28 ms·

Adobe to remove Flash Player from web site after December 2020

906 points by michaelhoffman 6y ago

space_ghost 6y ago
Installing Flash used to be one of the very first things I did when configuring a new system. Now? I can't even remember the last time I actually used it.
- deleted 6y ago
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- mark-r 6y ago
  Considering how often Flash was found to have a security bug, I've been actively avoiding it for years.
- merlyn 6y ago
  Because it is bundled in with most OSs now. You have it without even realizing it. ... For now ...
notRobot 6y ago
This has been a looooooong time coming. Very few websites still use flash. The only sad thing about it is that it'll become much harder to play thousands of old-school flash games.
- jimbob45 6y ago
  https://www.newgrounds.com/flash/player https://www.newgrounds.com/flash/player Newgrounds, at least, will never have its players lose the ability to play its old Flash games.
aclelland 6y ago
I'm still confused by the statement 'Flash-based content will be blocked from running in Adobe Flash Player after the EOL Date.' are they literally going to stop the flash player loading SWF files on the 1st of January?
- user5994461 6y ago
  Browsers will prevent from loading all flash content? They already block flash by default. The next step must be to remove the "run anyway" button and ignore the flash plugin.
Jonnax 6y ago
Is there a standalone player for old flash content? If people wanted to still view old things created in it.
- lemcoe9 6y ago
  You might take a look at Flashpoint: https://bluemaxima.org/flashpoint/ https://bluemaxima.org/flashpoint/
  - pzmarzly 6y ago
    As well as the underlying Flash Projector: https://www.adobe.com/support/flashplayer/debug_downloads.html https://www.adobe.com/support/flashplayer/debug_downloads.ht... https://bluemaxima.org/flashpoint/datahub/How_Flashpoint_Works https://bluemaxima.org/flashpoint/datahub/How_Flashpoint_Wor... https://bluemaxima.org/flashpoint/datahub/Extracting_Flash_Games https://bluemaxima.org/flashpoint/datahub/Extracting_Flash_G...
- RinTohsaka 6y ago
  https://bluemaxima.org/flashpoint/ https://bluemaxima.org/flashpoint/ Flashpoint is an archival project
- Wowfunhappy 6y ago
  Yes, Adobe makes Flash Projector: • Windows: https://fpdownload.macromedia.com/pub/flashplayer/updaters/32/flashplayer_32_sa.exe https://fpdownload.macromedia.com/pub/flashplayer/updaters/3... • Mac: https://fpdownload.macromedia.com/pub/flashplayer/updaters/32/flashplayer_32_sa.dmg https://fpdownload.macromedia.com/pub/flashplayer/updaters/3... • Linux: https://fpdownload.macromedia.com/pub/flashplayer/updaters/32/flash_player_sa_linux.x86_64.tar.gz https://fpdownload.macromedia.com/pub/flashplayer/updaters/3... You can just open the swf file you want and run it directly. It's great. Linux users might alternately want to use the community-packaged Flatpak: https://flathub.org/apps/details/com.adobe.Flash-Player-Projector https://flathub.org/apps/details/com.adobe.Flash-Player-Proj... All other links come from https://www.adobe.com/support/flashplayer/debug_downloads.html https://www.adobe.com/support/flashplayer/debug_downloads.ht... Kind of stupid that these will also presumably be removed from Adobe's official download page, since this is exactly how Flash content ought to be run going forwards: as individual legacy files you've downloaded and inspected. I would advise downloading and backing up a copy now.
deleted 6y ago
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Wowfunhappy 6y ago
I didn’t have Flash on my computer for several years, but I installed it last week. I'm planning to take the GRE, which is being given remotely due to Covid. A proctor watches you through your webcam, which I find this completely creepy, but what can I do? Anyway, this system apparently requires Flash.
- elromulous 6y ago
  This level of incompetence is exactly what I expect from the college board. They have no incentive to improve. They are a government funded "non profit" monopoly.
