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We have very different recollections of the history. If your website had the Shockwave badge, I was excited. If your website has the RealPlayer badge, I likely

We have very different recollections of the history. If your website had the Shockwave badge, I was excited. If your website has the RealPlayer badge, I likely went somewhere else. You also can’t underestimate the influence of the ‘new media’ web aesthetic, that was dominated by Shockwave (e.g. Praystation), on current web design principles and tools.

bsimpson 9y ago
For those that don't remember/weren't online then, Shockwave was the brand that Flash originally shipped under. It's where the "sw" in "swf" comes from. For an even more thorough history of Flash, this is a great (and relatively quick read: https://code.tutsplus.com/articles/a-nostalgic-rummage-through-the-history-of-flash--active-6733 https://code.tutsplus.com/articles/a-nostalgic-rummage-throu...
ChrisSD 9y ago
Sure but my recollection is that Java was the first major plugin that really took off. Then realmedia and other players came along. It was only in the 00's that I remember Flash taking off. My memory may be faulty so I'll bow to anyone who has decent sources.
- coliveira 9y ago
  It is true that Java was the first widely available plugin, but how many people did really useful things in Java? It was always a pain, slow, difficult to use properly. Most people dreaded using Java and it only had a niche in enterprise applications. It was flash that made plugins look cool and brought innovative things like Youtube to the masses.
  - jrs95 9y ago
    Only thing I ever really remember encountering that was decent was Runescape.
- shove 9y ago
  Flash player plugin had 90+% browser penetration by the late 90s but yeah, the corporate money really started flowing around 2000.
- Decade 9y ago
  In my recollection, Java was pushed into browsers as part of Sun’s Write Once Run Anywhere strategy. Browser makers went along because it was the era when everybody wanted to be a platform for plugins. Then Microsoft tried to control the development of Java on Windows, and that was a mess. The Java plugin was a pain. The runtime took somewhere on the order of 10 seconds to load, and the browser was completely unresponsive during this time. This was also the era before CSS, so if you wanted animated buttons on your web site, you had to use Java. Imagine loading a page, and then seeing a column of gray rectangles that freeze your browser and eventually resolve into dithered (“web-safe” color) buttons. Not a great experience. Real Media only played video and audio. QuickTime played video and audio and VR snapshots. There were also plugins for specific types of content like VRML. I feel that Flash took off because Adobe spent lots of money pushing it everywhere, but also because it ran better than Java. The runtime was smaller to download than Java, it started up much faster than Java, and its vector animations played very smoothly compared to the alternatives of the time.
  - Drdrdrq 9y ago
    This. Java applets were first, but the plugin was horrible (slow) and tooling was aimed at programmers, not designers. I hated flash btw (designers were really creative with it), but in the end it pushed JS and DOM forward, so I guess I should be thankful. :)
  - merdreubu 9y ago
    It was Macromedia that made Flash, not Adobe. Adobe just ignored it and is now killing it. Edit: Adobe also killed 2 other brilliant Macromedia products, right after acquisition, Fireworks and Freehand.
    - Decade 9y ago
      Right. I remembered that Adobe bought Macromedia, but I thought the acqui-kill was earlier. I was getting the story of Macromedia mixed up with Aldus. And actually, Flash came from FutureWave Software, before Macromedia acquired that company. But Adobe did not ignore Flash. They may have mismanaged it, but they did invest in it, and tried to push Flash into places it does not belong (AIR, and especially PDF). They also tried to turn ActionScript 3.0 into ECMAscript 4. https://www-archive.mozilla.org/projects/tamarin/faq.html https://www-archive.mozilla.org/projects/tamarin/faq.html Now that the Flash runtime is becoming banned, Adobe renamed the Flash Professional content creation program to Adobe Animate, and made it able to export to some flavor of HTML5. The content creation is where they make the money, after all.

bsimpson 9y ago

For those that don't remember/weren't online then, Shockwave was the brand that Flash originally shipped under. It's where the "sw" in "swf" comes from. For an even more thorough history of Flash, this is a great (and relatively quick read: https://code.tutsplus.com/articles/a-nostalgic-rummage-through-the-history-of-flash--active-6733 https://code.tutsplus.com/articles/a-nostalgic-rummage-throu...

ChrisSD 9y ago

Sure but my recollection is that Java was the first major plugin that really took off. Then realmedia and other players came along. It was only in the 00's that I remember Flash taking off. My memory may be faulty so I'll bow to anyone who has decent sources.

coliveira 9y ago
It is true that Java was the first widely available plugin, but how many people did really useful things in Java? It was always a pain, slow, difficult to use properly. Most people dreaded using Java and it only had a niche in enterprise applications. It was flash that made plugins look cool and brought innovative things like Youtube to the masses.
- jrs95 9y ago
  Only thing I ever really remember encountering that was decent was Runescape.
shove 9y ago
Flash player plugin had 90+% browser penetration by the late 90s but yeah, the corporate money really started flowing around 2000.
Decade 9y ago
In my recollection, Java was pushed into browsers as part of Sun’s Write Once Run Anywhere strategy. Browser makers went along because it was the era when everybody wanted to be a platform for plugins. Then Microsoft tried to control the development of Java on Windows, and that was a mess. The Java plugin was a pain. The runtime took somewhere on the order of 10 seconds to load, and the browser was completely unresponsive during this time. This was also the era before CSS, so if you wanted animated buttons on your web site, you had to use Java. Imagine loading a page, and then seeing a column of gray rectangles that freeze your browser and eventually resolve into dithered (“web-safe” color) buttons. Not a great experience. Real Media only played video and audio. QuickTime played video and audio and VR snapshots. There were also plugins for specific types of content like VRML. I feel that Flash took off because Adobe spent lots of money pushing it everywhere, but also because it ran better than Java. The runtime was smaller to download than Java, it started up much faster than Java, and its vector animations played very smoothly compared to the alternatives of the time.
- Drdrdrq 9y ago
  This. Java applets were first, but the plugin was horrible (slow) and tooling was aimed at programmers, not designers. I hated flash btw (designers were really creative with it), but in the end it pushed JS and DOM forward, so I guess I should be thankful. :)
- merdreubu 9y ago
  It was Macromedia that made Flash, not Adobe. Adobe just ignored it and is now killing it. Edit: Adobe also killed 2 other brilliant Macromedia products, right after acquisition, Fireworks and Freehand.
  - Decade 9y ago
    Right. I remembered that Adobe bought Macromedia, but I thought the acqui-kill was earlier. I was getting the story of Macromedia mixed up with Aldus. And actually, Flash came from FutureWave Software, before Macromedia acquired that company. But Adobe did not ignore Flash. They may have mismanaged it, but they did invest in it, and tried to push Flash into places it does not belong (AIR, and especially PDF). They also tried to turn ActionScript 3.0 into ECMAscript 4. https://www-archive.mozilla.org/projects/tamarin/faq.html https://www-archive.mozilla.org/projects/tamarin/faq.html Now that the Flash runtime is becoming banned, Adobe renamed the Flash Professional content creation program to Adobe Animate, and made it able to export to some flavor of HTML5. The content creation is where they make the money, after all.