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Let's not forget that Flash-the-creation-studio-application was hugely successful with amateur animators, which provided content for sites like Newgrounds et al

Let's not forget that Flash-the-creation-studio-application was hugely successful with amateur animators, which provided content for sites like Newgrounds et al. Such artists were enabled to produce animations without dabbling with programming. For those remembering the web in the early 2000s, the Flash-only designer-based websites were the norm for restaurants, luxury brands; it was a designer wet dream, to allow him to design animation enabled and pixel perfect "web sites" without dabbling with HTML and JS code

drawkbox 8y ago
Yeah Flash was amazing at attracting both developers and designers and led to awesome games and some really innovative interactive experiences. The web is a better place due to Flash and Macromedia did a killer job, I wish Adobe had kept it going better. Originally I was attracted to Flash 3/4 for making cartoons, Flash was where I launched my first game (and hundreds more) and got lots of fun game/interactive/video work from it. I probably work in games/dev today due to Flash (mainly Unity now, another Flash inspired tool). I loved AS3 as well, great iteration of javascript and only ES4 implementation that was kicked to the curb unfortunately. Flash was awesome all the way to the 2007ish Papervision 3d days (Three.js by mr. doob [1], part of Papervision team along with great designers like Carlos Ulloa [2] and people that work at Unity now like Ralph Hauwert [3], takes Papervision's place) but then Adobe let Flash languish in lacking hardware rendering support and eventually mobile and apps killed it due to native/hardware rendering support, Chrome put the final punch in by changing plugin support. Though HTML5, Canvas, WebGL, SVG, web video, web audio and even wasm is a direct result of the innovation from Flash. Flash even got big in entertainment like video, games and lots of web cartoons still use Flash today for animation (Adobe Animate now) [4] though many use ToonBoom/USAnimation (also inspired by Flash) [5][6]. Sites like joe cartoon, newgrounds, praystation, thefwa etc were all part of it and Youtube jumped on Flash video, big parts of internet history are due to Flash. Flash was one of those rare tools that attracts interactive/creative designers and interactive/creative developers. I don't know that there is another tool/platform that was as attractive to design and development. Adobe Animate is still around but the Flash community was awesome and attracted all types of creative people. Flash was so much more than a buggy plugin in the end, it was a great interactive, vector based entertainment and content creating system overall end to end. Flash/Animate is still out there today but not as integrated. Adobe Animate is the same but can export to apps and html5/canvas/webgl. There are also open source tools that can do flash like but not as integrated as well for designers in OpenFL [7], Haxe [8] and lime [9]. [1] https://threejs.org/ https://threejs.org/ [2] https://helloenjoy.com/ https://helloenjoy.com/ [3] http://www.marketwired.com/press-release/flash-3d-vet-ralph-hauwert-joins-unity-technologies-1544586.htm http://www.marketwired.com/press-release/flash-3d-vet-ralph-... [4] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Flash_animated_television_series https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Flash_animated_televis... [5] https://www.toonboom.com/company/customer-productions https://www.toonboom.com/company/customer-productions [6] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/USAnimation https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/USAnimation [7] http://www.openfl.org/ http://www.openfl.org/ + https://github.com/openfl/openfl https://github.com/openfl/openfl [8] https://haxe.org/ https://haxe.org/ [9] https://github.com/openfl/lime https://github.com/openfl/lime

drawkbox 8y ago

Yeah Flash was amazing at attracting both developers and designers and led to awesome games and some really innovative interactive experiences. The web is a better place due to Flash and Macromedia did a killer job, I wish Adobe had kept it going better. Originally I was attracted to Flash 3/4 for making cartoons, Flash was where I launched my first game (and hundreds more) and got lots of fun game/interactive/video work from it. I probably work in games/dev today due to Flash (mainly Unity now, another Flash inspired tool). I loved AS3 as well, great iteration of javascript and only ES4 implementation that was kicked to the curb unfortunately. Flash was awesome all the way to the 2007ish Papervision 3d days (Three.js by mr. doob [1], part of Papervision team along with great designers like Carlos Ulloa [2] and people that work at Unity now like Ralph Hauwert [3], takes Papervision's place) but then Adobe let Flash languish in lacking hardware rendering support and eventually mobile and apps killed it due to native/hardware rendering support, Chrome put the final punch in by changing plugin support. Though HTML5, Canvas, WebGL, SVG, web video, web audio and even wasm is a direct result of the innovation from Flash. Flash even got big in entertainment like video, games and lots of web cartoons still use Flash today for animation (Adobe Animate now) [4] though many use ToonBoom/USAnimation (also inspired by Flash) [5][6]. Sites like joe cartoon, newgrounds, praystation, thefwa etc were all part of it and Youtube jumped on Flash video, big parts of internet history are due to Flash. Flash was one of those rare tools that attracts interactive/creative designers and interactive/creative developers. I don't know that there is another tool/platform that was as attractive to design and development. Adobe Animate is still around but the Flash community was awesome and attracted all types of creative people. Flash was so much more than a buggy plugin in the end, it was a great interactive, vector based entertainment and content creating system overall end to end. Flash/Animate is still out there today but not as integrated. Adobe Animate is the same but can export to apps and html5/canvas/webgl. There are also open source tools that can do flash like but not as integrated as well for designers in OpenFL [7], Haxe [8] and lime [9]. [1] https://threejs.org/ https://threejs.org/ [2] https://helloenjoy.com/ https://helloenjoy.com/ [3] http://www.marketwired.com/press-release/flash-3d-vet-ralph-hauwert-joins-unity-technologies-1544586.htm http://www.marketwired.com/press-release/flash-3d-vet-ralph-... [4] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Flash_animated_television_series https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Flash_animated_televis... [5] https://www.toonboom.com/company/customer-productions https://www.toonboom.com/company/customer-productions [6] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/USAnimation https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/USAnimation [7] http://www.openfl.org/ http://www.openfl.org/ + https://github.com/openfl/openfl https://github.com/openfl/openfl [8] https://haxe.org/ https://haxe.org/ [9] https://github.com/openfl/lime https://github.com/openfl/lime