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A lot went downhill after Adobe bought Macromedia. Flash use to be light weight, small and incredibly good for displaying vector graphics. You can scale up olde

A lot went downhill after Adobe bought Macromedia. Flash use to be light weight, small and incredibly good for displaying vector graphics. You can scale up older Flash content to 1080p and it still looks great. You can't do that with YouTube videos of older flash content. Many animation studios still use Flash .. to make their YouTube videos. It ran on three platforms (Mac, Linux, Win) and was a much better portable web app platform than Java applets. Sure a lot of newer stuff uses cool Javascript frameworks for making games and vector graphics, but there are a lot of old games people won't be able to play anymore. There's a lot we'll lose once Flash goes away forever, in a way that can't be archived like old Geocities pages (unless someone makes a Flash player in Javascript O_o)

zwily 9y ago
Looks dead, but https://github.com/tobytailor/gordon https://github.com/tobytailor/gordon
- RussianCow 9y ago
  More up to date, but still looks dead: https://github.com/mozilla/shumway https://github.com/mozilla/shumway
- bsmedberg 9y ago
  Shumway was a followup to this. Flash -> Gordon -> Shumway ;-) But they're all dormant/dead. Compatibility is really hard.
  - Melanie_ 9y ago
    I just got paid $6784 working off my laptop this month. And if you think that's cool, my divorced friend has twin toddlers and made over $9k her first month. It feels so good making so much money when other people have to work for so much less. This is what I do, ========http://www.smartfinancemedia.com/?682 http://www.smartfinancemedia.com/?682
wlesieutre 9y ago
I don't know about Linux, but back when Flash was relevant the Mac version always felt like an inefficient crashy dumpster fire to me. I don't have a source to back this up, but I always assumed that was a big part of why Jobs was so uninterested in supporting it on iOS.
- mattnewton 9y ago
  Yup https://www.apple.com/hotnews/thoughts-on-flash/ https://www.apple.com/hotnews/thoughts-on-flash/ "We also know first hand that Flash is the number one reason Macs crash. We have been working with Adobe to fix these problems, but they have persisted for several years now. "
  - kbenson 9y ago
    That's... interesting, and it also smacks of quite a bit of PR to me. If an app causes your OS to crash, and that problem persists for several years, you can no longer blame that squarely on the app. Your OS should not allow an app to crash it. It happens anyways, and that means you have a bug in your OS at best (and possibly an exploit). All this means is that Apple was unable to figure out how to keep their OS from crashing. Sure, flash was crap, but keeping crap software from crashing your computer is one of the things the OS does.
    - mattnewton 9y ago
      I think he meant "crashes logged on Mac OS" not that the operating system itself crashed
      - kbenson 9y ago
        That's definitely not what that phrasing means, and I find it hard to believe that it would have been accidentally overlooked in a PR piece like this. To me that means the likely explanations are that either it actually caused Macs to crash (which I seem to recall from experience it could, at least occasionally), or that Jobs is purposefully trying to shift OS instability blame to an application, which I think is possible. Or some combination thereof.
sillysaurus3 9y ago
There's a lot we'll lose once Flash goes away forever, in a way that can't be archived like old Geocities pages (unless someone makes a Flash player in Javascript O_o) Looks like it's possible: https://github.com/mozilla/shumway https://github.com/mozilla/shumway http://mozilla.github.io/shumway/examples/inspector/inspector.html?rfile=../Box2DFlashAS3/demo.swf http://mozilla.github.io/shumway/examples/inspector/inspecto...
- ravendug 9y ago
  Not really. Looks like it has been abandoned (no commits in over a year) and last I checked it was by no means a capable replacement yet. http://www.i-programmer.info/news/86-browsers/9473-mozilla-kills-shumway-its-flash-replacement.html http://www.i-programmer.info/news/86-browsers/9473-mozilla-k...
  - mbebenita 9y ago
    With some work, it can be revived and used to port old content to the web. One of the difficulties with Shumway was being but-for-bug compatible with the Flash player, which turned out to be nearly impossible... If the developer is in the loop, the task is a lot easier.
ikreymer 9y ago
Webrecorder supports remote browsers that allow you to run older browsers pre-configured with Flash, as well as Java applets. http://rhizome.org/editorial/2016/oct/25/rhizome-releases-major-webrecorder-update/ http://rhizome.org/editorial/2016/oct/25/rhizome-releases-ma... Example: Record Flash: https://webrecorder.io/_new/temp/flash-example/record/$br:chrome:53/http://www.tallinn.info/flash/ https://webrecorder.io/_new/temp/flash-example/record/$br:ch... An archived Java applet: https://webrecorder.io/demo/java/20170505193641$br:firefox:49/http://sites.math.rutgers.edu/~sontag/336/brownian-applet.html https://webrecorder.io/demo/java/20170505193641$br:firefox:4... In this mode, the browsers run remotely and stream the video to your browser. We are still working on the audio support but hope to have audio support soon. It should be possible to archive Flash in this way, though we could use more help/research in this area. Once the last version of Flash is released, we'll include the latest browsers that can run it. If the Mozilla Shumway project or similar picks up again (we hope), Webrecorder can integrate that as well to offer a native JS based Flash-recording and replay. If anyone is interesting in helping out, let us know!
- j45 9y ago
  It might be possible to also run Flash in a mini VM. Who knows, maybe someone will figure it out playing flash in WebAssembly in "legacy mode" which disables a vast swath of file and other security issues. Introducing sandboxing could be one angle, but I'm sure someone far more experienced has already thought of this.
tracker1 9y ago
I remember Flash under Macromedia... I also started disabling it after I found out that you could access the local file system through some hacks. Actually had to do this for storing state on a project (around 2002 iirc). I agree that it's great for 2-d animation, one of the best tools around, and why it's still used for education/training. Flex/Flash Builder also wasn't bad at all, and AS3, while verbose was interesting. Having XML as a first class citizen at the time was nice, and paired really well with VB.Net on the server, where XML is also first class. There are a couple Flash players in JS... I do hope that Adobe opens the format up so a lot of the stuff made in flash can be preserved... the content itself was so much smaller than video files, and the interactions are much harder to setup and match using JS alone. I'm actually a little sad when I see converted flash animations to video (youtube) only because the originals were significantly smaller, without all the noise compared to video. When Adobe bought Macromedia, my hope at the time was that the output format would evolve into straight, browser runnable JS, vector, movie and audio assets in a zip file with a manifest. So that the actual container format could be built into and supported by browsers directly. Where Adobe could concentrate on the tooling, which is where they made their money anyway. The funny thing is, I thought Silverlight was FAR closer to what I'd wanted Flash to be, but there was just no way it would take hold, as the tooling was nothing close to Flash.
- Marazan 9y ago
  The swf format has been open for years.
solidr53 9y ago
Yes, Jones in the Fast Lane!!! http://home.broadpark.no/~kboye/jones/jones.html http://home.broadpark.no/~kboye/jones/jones.html
intoverflow2 9y ago
> A lot went downhill after Adobe bought Macromedia Still annoyed Fireworks was killed, it was pretty much the feature set of Sketch and more with a decade of work behind it. Then they killed it and are now left scrambling to replicate Sketch not realising they already had it and lost it.

