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Comment by rkhassen9 | Hacker News Reader

I still lament the loss of Flash. It’s ability to get in there and as a single user do everything from design to animation to code front end and back end was enormously flexible and easy for creatively engaging and creating. It fit the “bicycle of the mind” concept.

As far as I know, no single tool has replicated that kind of freedom. For rapid prototypes that one could actually iteratively build on top of top make a full application it was amazing.

I know about the issues and why it isn’t secure etc etc, but in terms of you could interact with it to create we are still at a loss.

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I've dreamed of cloning Flash for a long time. Aiming for full compatibility is infeasible (unless you can convince the Ruffle folks to give it a go once they're done with Ruffle!), but aiming to capture the spirit of Flash (e.g. build Flash like authoring tools on top of TS/WebGL) is certainly doable.

The Wick editor was one such attempt, though it didn't gain traction and was abandoned.

Also there seem to be quite a lot of us who feel this way -- a dozen or more every time Flash is mentioned on HN -- maybe it's time we got organized? "Everybody talks about the weather but nobody ever does anything about it!"

I feel you.

I have looked at the Wick Editors source code and managed a sucessful build with some minor changes and felt picking it up is doable, but not easy. But a satisfying way to develope for me, would require a rewrite of many parts. Or most parts, except the UI ..

Pixi as the graphical base would be the way, I think.

But I could not do it as a side project as of now, maybe one bright other day.

Have you checked out https://haxe.org/ It supports Action script, and is the spiritual successor to Flash

When HTML5 was supposed to replace Flash, I just thought I didn't know enough about HTML5. Turns out that it was never an adequate replacement and it was just more Web 2.0 sterility.

I mean, I miss silly flash games and 0 other applications of flash. I can see why people miss it from a creator point of view, but it was extremely annoying in general.

It was great for animation with interactions. Also, flash files could easily be saved and shared offline.

It was a double edged sword. If you were not good at making something it would show, but if you wet good and wanted to do something out of the box it was incredible flexible.

From the stand point of freedom for the individual to create in their own way digitally it is unmatched. People can learn UI and UX but it’s really hard, nearly impossible to create a vast ecosystem and the the community that flash once was.

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