6 ms·

My impression is that tools, over the last few years and no matter the stack they're for, have kind of converged onto where Flash was eons ago. Remember when we

My impression is that tools, over the last few years and no matter the stack they're for, have kind of converged onto where Flash was eons ago. Remember when web was littered with 2advanced clones? Looks like we've abandoned Flash, but never gave up the idea.

emmanueloga_ 8y ago
Agreed! I always come to this conclusion as well. A product that I've been keeping an eye on is Subform [1]. Apart from Flash-esque design tools, it includes more or less "novel" ways of defining the layout of the app. I think the layout tools set this product apart form similar offers. One of the main developers has a talk about the philosophy behind the UI of this app [2]. The same team is working on an app to use state machines to define UI interactions, which is also super interesting [3]. 1: https://subformapp.com/ https://subformapp.com/ 2: https://www.deconstructconf.com/2017/kevin-lynagh-choosing-features https://www.deconstructconf.com/2017/kevin-lynagh-choosing-f... 3: https://sketch.systems/ https://sketch.systems/.
- phenotype 8y ago
  these are really nice looking tools.
- mygo 8y ago
  > A product that I've been keeping an eye on is Subform Dude, hate to be the bearer of bad news, but subform shut down, during beta. I also was keeping track of it and hoping it would launch. sketch.systems is created by the same people though, and sketch.systems is pretty much their pivot. not quite the same thing but it seems to be receiving a better response in the market.
  - emmanueloga_ 8y ago
    Is that so! Such a pity, this product looked really promising! I just saw that they haven't updated the blog since March or so, but I wasn't sure since their forum is invite only. Did they announce this somewhere? Perhaps they are taking a break from subform to work on sketch.systems.
    - mygo 8y ago
      > I wasn't sure since their forum is invite only. Did they announce this somewhere? They announced it on their invite only forum. > Perhaps they are taking a break from subform to work on sketch.systems. That’s exactly what they’re doing, except for it being a break.
CharlesW 8y ago
Which idea are you thinking of? (Flash was very similar to tools that had been on the scene for many years before, like Director and it's predecessor VideoWorks.)
- Keyframe 8y ago
  What Director enabled on interactive CDs we got in mail and as freebies continued with Flash on the web and culminated with 'skip intro'. Idea of having motion graphics on the web. Sometimes in form of small elements, sometimes full everything. Something's gotta move though.
  - beetwenty 8y ago
    I was just reviewing Hypercard's history yesterday and realized that it's really one of many tools from that period circa 1985-1995 where everyone was driving commercial dev tools towards the "RAD" paradigm and merging IDE, database, code editing, and forms editing into one Smalltalk-esque environment. Flash and Director date from this era, and other antecedents include Filemaker(still around today!) and MS Access, as well as more "code-centric" ideas like Visual Basic or Delphi. Flash survived longer than most just by developing into a Web-centric product, but for the most part, these products are old and there's room for a new generation of them. The thing that I think has held them back is that it requires a more holistic approach than is usually taken by open-source projects. It's easier to make a programming language that is dumped on top of the C/Unix environment and just accumulates power-user features over time.
    - scroot 8y ago
      Perhaps the computing experience should be precisely the more holistic one. Hypercard is exceptional for many reasons: new users can do a lot without writing code, but can easily "see" how it works by inspecting things (in a language that is readable even for non-programmers). You can copy and paste everything. It integrated well with the system upon which it was built. It let users do what they needed to, for their own ends, without making too many assumptions -- and it did this in a highly accessible way. That should be what personal computing is all about. I think the key lesson, really, is that you need intuitive metaphors to make such things work. The idea of cards and stacks are highly intuitive in this case. It's worth booting up Sheepshaver and giving the final version of Hypercard another look. The default home stack -- complete with interactive examples and documentation that you can straight up copy and paste -- is still a marvel of design in my view.
swerveonem 8y ago
Wysiwyg?
- pasta 8y ago
  No: keyframes
moolcool 8y ago
It becomes really apparent in web games. Some crude HTML5 game will need a relatively modern PC to run, while graphically superior flash game from 10-15 years ago ran fine on a 500mhz Celeron
- jlarocco 8y ago
  To play devil's advocate, the Flash games of 10 years ago needed a modern (at that time) PC to reproduce similar games written in C 20 years ago...
  - alxlaz 8y ago
    To also play devil's advocate: Flash was a great authorship environment, certainly far easier to write games with, and with better results, than C could give you twenty years before. Developing JS/HTML5 games is far more painful and unpleasant than developing Flash games -- it's a worse developer experience that somehow requires significantly more advanced hardware for comparable results.
    - jlarocco 8y ago
      That's true, but web developers did it to themselves. It's not hard, or at least wasn't hard several years back, to find developers complaining that Flash was ruining the web and needed to go away. That the results aren't as good isn't surprising. Flash was specifically built (and optimized) for interactive graphic content like games. HTML was originally made to display text documents and it's been a long series of revisions and hacks to get where it is now.
- lxe 8y ago
  Right? I’m surprised there isn’t more of this sentiment here. Flash did 15 years ago on a hardware from 15 years ago exactly what the “web platform” does now with hardware that’s orders of magnitude more powerful in every aspect. It’s embarrassing that Flash was left to die for superficial reasons.
  - 8y ago
fenomas 8y ago
> we've abandoned Flash, but never gave up the idea I'd argue that's a very good thing. Obviously lots of people disliked the Flash player for various reasons, but the Flash authoring tool was terrific. Specifically, the features/metaphors it comprised are IMHO precisely the recipe for a powerful design tool: * Composable hierarchy of objects that can contain other objects * Each object has states (keyframes) and state transitions * Each object is an instance of a class, and editing the class affects all instances * Code can be attached to each object / state / state transition Presumably this formula didn't originate with Flash but it's where I first encountered it, and I think it probably ought to be the skeleton of any design tool for interactive content.
- Apocryphon 8y ago
  Sounds a lot like Flutter.
sdegutis 8y ago
Qt seems to have a very strong niche market share, but to this day I still can't tell exactly who is using out commercially outside of maybe a few bigger name Linux utilities.
- pjmlp 8y ago
  Embedded products like medical devices, car infotainment systems, factory robots control panels, research labs monitoring devices, CAD, 3D animation packages,.... The only contender to Qt in these companies is usually WPF.
- jcelerier 8y ago
  > but to this day I still can't tell exactly who is using out commercially outside of maybe a few bigger name Linux utilities. Microsoft OneDrive is made with Qt, the Blizzard launcher, the AMD drivers panel, authoring software like Guitar Pro, Maya, CryEngine, Allegorithmic software (one of the slickiest UIs in that field I think : https://www.allegorithmic.com/ https://www.allegorithmic.com/)... Blackberry also used Qt for their OS's shell and apps, as well as HP/LG WebOS.
- blattimwind 8y ago
  Almost every in-car entertainment system is built using Qt Quick.
- dan00 8y ago
  I would say that quite a lot scientific visualization applications are using Qt. Well, I'm working on one. ;)
simonh 8y ago
Fun fact. Qt is 5 years older than Flash.
- self_awareness 8y ago
  Qt itself yes, it's 5 years older than Flash. But Flash is 6 years older than Qt Quick. Qt Quick was introduced in Qt 4.7.
  - pjmlp 8y ago
    And rewritten in Qt 5.0.
pjmlp 8y ago
HNers think that they have abandoned Flash, howver many of those HTML 5 games and shinny ads are now done with Animate nee Flash.