  - Wowfunhappy 6y ago
    Well, they're using some larger system called "ProctorU", so it's not just the college board.
- Majestic121 6y ago
  What is a GRE ?
  - gizmo686 6y ago
    A standard test for applying to grad schools.
    - andybak 6y ago
      What's a grad school? (not joking. Not a US citizen)
      - deleted 6y ago
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      - saghm 6y ago
        Somewhere you can get a masters (or doctorate) degree; "grad" here is short for "graduate", which is used to describe degrees one gets after receiving a bachelors (or "undergraduate" degree). Most major colleges in the US offer both graduate and undergraduate degrees, but the admissions process for a graduate degree is separate; once you get an undergraduate degree from an institution, you still need to apply to enroll in a graduate program there or elsewhere. It's not at all uncommon for people to attend grad school somewhere different than they went to undergrad, especially if they don't attend grad school immediately after undergrad (as some people work for several years before deciding to go back and get a masters degree).
ellisv 6y ago
Interestingly clicking on the link in Safari prompts a "Would you like to use Flash?" user dialog...
afrcnc 6y ago
This was announced in 2017. It's already removed from all browsers already.
- calebegg 6y ago
  Still works fine for me in Chrome 83.
  - FakeRemore 6y ago
    Apparently it's being removed in January 2021. https://www.chromium.org/flash-roadmap#TOC-Flash-Support-Removed-from-Chromium-Target:-Chrome-88---Jan-2021- https://www.chromium.org/flash-roadmap#TOC-Flash-Support-Rem...
  - afrcnc 6y ago
    Not by default, it doesn't
- edgarvaldes 6y ago
  The EOL was announced back then, with the same date of december 2020, as far as I recall.
- michaelhoffman 6y ago
  I knew Flash would not be supported further, but did not know that Adobe planned on totally removing even the old versions from their web site at that point. It seems like an unusual approach to the end of life for previously gratis software, even if there are special reasons for it in this case.
  - rkagerer 6y ago
    Not only that, it sounds like the latest version(s) might already have a timebomb in them to prevent playback of content after the sunset date, and they seem to be aggressively pressuring everyone to stop using it: >Q: Will Adobe make previous versions of Adobe Flash Player available for download after 2020? >A: No. Adobe will be removing Flash Player download pages from its site and Flash-based content will be blocked from running in Adobe Flash Player after the EOL Date. >Q: If I find Flash Player available for download on a third-party website, can I use it? >A: No, these versions of Flash Player are not authorized by Adobe. Customers should not use unauthorized versions of Flash Player.
firloop 6y ago
I wonder how much this will enable another wave of "Adobo Flash Player Browser Toolbar"-like adware since the official source will be removed.
htk 6y ago
I don't know if everyone here is familiar with this, but the decline of Flash began or was greatly influenced by Apple's decision to not let flash run on iPhones/iPads. Steve Jobs even wrote an open letter about it[1]. [1]https://www.apple.com/hotnews/thoughts-on-flash/ https://www.apple.com/hotnews/thoughts-on-flash/
- chc 6y ago
  Yep. At the time, it was kind of a controversial decision. Now it seems obvious.
  - ChrisSD 6y ago
    That Flash should be deprecated wasn't controversial (at least amongst tech savvy people). What was controversial was not supporting it at all, because doing so locked out a lot of the web of the time. Especially certain enterprise sites but also a lot of video sites or even ordering a taxi in some cases. That said, the iPhone was in a particularly unique position to push through a change like this and force websites to adapt. iPhones were becoming popular with upper management so a website that didn't work for them was actually considered an issue worth addressing. Nowadays Chrome would also have a good chance of forcing similar changes.
- uhhyeahdude 6y ago
  That is one of the more well-reasoned and thoroughly explained pieces of corporate communication I’ve read. I wonder if the “Jobs style” has been widely adopted in the corporate world; I feel like I see it more and more often these days.
