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In terms of predictable layout and control, Flash is still lightyears beyond HTML+JS; and that's nothing short of a catastrophic failure on the part of browsers

In terms of predictable layout and control, Flash is still lightyears beyond HTML+JS; and that's nothing short of a catastrophic failure on the part of browsers. That said, Flash was/is an accessibility nightmare. It broke screen readers, and the animations and custom interfaces regularly created unnecessary cognitive load and confusion.

airza 7y ago
I don't think that it's particularly difficult to make extremely predictable layouts in HTML+JS if you have the same constraints as flash (particularly a fixed canvas size).
- dleslie 7y ago
  In Flash it could be done in minutes, with no prior experience, and only using a mouse.
  - VMG 7y ago
    ...and the closed, proprietary authoring tool
    - dleslie 7y ago
      That was widely available to huge numbers of designers who already had Adobe's Creative Suite, whether through work or school or from the high seas.
    - Google234 7y ago
      There's nothing wrong with using proprietary software. Sometimes it's good to support developers.
      - xtracto 7y ago
        This has been a very interesting change in Hacker News. Back in 2010 when I first learned about it, I was coming from Slashdot. And for me it was a (refreshing) surprise that people here were not anti-paid software, anti-business, etc. After all, it is a forum within a VC firm that looks to fund startups to make a profit. The discussion was more pragmatic. Somehow nowadays the group think has kind of changed into what Slashdot was 10 years ago. Which is funny, since the objective of YC has not changed.
        AsyncAwait 7y ago
        I like how both of you assume that just because someone wants free software they don't support developers. They may be donating, which is what I do, on the other hand I guarantee you that you're making use of several pieces of free software daily and yet your mindset seems to be, if it's not proprietary, or requiring payment, then it's not worth supporting. I mean I knew this mentality exists, (after all Bill Gates was rather influential), but it's not the OP who is not willing to support developers...
        VMG 7y ago
        > people here were not anti-paid software, anti-business, etc neither am I
      - braindeath 7y ago
        The software isn’t the issue. The lack of an open standard for content presentation is. This is not to claim that what we have isn’t less than ideal, but the fundamental problem with Flash is not the authoring tool itself, but that it effectively monopolized the space.
      - catalogia 7y ago
        Because Flash and it's tooling were proprietary, the format is now dead and the content created in this format is becoming inaccessible. For as rough as PDF tooling is, flash is even worse.
        dleslie 7y ago
        You know what's _really_ rough for open data standards? The information diaspora that is the modern web. We're in an archival and interoperability dark ages, despite that the presentation layer is "open".
      - acdha 7y ago
        The problem was that it was the only option and Adobe just wasn't committed to being a good software development shop so when you found a bug you were stuck living with it. I did a modest sized project a decade ago where we kept hitting this cycle: 1. Find a bug in the Flash IDE where something basic (e.g. the debugger) crashes or doesn't work in an obvious, easily tested manner. 2. Report it under the paid support plan (hey, that's what we're paying for, right?) with a straight-forward test case 3. A year later, get an email telling you that a new paid upgrade is out and could you pay another $800 to have the privilege of testing whether the problem is fixed?
      - VMG 7y ago
        I'm not saying there is anything wrong with it. I'm just pointing out that there is a significant hurdle that doesn't exist with HTML.
      - qtplatypus 7y ago
        On the other hand adobe ist sucks up money.
ryandrake 7y ago
I always thought one of the biggest plusses of the early web was that you didn’t have to hire a graphic artist and designers in order to publish. In fact best practice was just don’t worry about whether it’s pixel perfect.. just publish your data and organize it into headers and paragraphs. The browser will display it however the user wants it displayed. If that means turning your links orange, that’s fine. If it means displaying it as fixed width green text in a 40x25 terminal, that’s fine too. If the user wanted a textured brick wall background, fine, let them. If it would be read through a screen reader, great! Later, the designers showed up and started abusing <table> and <img> and body background, thinking the web was a word processor or Photoshop, and everything started going to hell. Now we have JavaScript and <canvas> and I as a user have pretty much lost all control over my browser. It’s just been handed over to the web site publisher, who tries to get rid of my scroll bars and worries whether some element is rendered 3 or 6 pixels wide on different browsers. In my view, we sacrificed a lot at the altar of “predictable layout”.
- dleslie 7y ago
  In the very early days, before Flash, making a website was a difficult proposition. HTML was an esoteric structural markup language, and much of the effort of early browsers was focused on "correcting" mistakes made by individuals attempting to build websites. <map> was the true monstrosity, <table> and <img> were improvements upon it, but were burdened by padding and margins added by early browsers that were difficult to modify and retain consistency. The situation hasn't really improved much; creating a website nowadays is a matter of dedicating yourself to a custom content platform, like Blogger/Squarespace/Wordpress, or learning the arcane language of HTML+CSS+JS. That's a far cry from the drag, drop, click, publish or share of Flash. Just how does an individual create a .EXE of their animation/game/document and send it via email, nowadays?
  - mattmcknight 7y ago
    Have you forgotten Dreamweaver and Front Page? You didn't need to write HTML directly.
    - 7y ago
tabtab 7y ago
Re: "In terms of predictable layout and control, Flash is still lightyears beyond HTML+JS...That said, Flash was/is an accessibility nightmare." The key question is if these are mutually exclusive goals or not. Can we take the simplicity of Flash's concepts and improve the accessibility, or will fixing accessibility inherently ruin the simplicity? It seems to me that accessibility meta data can be supplied to the client independent of layout info. If Paragraph A comes after Paragraph B, the meta data can indicate that regardless of where A and B show up on the screen. Ideally they don't contradict, but my point is that they can be independent. Conceptually think of two different markup tag sets. Set A is for visual positioning only, and Set B is for semantics (accessibility). The visual rendering engine would ignore tag Set B and an accessibility "reading machine" would ignore Set A. For practical/convenience reasons we may want to tie them together at times, but it's not a requirement for making both the visual screen "happy" and making ADA devices "happy" at the same time. They can be independent info.

