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Old-timers as myself already saw this coming. The main idea of killing Flash was because some websites completely ran on it, which is bad. But games never was

Old-timers as myself already saw this coming. The main idea of killing Flash was because some websites completely ran on it, which is bad. But games never was an issue, and never will be. Battery life, system resources, downloading assets, ..., it's all the same if you use either Flash or JavaScript. Newsflash: Apple didn't block Flash because it is "bad", they blocked it because they wanted you to go through their app store Newsflash: Games written for Flash (in ActionScript3) also run on Android and iOS. It even became "Best Mobile Application Development product" of 2014 and 2015. They say Flash advertisement banners were annoying, so what do you think about those JavaScript popup banners that pop in the middle of the page you are reading, saying "Please subscribe to our mailing list"? I you develop a game for Flash, it runs consistently in the Flash plugin. If you develop a game in JavaScript, you need to test it in all browsers you want to support. And yes, they are all different. And still gives troubles so many years later. Surprising? Not for old farts like myself. But no worries. I looked at my google analytics for the past few years. Most visitors moved to Chrome. Flash plugin installed percentage: remained the same.

mawburn 10y ago
http://www.theverge.com/2016/5/15/11679394/chrome-to-block-flash-later-2016 http://www.theverge.com/2016/5/15/11679394/chrome-to-block-f... Nails in the coffin.
- koonsolo 10y ago
  I still need to see how this turns out in practice. But if they completely get rid of it, this will mean more headaches for game developers, and more gamers crying that stuff doesn't work. Non-game related, this might actually be a good thing. But coming from a game development background, this is a huge step back, both for game developers and gamers who want to play straight in the browser. But as said, we will see how inconvenient they make it.
mamadrood 10y ago
Flash also has huge security flaws and memory leaks. Pretty much like Java applets. At least with JS, if it leaks or has security breach, the browser's developer can fix it without waiting for a 3rd party, or I can use a different browser.
- koonsolo 10y ago
  The more complex software is, the more potential security flaws and memory leaks. All software is subjected to this. Bringing HTML5 to browsers adds to this, and don't assume browsers are immune because they are not developed by Adobe. Same arguments can be made for Flash: Plugin's developer can fix it without waiting for browser. Disable the plugin and use the same browser. Conclusion: makes no difference conceptually.
  - bobajeff 10y ago
    That's all well and good but what would you have us do? Move all web app development over to the Flash Player and disable JavaScript (and JS APIs) in browsers? We have to reduce the attack surface somehow. Oh, and guess what? We now have no browser competition because all the relevant parts are in the Flash Player and good luck motivating Adobe to fix issues with it now that it's basically a requirement to run a browser. Oh, and now they could charge everyone to access it if they want.
  - phaser 10y ago
    The difference is that Flash, being proprietary, Adobe is the only party allowed to fix a memory leak. HTML5, a standard, can have many proposals, discussions and implementations on how to fix issues.
    - BatFastard 10y ago
      Seriously? Have you ever seen something fixed faster by a committee then by a vendor who has a large financial incentive to protect? I want to live in your world!
  - corysama 10y ago
    No difference conceptually. Huge difference in practice when looking at the track records of the two approaches.
  - vesinisa 10y ago
    > Same arguments can be made for Flash: Plugin's developer can fix it without waiting for browser. Disable the plugin and use the same browser. Not exactly comparable. Flash, at its height, had pretty much the "multimedia in browser" market cornered with draconian vendor lock-in effects. They didn't need to hurry that much with fixing issues, because what are you gonna do if you are not satisfied with the Adobe Flash plugin? Run your favourite Flash game with Microsoft Silverlight? Use the open-source plug-in that could only run some Flash 1.0 animations? At least with browsers you can easily switch vendors (the whole point of standardization and techs like WASM), or even fork your own. Even if I don't like Apple or Steve Jobs that much, I must say they did one great thing killing off Flash by not allowing it on the original iPhone.
delinka 10y ago
No one ever demonstrated a performant Flash implementation on iOS. (or any other ARM system?) IIRC, Adobe whined and stomped and gave a demo that it could run on iOS, but it didn't run well at all. And as another commenter mentions, security flaws galore.
- koonsolo 10y ago
  Do you know a game called "Angry Birds" that runs on mobile platforms? Seems to run pretty smooth in my eyes. Edit: In case it is not clear, Angry Birds uses the Starling Platform, which uses Stage3D, which uses Adobe AIR, which uses the same technology as Flash, and is written in the same ActionScript3 environment.
  - jeremiep 10y ago
    I used to work with Stage3D when it came out. Its a crippled API with an even worse shaders API. AS3 spawned way too many OOP practices in the Flash world for my liking, it was the most naive way to code games I've seen until people started doing the same in JS. Angry Birds is so simple a game it could waste 90% of the system's resources and still run smoothly. The build pipeline for AIR is also terrible, with XML configuration and arcane documentation and plenty of non-documented behaviors. I once had to maintain a Flash extension, ExtensionBuilder is as bad as a toolchain can get. I'm so glad Flash is dead :)
  - Impossible 10y ago
    Do you have a source for the mobile version of Angry Birds using Flash? My understanding is that only the web\social version of Angry Birds uses Flash and the original iOS mobile version is a native app using a few third party libraries (Box2D and Lua).
    - joshmarinacci 10y ago
      Angry Birds was definitely C++/OpenGL. That's how it could run on WebOS with the PDK.
ZeroGravitas 10y ago
I used to surf the web with an Opera browser on Nintendo DS. The Opera devs felt like Adobe had no interest in supporting ARM platforms either due to organisational issues, or because they'd painted themselves into a corner technically in how they'd built on the assumption of having a high-powered desktop machine available. It came as no suprise to me when Flash and the iPhone never happened.
eridius 10y ago
> Newsflash: Apple didn't block Flash because it is "bad", they blocked it because they wanted you to go through their app store No. They blocked it because it sucked. Horrible for battery, horrible for accessibility, performance wasn't great, and security issues galore. Don't forget, iPhone shipped without Flash before the app store even existed. When iPhone was first launched, Apple literally told developers to make web apps for it instead of providing native apps. It wasn't until iOS 2.0 that native apps were possible.