- cxr 6y ago
  The other thing that was always notable about this letter is Jobs's own use of the term "PCs" to refer generically to a form factor (that would include Macs), and not the long-dead trademark for IBM's product line of home computers from the 1980s.
  - DannyB2 6y ago
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azinman2 6y ago
“Adobe will be removing Flash Player download pages from its site and Flash-based content will be blocked from running in Adobe Flash Player after the EOL Date.” This blocking seems really dumb to me. At least throw up a warning. It will cause old web content to be completely inaccessible, throwing away years of human creativity. Most likely there will be some legacy systems somewhere that will then use a hacked version of flash laden with malware because it’s the only thing available so some legacy system written by long gone people can be used.
- cryptoz 6y ago
  I think hacked versions of Flash are statistically more likely to be secure than the official version, though. Why do you think that the official Flash player would provide a secure environment going forward? It never has, and so without Adobe's active support, I imagine it would get even worse. Official Flash has always been a security nightmare.
  - Wowfunhappy 6y ago
    > I think hacked versions of Flash are statistically more likely to be secure than the official version, though. I would think exactly the opposite, primarily because you have no idea who put together that hacked copy. God knows there is already enough malware that pretends to be an update to Adobe Flash.
- TeddyDD 6y ago
  > It will cause old web content to be completely inaccessible, throwing away years of human creativity. Good. It's great lesson for content creators and consumers about relying on proprietary formats.
  - doublerabbit 6y ago
    > Good. It's great lesson for content creators and consumers about relying on proprietary formats. How old are you? There is nothing wrong using proprietary formats and at the time there were no other alternatives. Macromedia were the pioneers of internet animation. Even with HTML5 today there still isn't anything that allows me to produce a quick web animation with the likes of the Macromedia Flash. Adding that Flash would always produce the same result on any device that could support it. Mobile Phones, Symbian and even Palm tablets all supported it at one point. Proprietary isn't the issue here, it's the monopoly that Adobe is. Adobe could of more and happy propped this up but no; like all major buyouts, bleed the product out to die. If it wasn't for Macromedia, Adobe wouldn't be what it is today.
FillardMillmore 6y ago
What are we to do about all the useful tools, pages and games that were either written in or utilized Flash? I realize some of this stuff will be rewritten in HTML5, but what about the things that are not? How will we preserve all those classic flash games that we wasted our time playing in the early 2000s?
- shadowgovt 6y ago
  shrug Never build a towering edifice on a closed-source, closed-protocol, single-company-owned engine and infrastructure ever again, because there is no solution to this problem?
  - DannyB2 6y ago
    Absolutely. And that was a bit obvious in the late 80's. Somewhat obvious in the 90's. Very obvious in the early 2000's.
  - Wowfunhappy 6y ago
    You're right, we should all write software exclusively for Linux, and then only on RISC-V CPUs! :)
    - acdha 6y ago
      A better way of looking at this is from the perspective of where they make money: targeting Windows makes sense because it's core to Microsoft's business, their reputation is heavily linked to it via all of those enterprise contracts, and their revenue scales directly with the number of people using Windows. In contrast, Flash was an Adobe acquisition which they never had a clear vision for and the model of selling tools but giving away the runtime for free meant that your app being popular didn't make more money for them. Anything security-exposed like this needs substantial amounts of ongoing maintenance funding but from Adobe's perspective that was mostly overhead or something Google would subsidize for them.
    - RandomGuyDTB 6y ago
      This but unironically. I can get C code from the 70s to compile in GCC but I can't get Windows programs released twenty or so years ago to run in Win10. Open software will always be easier to support and always be more stable than proprietary software, because one invites a free community of maintainers and the other one tells them that they aren't welcome. In the short-term, writing for proprietary systems is fine, but if you want your application to be use-able after you die you should probably open-source your stuff and make it compatible with free platforms.
cosmotic 6y ago
If it's of such low value that it's being discontinued and all the browser vendors are blocking it; why not open source?
