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Flash Animations Live Forever at the Internet Archive

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Re: Flash Animations Live Forever at the Internet Archive

#61

Post by disqard »

IsopropylMalbec wrote: post #52
grishka wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

AS3 and VKontakte apps and games for me. Not really got me into programming , I did some J2ME before, but Flash certainly did end up shaping my life quite a lot. It's honestly a shame there's no technology currently in existence that would allow this kind of creativity, with a barrier to entry as low as Flash had.

You are not the first person I have met with that exact same sentiment. It feels like there is a desire for the same hacky frontend yet no one wants to invest.

Please check out https://www.blockstudio.app

(Disclaimer: I built it)

It currently lacks sound, but a lot of young people seem to be having fun using it to create games, animations, stories, puzzles, etc.

Re: Flash Animations Live Forever at the Internet Archive

#62

Post by mschuster91 »

numbsafari wrote: post #59
Google234 wrote: post #54

What’s with the criticism of Steve Jobs letter? Apple was completely right.

Yeah, Adobe's failure to keep Flash relevant is the problem. Not Steve Jobs. It's not like they didn't try to work with Adobe. Adobe just couldn't get it done. This is what disruption is like. It's great that we have orgs like IA doing the work to keep this old content alive and accessible, and a platform like the Web that can grow and adapt over time.

> Adobe just couldn't get it done.

They should have fully open sourced it, at least the runtime.

Re: Flash Animations Live Forever at the Internet Archive

#64

Post by throw_m239339 »

dj_mc_merlin wrote: post #27

Programming a shitty AS2 "catch the falling object" game with the cheesiest story and uploading it to Newgrounds got me into programming. Might never have if not for Flash.

Same here. Flash helped me understand OOP. I would have never become a programmer without Flash the IDE.

It is very sad what Adobe did with Flash (and Fireworks, and Dreamweaver...), especially in the wake of WASM where they could have ported most of the platform. I guess there was no financial incentives to do that.

Re: Flash Animations Live Forever at the Internet Archive

#65

Post by throw_m239339 »

catmanjan wrote: post #30
dj_mc_merlin wrote: post #27

Programming a shitty AS2 "catch the falling object" game with the cheesiest story and uploading it to Newgrounds got me into programming. Might never have if not for Flash.

Same here - AS2 and the flash movieclip editor had the perfect learning curve for me - I wonder what the current equivalent is, if any

There is none in a single package. The closest is Godot but it's not really for animation purposes. Flash went really far. At some point one could even write 2D shaders and use C++ code with 'Alchemy'. A lot of interesting tech abandoned...

I mean Javascript can certainly do all that but it's code first, not "IDE" first.

Re: Flash Animations Live Forever at the Internet Archive

#66

Post by breakfastduck »

Flash as a technology should never be used now unless for artistic purposes.

However, it's preservation to be able to run & archiving of flash media are an absolute cornerstone of any attempt to archive the 2000s internet. Flash introduced & inspired countless people who have no doubt gone on to build amazing things in other technologies.

I love flash. I'm glad it's not used anymore, but I truly love the content it produced from the bottom of my heart.

Long live Flash & special mention to Macromedia Shockwave.

Re: Flash Animations Live Forever at the Internet Archive

#68

Post by lanius »

roca wrote: post #44
textfiles wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wouldn't say Lightspark has failed at all, they're progressing nicely. Others are too. I heard a rumor Shumway was abandoned as a project by Mozilla because ex-Adobe engineers were steering the project and Adobe issued concerns; they probably could have been worked out, but you know, Mozilla. Since then, Flash has been end of life'd more aggressively, so I think Shumway could return. Flash files should be like musi…

A Flash player is a lot more like a Java virtual machine + libraries or a Web browser than it is like a video codec. I have not heard that rumor about Shumway. As a former Mozilla distinguished engineer, I think I would have. Thanks for pointing out Lightspark is progressing. I thought it had stalled, but I was wrong. Still, if Lightspark is doing well it's not ideal to split efforts into multiple projects.

I recall being able to play .swf files in Media Player Classic a decade ago.

Re: Flash Animations Live Forever at the Internet Archive

#69

Post by TillE »

Google234 wrote: post #54

What’s with the criticism of Steve Jobs letter? Apple was completely right.

While everyone loves Flash games and Homestar Runner and everything, let's not forget that Apple's war was against horrendous Flash websites, which were never going to be reasonably accessible on a touchscreen phone.

Re: Flash Animations Live Forever at the Internet Archive

#70

Post by acqq »

cogman10 wrote: post #50
TedDoesntTalk wrote: post #4

All Your Base Are Belong To Us... preserved forever: https://archive.org/details/flash_allyourbase

Amazing that the whole thing lived in ~1.7mb of data. Really crazy how little data went into stuff like that.

The famous original "Napster Bad" (1) from 2000 was around 2 and half minutes long and only 600 KB (!) (specifically: 606,555 bytes -- just checked).

http://www.fastswf.com/jDwfXOc

And as it's drawn with vector graphics (I guess?) it can be sharper than most of the videos of that that you can find today (or was it fixed? I don't remember -- at least it looked so sharp then!). Anyway, the following video on youtube is approximately the content of the 600 KB swf, but, of course, with unchangeable and limited pixel rendering -- and around 50 MB in highest resolution.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LeKX2bNP7QM

Edit: Just found -- the special edition captured in the above video is ~ 700 KB swf (719,527 bytes):

http://gpatricka.net/assets/napsterbad.swf

There, having 100 KB more, one can also click to see the "deleted scene", play a small "game" or read the hate mail. And it does render across my full screen.

Edit 2: Tried ruffle. It can play that swf. Ruffle good. (But it seems that the lines are thicker and that the connections don't look the same)

1) https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/WebAnimation/NapsterB...

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