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pjmlp

Outside the HN bubble, in the designers and game development community, Flash was loved.

* Powerful graphical tooling, where HTML/CSS are still catching up to

* Guarantee to actually have hardware acceleration, instead of CSS z-index tricks hoping for the best

* It was the first to support game engines on the Web, like Unreal

Unknown to many, Flash apps actually do exist on mobile, because Flash also AOT compiles to native code.

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Additionally, Flash was an amazing medium for animation in the era before high speed internet. Because much of it is vector based, file sizes are very small and videos from 2003 scale perfectly onto a 4K monitor. Can't say that about any other internet videos from the pre-youtube era.

It was also hugely loved among amateur artists and animators, which led to the creation of most of the vast array of creative works I enjoyed as a kid.

I don't think I've ever quite gotten over my resentment at the tech community for killing Flash in the name of "security".

I don’t remember security being the reason flash was killed, but rather mobile being the culprit. Flash on first gen smartphone was just impossible to run, it was slow, not meant for touch, basically a horrible user experience that also drained batteries.

So, most ads skipped to JS or gif animation, and most game developers rushed to develop for the app stores (where money could supposedly be made much more easily than on the web).

Plenty of those app store games use AOT native compiled Flash.

https://www.adobe.com/devnet/air/articles/ios-packaging-comp...

Steve Jobs killing it the name of ecosystem lockdown, you mean? He killed the greater part of my childhood along with it.

As someone who dealt professionally with security issues from about 2000 onwards, many involving Flash 0-days, I have about as much fond remembrance of Flash as I do for polio or smallpox. I regard it as an infectious scourge that humanity has finally largely eradicated, and we're healthier for it.

As someone who used browsers in 2000 I have the same fond remembrance of JavaScript. Yet for some reason it still spreads like aids instead of following flash on its way out.

Apples to oranges. Javascript is an open-standard language, not a closed black box runtime like Flash.

Ah, so now it is ok to have possible exploits or pages that are just a big canvas, 'cause open standards. /s

Only for the devs that didn't follow up on it.

https://www.adobe.com/devnet/air/articles/ios-packaging-comp...

Long-time AS programmer here. It was on its way out either way. The runtime just wasn't up to scratch and accessibility implementation was often ignored. I made my last piece of Flash work in 2011, knowing this would be the last time I worked on AS. Flex was a bust, the frameworks were all over the place, and ultimately the developers of libraries and frameworks were moving on anyway to other interesting things like iOS development. Key people just lost interest too.

Like this?

https://www.adobe.com/devnet/air/articles/ios-packaging-comp...

Yes, but those same artists now use open source 3D animation, and probably contribute to various indie game projects. Flash didn’t go away entirely because of security, there was no innovation, and the most anyone could aspire to was making adventure games or flash stick figure games/movies back then.

I personally miss the existence of thousands of Planetarion clones on the internet.

Those artists are still using AOT compiled Air runtime, or have migrated to either Animate CC or Unity, although a minority might have given a shot to OpenFL/PlayCanvas.

There is no miraculous contribution to open source 3D animation going on.

There’s no census of independent art, and what is available to me is on the recommendation sidebar of various video sites, so I disagree, but acknowledge we live in different echo chambers.

>the most anyone could aspire to was making adventure games or flash stick figure games/movies back then.

As a counterexample, I present: Homestar Runner. Also, Homestuck.

Let’s not forget Flex and Air. These two were way ahead of its time. There is still no technology out there that would match the simplicity of these two combined.

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