No, we didn't have better alternatives. For video, HTML5 video was simplistic before DASH, which became a standard in 2012. Further, with Flash your choice of

No, we didn't have better alternatives. For video, HTML5 video was simplistic before DASH, which became a standard in 2012. Further, with Flash your choice of codecs was easy (Sorensen Spark, and later H.264); with HTML5, you have to stream in whichever combination of audio and video codec and container the browser supports. For rich interactivity other than video, we're just now, in 2016, at a point where we can claim the Web Platform [1] finally is on par with Flash, but sites like CanIUse still exist [2], because not every browser supports every new API. Flash gets a (rightfully) bad rep for its security vulnerabilities, but it was a single platform to target, and it's been replaced with alternatives that are no less subject to vendor pressures, despite being 'open' and 'neutral'. [1] https://docs.webplatform.org/ https://docs.webplatform.org/ [2] http://caniuse.com/ http://caniuse.com/