mawburn 10y ago

http://www.theverge.com/2016/5/15/11679394/chrome-to-block-flash-later-2016 http://www.theverge.com/2016/5/15/11679394/chrome-to-block-f... Nails in the coffin.

koonsolo 10y ago
I still need to see how this turns out in practice. But if they completely get rid of it, this will mean more headaches for game developers, and more gamers crying that stuff doesn't work. Non-game related, this might actually be a good thing. But coming from a game development background, this is a huge step back, both for game developers and gamers who want to play straight in the browser. But as said, we will see how inconvenient they make it.

mamadrood 10y ago

Flash also has huge security flaws and memory leaks. Pretty much like Java applets. At least with JS, if it leaks or has security breach, the browser's developer can fix it without waiting for a 3rd party, or I can use a different browser.

koonsolo 10y ago
The more complex software is, the more potential security flaws and memory leaks. All software is subjected to this. Bringing HTML5 to browsers adds to this, and don't assume browsers are immune because they are not developed by Adobe. Same arguments can be made for Flash: Plugin's developer can fix it without waiting for browser. Disable the plugin and use the same browser. Conclusion: makes no difference conceptually.
- bobajeff 10y ago
  That's all well and good but what would you have us do? Move all web app development over to the Flash Player and disable JavaScript (and JS APIs) in browsers? We have to reduce the attack surface somehow. Oh, and guess what? We now have no browser competition because all the relevant parts are in the Flash Player and good luck motivating Adobe to fix issues with it now that it's basically a requirement to run a browser. Oh, and now they could charge everyone to access it if they want.
- phaser 10y ago
  The difference is that Flash, being proprietary, Adobe is the only party allowed to fix a memory leak. HTML5, a standard, can have many proposals, discussions and implementations on how to fix issues.
  - BatFastard 10y ago
    Seriously? Have you ever seen something fixed faster by a committee then by a vendor who has a large financial incentive to protect? I want to live in your world!
- corysama 10y ago
  No difference conceptually. Huge difference in practice when looking at the track records of the two approaches.
- vesinisa 10y ago
  > Same arguments can be made for Flash: Plugin's developer can fix it without waiting for browser. Disable the plugin and use the same browser. Not exactly comparable. Flash, at its height, had pretty much the "multimedia in browser" market cornered with draconian vendor lock-in effects. They didn't need to hurry that much with fixing issues, because what are you gonna do if you are not satisfied with the Adobe Flash plugin? Run your favourite Flash game with Microsoft Silverlight? Use the open-source plug-in that could only run some Flash 1.0 animations? At least with browsers you can easily switch vendors (the whole point of standardization and techs like WASM), or even fork your own. Even if I don't like Apple or Steve Jobs that much, I must say they did one great thing killing off Flash by not allowing it on the original iPhone.

delinka 10y ago

No one ever demonstrated a performant Flash implementation on iOS. (or any other ARM system?) IIRC, Adobe whined and stomped and gave a demo that it could run on iOS, but it didn't run well at all. And as another commenter mentions, security flaws galore.

koonsolo 10y ago
Do you know a game called "Angry Birds" that runs on mobile platforms? Seems to run pretty smooth in my eyes. Edit: In case it is not clear, Angry Birds uses the Starling Platform, which uses Stage3D, which uses Adobe AIR, which uses the same technology as Flash, and is written in the same ActionScript3 environment.
- jeremiep 10y ago
  I used to work with Stage3D when it came out. Its a crippled API with an even worse shaders API. AS3 spawned way too many OOP practices in the Flash world for my liking, it was the most naive way to code games I've seen until people started doing the same in JS. Angry Birds is so simple a game it could waste 90% of the system's resources and still run smoothly. The build pipeline for AIR is also terrible, with XML configuration and arcane documentation and plenty of non-documented behaviors. I once had to maintain a Flash extension, ExtensionBuilder is as bad as a toolchain can get. I'm so glad Flash is dead :)
- Impossible 10y ago
  Do you have a source for the mobile version of Angry Birds using Flash? My understanding is that only the web\social version of Angry Birds uses Flash and the original iOS mobile version is a native app using a few third party libraries (Box2D and Lua).
  - joshmarinacci 10y ago
    Angry Birds was definitely C++/OpenGL. That's how it could run on WebOS with the PDK.

ZeroGravitas 10y ago

I used to surf the web with an Opera browser on Nintendo DS. The Opera devs felt like Adobe had no interest in supporting ARM platforms either due to organisational issues, or because they'd painted themselves into a corner technically in how they'd built on the assumption of having a high-powered desktop machine available. It came as no suprise to me when Flash and the iPhone never happened.

eridius 10y ago

> Newsflash: Apple didn't block Flash because it is "bad", they blocked it because they wanted you to go through their app store No. They blocked it because it sucked. Horrible for battery, horrible for accessibility, performance wasn't great, and security issues galore. Don't forget, iPhone shipped without Flash before the app store even existed. When iPhone was first launched, Apple literally told developers to make web apps for it instead of providing native apps. It wasn't until iOS 2.0 that native apps were possible.