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There are some really cool things the web has gained I'd like to here about these things, if any. I'll generously assume you aren't seriously referring to "we

There are some really cool things the web has gained I'd like to here about these things, if any. I'll generously assume you aren't seriously referring to "web previews" or animations. I'm also glad Flash has finally been killed off No, that's an absolute tragedy. Some of the youngsters here might not be aware, but there was a time when 99 percent of the garbage in a website could be turned off with a single blocker, all without impacting anything necessary.

jiveturkey 8y ago
yep. wishing Flash to be gone is misguided.
- steve_adams_86 8y ago
  I liked flash too, but it being owned by Adobe killed it. If it was open, I'd be a lot more sad about it dying.
  - briandear 8y ago
    It wouldn’t have died if it were open. It would have been improved and more secure.
- goshx 8y ago
  Ask anyone who've lived in the world of java applets how the rise of flash was awesome at the time. It was great for a lot of things, but unfortunately, like many things in life (javascript?), people abused it.
TeMPOraL 8y ago
> 99 percent of the garbage in a website could be turned off with a single blocker, all without impacting anything necessary I was there and I remember no such thing. On the contrary, I remember people building whole sites in Flash. Killing that off is a Good Thing. I think the problem with the web is too much freedom given by tools for free, which leads to such maddening abuse as Flash was in the past, and modern web development is today. Publishers have too much capability, and too much control over the rendering of content.
- Chlorus 8y ago
  Don't forget our good friends ActiveX , ShockWave(whose relationship to Flash I've never been able to determine), and RealPlayer, which had an uncanny ability to be required for every online class assignment I ever had. If you were hapless enough to be running a Linux desktop, as I was, then have fun! The modern JavaScript experience might be a bloated disaster, but at least it's a cross-platform disaster.
  - brightball 8y ago
    I had forgotten about real player. It was so awful...
  - hnzix 8y ago
    Shockwave was the player for content packaged for web from Macromedia Director, a product focused on creating multimedia binaries, often distributed on CD. Shockwave had much more powerful video and 3D rendering capabilities than Flash, but Director arguably died after Macromedia failed to deliver a timely OSX port.
- hnzix 8y ago
  > I remember people building whole sites in Flash. Like some kind of Single Page App that takes forever to download, breaks the back button and has obfuscated source code? Lucky we're past that phase!
  - TeMPOraL 8y ago
    Yes, but with Flash pages scrolling rarely worked at all (people were too lazy to implement it), text wasn't searchable or copy-pastable, and no keyboard shortcuts worked, anywhere. JS SPAs are bad, but not that bad, because browser defaults are sane, and getting around them is hard. Or in other words, web starts working by default, and developers have to work to break it. Flash had no defaults, you started with blank slate and implement everything yourself.
pcwalton 8y ago
> No, that's an absolute tragedy. Some of the youngsters here might not be aware, but there was a time when 99 percent of the garbage in a website could be turned off with a single blocker, all without impacting anything necessary. Some of the youngsters here might not be aware, but there was a time when sites could reliably send raw TCP and UDP through a popular plugin that implemented a different, and weaker, version of the same-origin policy than the browser did. (For example, in earlier versions of Flash, any video could send anything to any port > 1024 on its hosting server!)

jiveturkey 8y ago

yep. wishing Flash to be gone is misguided.

steve_adams_86 8y ago
I liked flash too, but it being owned by Adobe killed it. If it was open, I'd be a lot more sad about it dying.
- briandear 8y ago
  It wouldn’t have died if it were open. It would have been improved and more secure.
goshx 8y ago
Ask anyone who've lived in the world of java applets how the rise of flash was awesome at the time. It was great for a lot of things, but unfortunately, like many things in life (javascript?), people abused it.

TeMPOraL 8y ago

> 99 percent of the garbage in a website could be turned off with a single blocker, all without impacting anything necessary I was there and I remember no such thing. On the contrary, I remember people building whole sites in Flash. Killing that off is a Good Thing. I think the problem with the web is too much freedom given by tools for free, which leads to such maddening abuse as Flash was in the past, and modern web development is today. Publishers have too much capability, and too much control over the rendering of content.

Chlorus 8y ago
Don't forget our good friends ActiveX , ShockWave(whose relationship to Flash I've never been able to determine), and RealPlayer, which had an uncanny ability to be required for every online class assignment I ever had. If you were hapless enough to be running a Linux desktop, as I was, then have fun! The modern JavaScript experience might be a bloated disaster, but at least it's a cross-platform disaster.
- brightball 8y ago
  I had forgotten about real player. It was so awful...
- hnzix 8y ago
  Shockwave was the player for content packaged for web from Macromedia Director, a product focused on creating multimedia binaries, often distributed on CD. Shockwave had much more powerful video and 3D rendering capabilities than Flash, but Director arguably died after Macromedia failed to deliver a timely OSX port.
hnzix 8y ago
> I remember people building whole sites in Flash. Like some kind of Single Page App that takes forever to download, breaks the back button and has obfuscated source code? Lucky we're past that phase!
- TeMPOraL 8y ago
  Yes, but with Flash pages scrolling rarely worked at all (people were too lazy to implement it), text wasn't searchable or copy-pastable, and no keyboard shortcuts worked, anywhere. JS SPAs are bad, but not that bad, because browser defaults are sane, and getting around them is hard. Or in other words, web starts working by default, and developers have to work to break it. Flash had no defaults, you started with blank slate and implement everything yourself.

pcwalton 8y ago

> No, that's an absolute tragedy. Some of the youngsters here might not be aware, but there was a time when 99 percent of the garbage in a website could be turned off with a single blocker, all without impacting anything necessary. Some of the youngsters here might not be aware, but there was a time when sites could reliably send raw TCP and UDP through a popular plugin that implemented a different, and weaker, version of the same-origin policy than the browser did. (For example, in earlier versions of Flash, any video could send anything to any port > 1024 on its hosting server!)