- dharmab 6y ago
  Flash evolved into Adobe Animate, which is used today for many television shows: https://www.adobe.com/products/animate.html https://www.adobe.com/products/animate.html https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Flash_animated_television_series https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Flash_animated_televis... Disclaimer: I work for Adobe, but not on Animate.
  - Dylan16807 6y ago
    I doubt open sourcing the player would hurt that revenue stream.
    - deleted 6y ago
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- deleted 6y ago
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- DannyB2 6y ago
  Good question. Why not open source? All it takes is someone (or group) interested enough to expend the resources necessary to re-implement it. But browsers are not going to support binary extensions. So an implementation might be in WebAssembly / JavaScript -- but then Flash becomes just a translation or transpile layer onto existing web technology. If nobody implements an open source Flash, that is the proof that it is not sufficiently interesting to anyone with resources to build it.
- macspoofing 6y ago
  I suspect the Flash runtime has a bunch of patent-encumbered, licensed software and codecs and the effort to secure those licenses for open-source release is too much effort/money.
srathi 6y ago
Someone please give this memo to Citibank which still uses Flash for their virtual credit card number feature! [1] [1] https://www.cardbenefits.citi.com/Products/Virtual-Account-Numbers https://www.cardbenefits.citi.com/Products/Virtual-Account-N...
- morganvachon 6y ago
  Not to mention Trustwave, which requires a Flash plugin to load their PCI compliance interface. The irony is deafening.
  - guerrilla 6y ago
    That made me laugh out loud, but it's somewhat on part with that circus.
- mehrdadn 6y ago
  I dunno, maybe it's better if no one does. I expect they'd just remove the feature instead of rewriting it.
  - e40 6y ago
    They'll lose me as a customer if they do. I suspect there are lots of other people in the same boat.
    - mehrdadn 6y ago
      Yeah, I'm not sure they'll care. Bank of America did exactly this. :\ Maybe Citi will feel differently but I wouldn't keep my hopes up.
    - jdofaz 6y ago
      CapitalOne also offers virtual numbers but only from a browser extension called Eno
      - 6y ago
tekstar 6y ago
Don't worry, there will still be thousands of sites hosting flash player update exes just waiting for you to download
vangelis 6y ago
The internet would be a lot duller without some of the creativity Flash animations allowed, imagine a world without Cirno's Perfect Math Class. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V_bQNPG2OyE& https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V_bQNPG2OyE&
egberts1 6y ago
I think I can speak for millions of security-minded folks: Well, it’s about time.
j-james 6y ago
Newgrounds has done a lot of work on preserving old Flash content. Some standouts are their own Flash player and an SWF to MP4 converter, but what I find most interesting is Ruffle. Ruffle is a Flash emulator written in Rust that can be used as a browser extension, a desktop client, or a website polyfill. It's still a work in progress, but eventually websites with heavy use of Flash content (like many late-2000s webcomics, or even Newgrounds itself) could use the polyfill to replace Flash content with WASM blobs. The roadmap was updated recently, and provides a good overview of Ruffle's current capabilities. There's also a demo instance that can run arbitary SWFs, with a few examples available. https://www.newgrounds.com/flash/player https://www.newgrounds.com/flash/player https://github.com/Herschel/Swivel https://github.com/Herschel/Swivel https://github.com/ruffle-rs/ruffle https://github.com/ruffle-rs/ruffle Roadmap: https://github.com/ruffle-rs/ruffle/wiki/Roadmap https://github.com/ruffle-rs/ruffle/wiki/Roadmap Demo: http://ruffle-rs.s3-website-us-west-1.amazonaws.com/builds/web-demo/index.html?file=synj1.swf http://ruffle-rs.s3-website-us-west-1.amazonaws.com/builds/w...
- triangleman 6y ago
  This guy is trying to emulate x86 in the browser and run the actual Flash player within that: https://medium.com/leaningtech/running-flash-in-webassembly-using-cheerpx-an-update-d500b6fbc44e https://medium.com/leaningtech/running-flash-in-webassembly-...
