I feel old reading this thread
Without Flash the current web tech stack might look different
71–80 of 201 posts
Re: Without Flash the current web tech stack might look different
#72Earlier quoted context omitted.
The authoring software was user friendly but sites made that way were atrocious in terms of usability in every way possible. Slow loading and also everything else about a browser didn't work as expected - bookmarking, back button, cut and paste, open in new window were all broken in flash sites. I don't think that it's laudable to create a tool that empowers beginners to create useless and difficult websites.
As a counterargument, look at the state of the web today without Flash. Many websites are still bloated, still slow to load, still hijack the back button, still mess with copy and paste, still force same-window-only opening. So was Flash really the issue?
With the flash sites i refer to, the back and forward buttons didn't work at all. Slow to load today is nothing like loading a 1 mb flash app over dialup on a 800mhz pentium iii. I mean copy and paste, like back and forward, were not just l 'messed with'... you often couldn't even highlight text. Flash sites were far worse than the average awful HTML site of 2004, and this is why they're now almost totally dead.
Sure, the real problem is the people who made poor decisions and made sites like that in the first place, and still do.
Re: Without Flash the current web tech stack might look different
#73I think what Flash (the program) really excelled at was giving creators the ability to draw, animate and program interactive objects, all wrapped in a single neat package . I would contest that no other software, even today, has come close to being able to do these three so seamlessly at once (Really, I encourage you to try to name one!) Sure, when it came down to it you can say it had poor performance, security, fil…
> Really, I encourage you to try to name one! The CreateJS suite covers most, if not all, of what Flash could do in JavaScript. In fact, it is the library used by Adobe Animate professional to export Flash programs to HTML5 target. It may not be as user-friendly, but it's as comprehensive.
Flash is not just ActionScript 3. The only environment that beats Flash IDE for asset management and editing is Unity3d.
Re: Without Flash the current web tech stack might look different
#74Earlier quoted context omitted.
The authoring software was user friendly but sites made that way were atrocious in terms of usability in every way possible. Slow loading and also everything else about a browser didn't work as expected - bookmarking, back button, cut and paste, open in new window were all broken in flash sites. I don't think that it's laudable to create a tool that empowers beginners to create useless and difficult websites.
Indeed, lets condemn everyone who creates easy to use and powerful tools! I think everyone prefers pain in the ass tools and don't do much, this is the best way to protect the holy order of coders. Long live shitty tools!!!
Powerful tools to do useless or harmful things aren't helping anyone.
Re: Without Flash the current web tech stack might look different
#75Earlier quoted context omitted.
I think Flash screwed up security because of the way users could control what Flash had access to (through a Security Sandbox Controller on the Macromedia/Adobe website) Imagine that instead Flash went the way of App Permissions: asking users for permission to access, read, and write different things to the browser. Could you imagine? Advertisers wouldn't be able to pull as many annoying/shady things, and security wo…
I don't remember the flash permissions model being problematic. I saw two main problems with flash: - it was a lightweight and compatible way to insert animated ads. The animation consumed a lot of CPU. This is why most people blocked flash, and why most Apple refused to support it on ipads. - it had horrible security record. For some reason, Adobe could not fix the bugs in the Flash plugin. This is why IT department…
Apple's main qualm at the time though was
"If developers grow dependent on third party development libraries and tools, they can only take advantage of platform enhancements if and when the third party chooses to adopt the new features. We cannot be at the mercy of a third party deciding if and when they will make our enhancements available to our developers."
They've since done a double-take and have accepted games built in Unity and apps built in website-wrapper frameworks (also many of which are proprietary).
Apple had many reasons to want to rightfully kill off Flash. But the thing is, it wasn't all bad.
Note that I do agree however that slow security fixes and Flash causing crashes / consuming lots of CPU are real concerns.