airza 7y ago

I don't think that it's particularly difficult to make extremely predictable layouts in HTML+JS if you have the same constraints as flash (particularly a fixed canvas size).

dleslie 7y ago
In Flash it could be done in minutes, with no prior experience, and only using a mouse.
- VMG 7y ago
  ...and the closed, proprietary authoring tool
  - dleslie 7y ago
    That was widely available to huge numbers of designers who already had Adobe's Creative Suite, whether through work or school or from the high seas.
  - Google234 7y ago
    There's nothing wrong with using proprietary software. Sometimes it's good to support developers.
    - xtracto 7y ago
      This has been a very interesting change in Hacker News. Back in 2010 when I first learned about it, I was coming from Slashdot. And for me it was a (refreshing) surprise that people here were not anti-paid software, anti-business, etc. After all, it is a forum within a VC firm that looks to fund startups to make a profit. The discussion was more pragmatic. Somehow nowadays the group think has kind of changed into what Slashdot was 10 years ago. Which is funny, since the objective of YC has not changed.
      - AsyncAwait 7y ago
        I like how both of you assume that just because someone wants free software they don't support developers. They may be donating, which is what I do, on the other hand I guarantee you that you're making use of several pieces of free software daily and yet your mindset seems to be, if it's not proprietary, or requiring payment, then it's not worth supporting. I mean I knew this mentality exists, (after all Bill Gates was rather influential), but it's not the OP who is not willing to support developers...
      - VMG 7y ago
        > people here were not anti-paid software, anti-business, etc neither am I
    - braindeath 7y ago
      The software isn’t the issue. The lack of an open standard for content presentation is. This is not to claim that what we have isn’t less than ideal, but the fundamental problem with Flash is not the authoring tool itself, but that it effectively monopolized the space.
    - catalogia 7y ago
      Because Flash and it's tooling were proprietary, the format is now dead and the content created in this format is becoming inaccessible. For as rough as PDF tooling is, flash is even worse.
      - dleslie 7y ago
        You know what's _really_ rough for open data standards? The information diaspora that is the modern web. We're in an archival and interoperability dark ages, despite that the presentation layer is "open".
    - acdha 7y ago
      The problem was that it was the only option and Adobe just wasn't committed to being a good software development shop so when you found a bug you were stuck living with it. I did a modest sized project a decade ago where we kept hitting this cycle: 1. Find a bug in the Flash IDE where something basic (e.g. the debugger) crashes or doesn't work in an obvious, easily tested manner. 2. Report it under the paid support plan (hey, that's what we're paying for, right?) with a straight-forward test case 3. A year later, get an email telling you that a new paid upgrade is out and could you pay another $800 to have the privilege of testing whether the problem is fixed?
    - VMG 7y ago
      I'm not saying there is anything wrong with it. I'm just pointing out that there is a significant hurdle that doesn't exist with HTML.
    - qtplatypus 7y ago
      On the other hand adobe ist sucks up money.