  - apignotti 6y ago
    Here is 'this guy' :-). Feel free to drop any question on Twitter. https://twitter.com/alexpignotti https://twitter.com/alexpignotti
    - nextaccountic 6y ago
      Hello! Big props for doing that! Is any of this open source?
      - fouc 6y ago
hartator 6y ago
We still don’t have an easy way to make Flash-like games that work in the browser across platform. Shame on Adobe for killing all Macromedia products. Fireworks, Macromedia, and Flash.
- dpcan 6y ago
  I still use Fireworks every day. It's the best graphic design tool ever created in my opinion. Everything else has become so complicated. With my Adobe Cloud subscription they still let me download it thankfully, but I'm a little worried that in 5 years, when I upgrade my PC, I'll never be able to install it again.
qwertox 6y ago
I don't get it why my Windows 10 installation is still downloading updates for Flash Player. I deselected it in some setting which was to be found somewhere (Windows 10 settings are a horrible maze), but for some reason it still thinks it needs to protect me from this deactivated piece of malware.
pull_my_finger 6y ago
Good thing Haxe[1] and OpenFl[2] are around and doing well. [1] - https://haxe.org/ https://haxe.org/ [2] - https://www.openfl.org/ https://www.openfl.org/
ryanmarsh 6y ago
Don’t let the door hit you in the ass on the way out
pengaru 6y ago
Kongregate's John Cooney did a flash games postmortem @ GDC which seems appropriate here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=65crLKNQR0E https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=65crLKNQR0E
jason0597 6y ago
Why can't Adobe open source flash? It would be a massive help to people trying to create alternative implementations of flash to keep legacy websites working
- throw_m239339 6y ago
  The compiler to generate SWF files is open source I believe. Not the player. I imagine it's burdened with licensed software and patents of all kind. Or they just don't want to do anything with it anymore, which is equally valid.
- macintux 6y ago
  It was terribly insecure throughout its life. I can only imagine how many more security vulnerabilities would be exposed once it goes open source.
  - jason0597 6y ago
    Does it really matter now? Pretty sure only nostalgic web users use flash to view old games, clips and such
    - macintux 6y ago
      Apparently bank logins, online exams...
- yokto 6y ago
  There's a fairly popular open source letter to petition to open source flash: https://github.com/open-source-flash/open-source-flash https://github.com/open-source-flash/open-source-flash But it doesn't look like it made Adobe change it's mind...
throw_m239339 6y ago
Flash became popular because of 2 things: 1/ Its IDE which made creating creative and interactive content mixing video/vector graphics sounds and code easier 2/ it's API that provided things that were not possible when browsers had none of these API (video streaming, socket programming...). At some point you could even write 2D shaders or inject C/C++ code with something called Alchemy. Point 2 is now largely covered by browser web API, although one might argue that the performances might not be always as good as they were in flash, especially when it comes to vector graphics or realtime audio processing. But 3D and webgl are more performant than flash in the browser. Point 1: well there isn't really an equivalent, and even Adobe Animate isn't really doing exactly what flash did when it comes to authoring content for browsers. So there is still a potential market here. I'd like to see something node based when it comes to coding. Artists love their nodes. The real problem is obviously running old flash content like games. Some of these games were really good. I remember playing one which was a hotel management simulator and it was really really fun. But it's a bit like a these jar games in the 2000' one cannot run on modern mobile phones anymore. Without an effort to preserve these, they will all be lost.
- pier25 6y ago
  > Point 1: well there isn't really an equivalent The other day I was researching how to add simple procedural animations to some web-based interactive content for a museum. This would have been a breeze with Flash. You just passed the .fla to the animator/illustrator and they would create the item in the library for you. Then you could simply animate that display object in your code and the artist would be able to modify it without breaking anything. I came up with this solution using DragonBones[1] so that the artists could work on their own. And then I could render those animations with Pixi[3]. I agree an all-in-one solution would be much nicer but not sure there is a market for it. [1] http://dragonbones.com/en/index.html http://dragonbones.com/en/index.html [2] https://pixijs.io/examples/#/plugin-dragonbones/eyetracking.js https://pixijs.io/examples/#/plugin-dragonbones/eyetracking....
