The internet used to be less "flat". Every website was interactive, animated, had sound, had dimensions to it. Everything was a theme park. Maybe you had to learn a new UI every time but I was amazed a lot back then.
I learned a lot of programming with Action Script, it wasn't the best, but it was easy to get into.
I did my fare share of animating, just because it was so easy to get into. Xiaoxiao was just amazing to me (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hw4wzwYeZ0Y).
I did my fair share of games as well, there were so many of them and publishing a game on internet had never been so easy. Orisinal is beautiful (http://www.ferryhalim.com/orisinal/).
Now where do people find such mini games? On mobile. The big mini-game market has shifted and we now have to pay, we now have to download each game individually.
I understand Flash has had a bad track of security vulnerability, but the internet used to be magical, it's the end of an era.
As methodover says it here:
> The tools for 2D animations and games in Flash are far beyond anything else out there from a creative standpoint. There isn't a product on the market that comes even close. Everything now is too technical, too specialized.