Re: Without Flash the current web tech stack might look different
#76I still haven't forgiven Madobe for killing Macromedia Director - a thousand hours of my work lost. It taught me a valuable lesson about the importance of Open Source - protect your investment from the caprice of a single corp.
> caprice of a single corp.
There was no sudden-change: they kept on maintaining Director, years after its main use-cases (kiosk applications, magazine cover demo disc launchers and CD autoplay software) stopped being relevant.
If my experiences at other software companies are anything to go by: Adobe's staffers probably wanted to open-source it but were held back by licensed third-party components.
I haven't seen any true Director Shockwave content on the web since the original Shockwave.com - it was a handful of games that today could be built in JavaScript without any trouble.
Re: Without Flash the current web tech stack might look different
#77Earlier quoted context omitted.
The app store wasn't opened until just over a year after the original iphone release (a day before the 3GS was available). Initially, you were supposed to build "web 2.0" apps using the safari engine. Flash didn't work then either.
Yeah but certainly they were planning to launch an app store when Jobs penned his open letter on flash. My understanding is they just didn't have the app store and the sdk ready in time.
> Yeah but certainly they were planning to launch an app store when Jobs penned his open letter on flash.
That was almost two years after the opening of the app store, and almost three years after the release of the iphone. I'm unsure whether they really had a fully thought out app store strategy initially, or whether they stumbled into it sort of by accident. Even if an app store was planned, I'm not sure they really knew what to expect. I seem to recall them initially saying you didn't need native apps, and then finally realizing the demand was so great (and performance too poor with Safari) that they needed to open one so scrambled to do so. That may just be a narrative I latched onto and remember though...
Re: Without Flash the current web tech stack might look different
#78Earlier quoted context omitted.
I think Flash screwed up security because of the way users could control what Flash had access to (through a Security Sandbox Controller on the Macromedia/Adobe website) Imagine that instead Flash went the way of App Permissions: asking users for permission to access, read, and write different things to the browser. Could you imagine? Advertisers wouldn't be able to pull as many annoying/shady things, and security wo…
I don't remember the flash permissions model being problematic. I saw two main problems with flash: - it was a lightweight and compatible way to insert animated ads. The animation consumed a lot of CPU. This is why most people blocked flash, and why most Apple refused to support it on ipads. - it had horrible security record. For some reason, Adobe could not fix the bugs in the Flash plugin. This is why IT department…
> it had horrible security record
I think this is overstated. Sure there were Flash 0-days, but then it was probably also the highest-value 0-day target in the world. In those days Flash was more widely installed than any single browser, or even OS. It may well have been the most widely-installed application period.
The point being, if Flash was inherently horrible for security (in some way that, say, Java wasn't) there would have been exploits every day of the week and half the planet would have been owned. I think the reality is that it was just a really big target, which Adobe (with a lot of help from Google) kept relatively secure, all things considered.
Re: Without Flash the current web tech stack might look different
#79Adobe Animate CC (aka FlashCC) can compile directly to HTML5 canvas, and allow code injection. It has the same troubles with mp3 and mp4 as browsers do, and requires knowing some "tricks" (like how to double the canvas scaling for retina), but it's an adequate tool.
Re: Without Flash the current web tech stack might look different
#80I think what Flash (the program) really excelled at was giving creators the ability to draw, animate and program interactive objects, all wrapped in a single neat package . I would contest that no other software, even today, has come close to being able to do these three so seamlessly at once (Really, I encourage you to try to name one!) Sure, when it came down to it you can say it had poor performance, security, fil…
I got started with Flash when it was still FutureSplash (FutureWave), and I think a lot of the credit we give Flash can be attributed to FutureSplash. It didn't have ActionScript yet, but if I remember correctly, it did have the ability to link visual elements to arbitrary frames within the animation timeline (as well as to other URLs), so it was actually pretty powerful (a bit like HyperCard for the web). I was stil…
Whoa, nostalgia triggered -- I totally forgot about FutureSplash Animator! Ah man, good times :)