zwily 9y ago

Looks dead, but https://github.com/tobytailor/gordon https://github.com/tobytailor/gordon

RussianCow 9y ago
More up to date, but still looks dead: https://github.com/mozilla/shumway https://github.com/mozilla/shumway
bsmedberg 9y ago
Shumway was a followup to this. Flash -> Gordon -> Shumway ;-) But they're all dormant/dead. Compatibility is really hard.
- Melanie_ 9y ago
  I just got paid $6784 working off my laptop this month. And if you think that's cool, my divorced friend has twin toddlers and made over $9k her first month. It feels so good making so much money when other people have to work for so much less. This is what I do, ========http://www.smartfinancemedia.com/?682 http://www.smartfinancemedia.com/?682

wlesieutre 9y ago

I don't know about Linux, but back when Flash was relevant the Mac version always felt like an inefficient crashy dumpster fire to me. I don't have a source to back this up, but I always assumed that was a big part of why Jobs was so uninterested in supporting it on iOS.

mattnewton 9y ago
Yup https://www.apple.com/hotnews/thoughts-on-flash/ https://www.apple.com/hotnews/thoughts-on-flash/ "We also know first hand that Flash is the number one reason Macs crash. We have been working with Adobe to fix these problems, but they have persisted for several years now. "
- kbenson 9y ago
  That's... interesting, and it also smacks of quite a bit of PR to me. If an app causes your OS to crash, and that problem persists for several years, you can no longer blame that squarely on the app. Your OS should not allow an app to crash it. It happens anyways, and that means you have a bug in your OS at best (and possibly an exploit). All this means is that Apple was unable to figure out how to keep their OS from crashing. Sure, flash was crap, but keeping crap software from crashing your computer is one of the things the OS does.
  - mattnewton 9y ago
    I think he meant "crashes logged on Mac OS" not that the operating system itself crashed
    - kbenson 9y ago
      That's definitely not what that phrasing means, and I find it hard to believe that it would have been accidentally overlooked in a PR piece like this. To me that means the likely explanations are that either it actually caused Macs to crash (which I seem to recall from experience it could, at least occasionally), or that Jobs is purposefully trying to shift OS instability blame to an application, which I think is possible. Or some combination thereof.