emmanueloga_ 8y ago

Agreed! I always come to this conclusion as well. A product that I've been keeping an eye on is Subform [1]. Apart from Flash-esque design tools, it includes more or less "novel" ways of defining the layout of the app. I think the layout tools set this product apart form similar offers. One of the main developers has a talk about the philosophy behind the UI of this app [2]. The same team is working on an app to use state machines to define UI interactions, which is also super interesting [3]. 1: https://subformapp.com/ https://subformapp.com/ 2: https://www.deconstructconf.com/2017/kevin-lynagh-choosing-features https://www.deconstructconf.com/2017/kevin-lynagh-choosing-f... 3: https://sketch.systems/ https://sketch.systems/.

phenotype 8y ago
these are really nice looking tools.
mygo 8y ago
> A product that I've been keeping an eye on is Subform Dude, hate to be the bearer of bad news, but subform shut down, during beta. I also was keeping track of it and hoping it would launch. sketch.systems is created by the same people though, and sketch.systems is pretty much their pivot. not quite the same thing but it seems to be receiving a better response in the market.
- emmanueloga_ 8y ago
  Is that so! Such a pity, this product looked really promising! I just saw that they haven't updated the blog since March or so, but I wasn't sure since their forum is invite only. Did they announce this somewhere? Perhaps they are taking a break from subform to work on sketch.systems.
  - mygo 8y ago
    > I wasn't sure since their forum is invite only. Did they announce this somewhere? They announced it on their invite only forum. > Perhaps they are taking a break from subform to work on sketch.systems. That’s exactly what they’re doing, except for it being a break.

CharlesW 8y ago

Which idea are you thinking of? (Flash was very similar to tools that had been on the scene for many years before, like Director and it's predecessor VideoWorks.)

