Flash was surreal in how good it was: a fantastic editor, language, and format for building and distributing hermetically encapsulated containers of multimedia greatness.
We need another Flash. It was S-tier and too good for us.
None of that emerged again when flash got killed and the reason is technological - comparatively current technologies sux for those people.
If flash was no more capable than what a browser can do with web standards, its a tooling problem for the people who "skill is primary art being able to create cool and great things".
Then the question becomes, why hasn't anyone created tooling on par with what existed for "flash developers" that instead of generating actionscript to be executed by the flash plugin, generated javascript, webassembly, interaction with canvas elements and webgpu. Is it simply because no one sees real business opportunities there? (/ if there is a real growable business opportunities, then why is no one pursuing it?)
If that's the case, then yes, we lost something with the move away from flash (i.e. the inability to use all investment in said legacy tooling that worked, but can no longer generate usable things), but one can also view that as the reason for wanting web standards.
When one is using tools that generate things to web standards, it doesn't matter if those tools become "legacy", if they still work for you, there's a stronger likelihood that they will continue to generate an output into the future that is usable as they are not dependent on a proprietary system to run them, even if the "business opportunity" for the developer of the tools evaporates and they no longer desire to invest in them.
> why hasn't anyone created tooling on par with what existed for "flash developers" that instead of generating actionscript to be executed by the flash plugin, generated javascript, webassembly, interaction with canvas elements and webgpu.
First, I think there is aspect of "javascript, webassembly, interaction with canvas elements and webgpu" being quite hard to generate in a way that would achieve the same as flash did. As API, they comparatively sux although they are improving.
What you suggest is much harder then it looks like and involved technologies are not making it easier.
By contrast, Javascript runs without any action from the user. Consequently, web designers have grown to rely on it always being there, and now many sites rely on it to do things that can be done in pure HTML.
And oh by the way, they also violate my privacy something fierce.
Even more, it was great at turning people who weren’t Flash developers—or even developers at all— into Flash developers, by giving them an easy to use toolset that is still unmatched today.
It was so easy and accessible, and there is no modern comparison.