ryandrake 7y ago

I always thought one of the biggest plusses of the early web was that you didn’t have to hire a graphic artist and designers in order to publish. In fact best practice was just don’t worry about whether it’s pixel perfect.. just publish your data and organize it into headers and paragraphs. The browser will display it however the user wants it displayed. If that means turning your links orange, that’s fine. If it means displaying it as fixed width green text in a 40x25 terminal, that’s fine too. If the user wanted a textured brick wall background, fine, let them. If it would be read through a screen reader, great! Later, the designers showed up and started abusing <table> and <img> and body background, thinking the web was a word processor or Photoshop, and everything started going to hell. Now we have JavaScript and <canvas> and I as a user have pretty much lost all control over my browser. It’s just been handed over to the web site publisher, who tries to get rid of my scroll bars and worries whether some element is rendered 3 or 6 pixels wide on different browsers. In my view, we sacrificed a lot at the altar of “predictable layout”.

dleslie 7y ago
In the very early days, before Flash, making a website was a difficult proposition. HTML was an esoteric structural markup language, and much of the effort of early browsers was focused on "correcting" mistakes made by individuals attempting to build websites. <map> was the true monstrosity, <table> and <img> were improvements upon it, but were burdened by padding and margins added by early browsers that were difficult to modify and retain consistency. The situation hasn't really improved much; creating a website nowadays is a matter of dedicating yourself to a custom content platform, like Blogger/Squarespace/Wordpress, or learning the arcane language of HTML+CSS+JS. That's a far cry from the drag, drop, click, publish or share of Flash. Just how does an individual create a .EXE of their animation/game/document and send it via email, nowadays?
- mattmcknight 7y ago
  Have you forgotten Dreamweaver and Front Page? You didn't need to write HTML directly.
  - 7y ago

tabtab 7y ago

Re: "In terms of predictable layout and control, Flash is still lightyears beyond HTML+JS...That said, Flash was/is an accessibility nightmare." The key question is if these are mutually exclusive goals or not. Can we take the simplicity of Flash's concepts and improve the accessibility, or will fixing accessibility inherently ruin the simplicity? It seems to me that accessibility meta data can be supplied to the client independent of layout info. If Paragraph A comes after Paragraph B, the meta data can indicate that regardless of where A and B show up on the screen. Ideally they don't contradict, but my point is that they can be independent. Conceptually think of two different markup tag sets. Set A is for visual positioning only, and Set B is for semantics (accessibility). The visual rendering engine would ignore tag Set B and an accessibility "reading machine" would ignore Set A. For practical/convenience reasons we may want to tie them together at times, but it's not a requirement for making both the visual screen "happy" and making ADA devices "happy" at the same time. They can be independent info.