawing some stuff, maybe writing a simple function, then building a static file that can be embedded anywhere and even downloaded. You have to spend so much time setting up any flash alternative, and the "standards" are worse. I hate Steve Jobs for killing Flash and…

Those downvoting you have no idea of what you are talking about. Flash was what truly brought multimedia to the internet. You could make complex vector animations so easily in it, and it would only take a few minutes to load on a dialup or ISDN because of its small size (10's or 100's of KB). At one point, it used to power the whole of Youtube (and many other video sites). "Web applications" in this era actually mean…

I have less rosy memories of self-indulgent Flash loading pages which took forever over dialup and contributed nothing. And a lot of weird-for-the-sake-of-it UI experiments.

There were also fun sites and games and generally silliness, but there was a lot of Flash slop.

Was it a more interesting web? It was more experimental and colourful. The Flash/Kai's Power Tools/Fireworks maximalist period was more inventive, but the UX wasn't necessarily friendlier.

It was a great time to be running a design agency, but not always a great time to be an ordinary user.

What actually killed Flash? Social media. That took the user interest, siloed it, and cut off the oxygen of individual attention.

Which is why even if someone reinvented a simple animation -> js etc tool it wouldn't make a difference. The attention isn't there to support a culture where creative sites become memes in their own right and search engines make them easy to find.

Re: Your ePub Is fine

#266

Post by stonecharioteer »

pbronez wrote: post #255
stonecharioteer wrote: post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yay! Registrations to https://merrilin.ai are open and you can enjoy a free account for as long as I can afford to give it (I have no funding lol). The android app is ready for closed testing too, if you have an Android device, mail me at mail [at] stonecharioteer.com and I'll add you to the beta testing. ios is still a pain.

That’s really cool! I’ve been thinking about how LLMs could help me with long running series. I read lots of stuff that’s thousands of pages long with a huge cast of characters and locations. Amazons X-Ray is okay ish but (1) not supported everywhere and (2) amazon. It would be really fun to have a progress-aware AI that can give me a quick definition of entities like people and places. The other thing that would hel…

You're in luck. I built this especially to target series and you can ask questions across books whether they're in a series or not. I wanted to be able to ask questions of books that aren't even related to each other together.

Royal Road looks cool. Do you know if you can extract them into an epub? I have a user who extensively reads Web Novels and I wrote a blog post about that just today. He converts them to epubs AFAIK and uses them.

https://blog.merrilin.ai/engineering/2026/translation-drift/

Re: Your ePub Is fine

#267

Post by steezeburger »

kstrauser wrote: post #107
radley wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> No mobile OS could have run it solidly and without sucking batteries like no tomorrow. By the time mobile could run Flash, it was too late. Between Apple & Adobe, it had no shot of making the transition. But before that, Flash was pretty amazing.

It was never amazing. It was adequate to give creative people a way to work around its many shortcomings and make something cool anyway. The tech and the implementation was awful, and all credit goes to people who still managed to shine through it. For all the many reasons people might dislike Apple, they were 100% in the right on this topic. Flash needed to die. It got everyone to collectively push the web standard…

It was definitely amazing, especially as a creator. It's how I learned to program! Actionscript was my first language. The only thing kinda close to the experience now is Processing. There may have been issues with the tech, but it kickstarted so many creative and engineering professional careers. There were so many good apps and games. It had such a rich ecosystem.

Re: Your ePub Is fine

#268

Post by steezeburger »

eichin wrote: post #77
fdgfikgfv wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Flash had its problems but as a user, it looked sharper and smoother than even current websites. And its editor gave non-tech users ability to create amazing animations, interfaces, and even games.

wasn't some of that smoothness because it ran at a 100hz tick without any way of adapting it (and still running existing code)? That was the complaint I kept hearing from people attempting to make flash on phones viable (this led to ludicrous battery consumption)

I had that same issue with a Tauri rust app recently. It just ran as fast as it possible could. Made my phone heat up.

Re: Your ePub Is fine

#269

Post by KPGv2 »

SG- wrote: post #184
pell wrote: post #172

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Flash had many issues for sure, first and foremost security. But I can’t help but feel sad of what was lost since then. The Flash era produced some really unique experiences on the web.

it was about as unique as seeing corn in my poop sometimes.

I suppose there's no accounting for taste, but from happy tree friends to xiaoxiao3's flash fights, indie animators made some pretty awesome stuff back then. My university experience included a lot of checking for new, cool flash animations back around 2002. Homestar Runner was another pretty big one.

edit: Space Ghost Coast to Coast was Flash. Harvey Birdman must've been, too.

Re: Your ePub Is fine

#270

Post by ndiddy »

spaghettifythis wrote: post #140
hardwaresofton wrote: post #54

BTW for those who are looking for a device, the PineNote exists: https://pine64.org/devices/pinenote/ More expensive and less out-of-the-box software, but straight to the point on device ownership/what kind of software you can run, fewer strings attached. [EDIT] Great experience blogs on the PineNote https://shom.dev/posts/20250308_pinenote-day-one/ https://shom.dev/posts/20250406_a-pinenote-only-5-day-weeken...

Also worth checking out, this guy's Open-Source 60hz e-ink screen: [video] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nHbA2-_qzH4

I saw that video a few days ago. It's really neat tech, but I'm curious what people are using the small external monitors for. I'm a big e-ink fan and really want to buy one because it's neat tech, but I can't come up with a use case where it makes sense for me. Any time I'm using a laptop on a desk, ideally I would want a larger monitor so I don't have to keep looking down (hurts your neck). If I'm lying down or on the couch, I would want a standalone device so I don't have to deal with the cords sticking out of the monitor or being tethered to a computer. I know portable e-ink displays have been a thing for nearly a decade at this point, so there must be a reason why people are buying them. If anyone reading this has one, what do you use it for?
Post reply on HN