Keyframe 8y ago
What Director enabled on interactive CDs we got in mail and as freebies continued with Flash on the web and culminated with 'skip intro'. Idea of having motion graphics on the web. Sometimes in form of small elements, sometimes full everything. Something's gotta move though.
- beetwenty 8y ago
  I was just reviewing Hypercard's history yesterday and realized that it's really one of many tools from that period circa 1985-1995 where everyone was driving commercial dev tools towards the "RAD" paradigm and merging IDE, database, code editing, and forms editing into one Smalltalk-esque environment. Flash and Director date from this era, and other antecedents include Filemaker(still around today!) and MS Access, as well as more "code-centric" ideas like Visual Basic or Delphi. Flash survived longer than most just by developing into a Web-centric product, but for the most part, these products are old and there's room for a new generation of them. The thing that I think has held them back is that it requires a more holistic approach than is usually taken by open-source projects. It's easier to make a programming language that is dumped on top of the C/Unix environment and just accumulates power-user features over time.
  - scroot 8y ago
    Perhaps the computing experience should be precisely the more holistic one. Hypercard is exceptional for many reasons: new users can do a lot without writing code, but can easily "see" how it works by inspecting things (in a language that is readable even for non-programmers). You can copy and paste everything. It integrated well with the system upon which it was built. It let users do what they needed to, for their own ends, without making too many assumptions -- and it did this in a highly accessible way. That should be what personal computing is all about. I think the key lesson, really, is that you need intuitive metaphors to make such things work. The idea of cards and stacks are highly intuitive in this case. It's worth booting up Sheepshaver and giving the final version of Hypercard another look. The default home stack -- complete with interactive examples and documentation that you can straight up copy and paste -- is still a marvel of design in my view.

swerveonem 8y ago

Wysiwyg?

pasta 8y ago
No: keyframes

moolcool 8y ago

It becomes really apparent in web games. Some crude HTML5 game will need a relatively modern PC to run, while graphically superior flash game from 10-15 years ago ran fine on a 500mhz Celeron

jlarocco 8y ago
To play devil's advocate, the Flash games of 10 years ago needed a modern (at that time) PC to reproduce similar games written in C 20 years ago...
- alxlaz 8y ago
  To also play devil's advocate: Flash was a great authorship environment, certainly far easier to write games with, and with better results, than C could give you twenty years before. Developing JS/HTML5 games is far more painful and unpleasant than developing Flash games -- it's a worse developer experience that somehow requires significantly more advanced hardware for comparable results.
  - jlarocco 8y ago
    That's true, but web developers did it to themselves. It's not hard, or at least wasn't hard several years back, to find developers complaining that Flash was ruining the web and needed to go away. That the results aren't as good isn't surprising. Flash was specifically built (and optimized) for interactive graphic content like games. HTML was originally made to display text documents and it's been a long series of revisions and hacks to get where it is now.
lxe 8y ago
Right? I’m surprised there isn’t more of this sentiment here. Flash did 15 years ago on a hardware from 15 years ago exactly what the “web platform” does now with hardware that’s orders of magnitude more powerful in every aspect. It’s embarrassing that Flash was left to die for superficial reasons.
- 8y ago

fenomas 8y ago

> we've abandoned Flash, but never gave up the idea I'd argue that's a very good thing. Obviously lots of people disliked the Flash player for various reasons, but the Flash authoring tool was terrific. Specifically, the features/metaphors it comprised are IMHO precisely the recipe for a powerful design tool: * Composable hierarchy of objects that can contain other objects * Each object has states (keyframes) and state transitions * Each object is an instance of a class, and editing the class affects all instances * Code can be attached to each object / state / state transition Presumably this formula didn't originate with Flash but it's where I first encountered it, and I think it probably ought to be the skeleton of any design tool for interactive content.

Apocryphon 8y ago
Sounds a lot like Flutter.

sdegutis 8y ago

Qt seems to have a very strong niche market share, but to this day I still can't tell exactly who is using out commercially outside of maybe a few bigger name Linux utilities.

pjmlp 8y ago
Embedded products like medical devices, car infotainment systems, factory robots control panels, research labs monitoring devices, CAD, 3D animation packages,.... The only contender to Qt in these companies is usually WPF.
jcelerier 8y ago
> but to this day I still can't tell exactly who is using out commercially outside of maybe a few bigger name Linux utilities. Microsoft OneDrive is made with Qt, the Blizzard launcher, the AMD drivers panel, authoring software like Guitar Pro, Maya, CryEngine, Allegorithmic software (one of the slickiest UIs in that field I think : https://www.allegorithmic.com/ https://www.allegorithmic.com/)... Blackberry also used Qt for their OS's shell and apps, as well as HP/LG WebOS.
blattimwind 8y ago
Almost every in-car entertainment system is built using Qt Quick.
dan00 8y ago
I would say that quite a lot scientific visualization applications are using Qt. Well, I'm working on one. ;)

simonh 8y ago

Fun fact. Qt is 5 years older than Flash.

self_awareness 8y ago
Qt itself yes, it's 5 years older than Flash. But Flash is 6 years older than Qt Quick. Qt Quick was introduced in Qt 4.7.
- pjmlp 8y ago
  And rewritten in Qt 5.0.

pjmlp 8y ago

HNers think that they have abandoned Flash, howver many of those HTML 5 games and shinny ads are now done with Animate nee Flash.