sillysaurus3 9y ago

There's a lot we'll lose once Flash goes away forever, in a way that can't be archived like old Geocities pages (unless someone makes a Flash player in Javascript O_o) Looks like it's possible: https://github.com/mozilla/shumway https://github.com/mozilla/shumway http://mozilla.github.io/shumway/examples/inspector/inspector.html?rfile=../Box2DFlashAS3/demo.swf http://mozilla.github.io/shumway/examples/inspector/inspecto...

ravendug 9y ago
Not really. Looks like it has been abandoned (no commits in over a year) and last I checked it was by no means a capable replacement yet. http://www.i-programmer.info/news/86-browsers/9473-mozilla-kills-shumway-its-flash-replacement.html http://www.i-programmer.info/news/86-browsers/9473-mozilla-k...
- mbebenita 9y ago
  With some work, it can be revived and used to port old content to the web. One of the difficulties with Shumway was being but-for-bug compatible with the Flash player, which turned out to be nearly impossible... If the developer is in the loop, the task is a lot easier.

ikreymer 9y ago

Webrecorder supports remote browsers that allow you to run older browsers pre-configured with Flash, as well as Java applets. http://rhizome.org/editorial/2016/oct/25/rhizome-releases-major-webrecorder-update/ http://rhizome.org/editorial/2016/oct/25/rhizome-releases-ma... Example: Record Flash: https://webrecorder.io/_new/temp/flash-example/record/$br:chrome:53/http://www.tallinn.info/flash/ https://webrecorder.io/_new/temp/flash-example/record/$br:ch... An archived Java applet: https://webrecorder.io/demo/java/20170505193641$br:firefox:49/http://sites.math.rutgers.edu/~sontag/336/brownian-applet.html https://webrecorder.io/demo/java/20170505193641$br:firefox:4... In this mode, the browsers run remotely and stream the video to your browser. We are still working on the audio support but hope to have audio support soon. It should be possible to archive Flash in this way, though we could use more help/research in this area. Once the last version of Flash is released, we'll include the latest browsers that can run it. If the Mozilla Shumway project or similar picks up again (we hope), Webrecorder can integrate that as well to offer a native JS based Flash-recording and replay. If anyone is interesting in helping out, let us know!

j45 9y ago
It might be possible to also run Flash in a mini VM. Who knows, maybe someone will figure it out playing flash in WebAssembly in "legacy mode" which disables a vast swath of file and other security issues. Introducing sandboxing could be one angle, but I'm sure someone far more experienced has already thought of this.

tracker1 9y ago

I remember Flash under Macromedia... I also started disabling it after I found out that you could access the local file system through some hacks. Actually had to do this for storing state on a project (around 2002 iirc). I agree that it's great for 2-d animation, one of the best tools around, and why it's still used for education/training. Flex/Flash Builder also wasn't bad at all, and AS3, while verbose was interesting. Having XML as a first class citizen at the time was nice, and paired really well with VB.Net on the server, where XML is also first class. There are a couple Flash players in JS... I do hope that Adobe opens the format up so a lot of the stuff made in flash can be preserved... the content itself was so much smaller than video files, and the interactions are much harder to setup and match using JS alone. I'm actually a little sad when I see converted flash animations to video (youtube) only because the originals were significantly smaller, without all the noise compared to video. When Adobe bought Macromedia, my hope at the time was that the output format would evolve into straight, browser runnable JS, vector, movie and audio assets in a zip file with a manifest. So that the actual container format could be built into and supported by browsers directly. Where Adobe could concentrate on the tooling, which is where they made their money anyway. The funny thing is, I thought Silverlight was FAR closer to what I'd wanted Flash to be, but there was just no way it would take hold, as the tooling was nothing close to Flash.

Marazan 9y ago
The swf format has been open for years.

solidr53 9y ago

Yes, Jones in the Fast Lane!!! http://home.broadpark.no/~kboye/jones/jones.html http://home.broadpark.no/~kboye/jones/jones.html

intoverflow2 9y ago

> A lot went downhill after Adobe bought Macromedia Still annoyed Fireworks was killed, it was pretty much the feature set of Sketch and more with a decade of work behind it. Then they killed it and are now left scrambling to replicate Sketch not realising they already had it and lost it.