  - MayeulC 6y ago
    Wouldn't something like this work in a game engine that can export to Webassembly, like Godot? Though in either case, you lose the web platform, with its accessibility (aria, screen readers) and forward compatibility (like the one we had with the move to smartphones, etc).
pmlnr 6y ago
Happy Tree Friends, Weebls' Stuff, z0r.de - the internet would be - will be! - different without Flash.
sitzkrieg 6y ago
my biggest hope is that government entities stop making training content in flash. the freaking DISA cybersecurity training is in flash for crying out loud
matlo 6y ago
RIP
omnibrain 6y ago
I have http://www.vatican.va/various/cappelle/sistina_vr/index.html http://www.vatican.va/various/cappelle/sistina_vr/index.html in my bookmarks. A really beautiful depiction of the Sixtine Chapel. But I have no Idea how to load it on a modern OS. I have also no idea if the vatican has plans to update ist for more modern technologies. There are even more http://www.vatican.va/various/basiliche/index_en.html http://www.vatican.va/various/basiliche/index_en.html if you dig around a little, but I have no clue how to preserve them...
cairoshikobon 6y ago
Does this mean we won't be able to access zombo.com anymore ? Truly an end of an era :(
- cpeterso 6y ago
  Welcome to HTML5 Zombo Com! The only limit is yourself. https://html5zombo.com/ https://html5zombo.com/
tomklein 6y ago
I’ve got flashbacks to the time when I started creating my first website at a young age in the 2000s. Flash was this unreachable height for me and I just started testing HTML and how the internet even works. Now I’m a full time software engineer and happy on how far the web has gone until today :)
pier25 6y ago
Adobe announced it in 2017. That's how it's done, Apple.
micheljansen 6y ago
Flash was a dumpster fire of performance and security issues and being a closed platform in direct competition with the web we have today, I won’t shed a tear over this. What will be sorely missed though, are the brilliant authoring tools that Flash came with. For a very short time in history there was one tool that allowed designers and developers to truly collaborate on rich interactive experiences. It was amazing what that unlocked.
bbayer 6y ago
Flash Player itself has a lot of security vulnerabilities but Adobe Flash as IDE still has no competitor even today IMHO. There is no such tool that combines code and graphics with ease like Adobe Flash. You can use it as an animator, you can use it as graphic designer, you can use it as developer. All these features just came together perfectly and it made sense. I am still missing this usability.
saos 6y ago
Good news
haolez 6y ago
Genuine question: if Flash weren't a security nightmare, would it be a better environment for producing games and dynamic content than what we have today? I've never done anything in Flash.
- andai 6y ago
  Add-on question: what do we have today? Has anything filled this void?
  - stjo 6y ago
    HTML5, the canvas API and all the new browser APIs right after it.
    - haolez 6y ago
      But we are probably missing the IDE/animation editor, which were one of the biggest selling points.
      - andai 6y ago
        Exactly, I was asking about authoring tools.
  - asdf9240 6y ago
    How about Godot?
thePunisher 6y ago
Flash Player is possibly the worst piece of software ever written, with literally HUNDREDS of vulnerabilities discovered so far. If I tried I most likely couldn't produce that many vulnerabilities in software. Anyway, if Adobe had rewritten Flash in Rust it could've lived on for years and years. Instead they were completely clueless on how to fix it.
qwerty456127 6y ago
I feel like I'm going to make a a VirtualBox image dedicated purely for Flash viewing.
anessaiver 6y ago
Looks like we only have a short time left to sit the younger generation down and force them to sit through all of Strong Bad's emails.
Wowfunhappy 6y ago
So, while it's still easily available, are there any particular flash games or content I should check out?
aasasd 6y ago
I hoped to live to the day when Flash is dead, so at least something good has happened in my life (a few years ago already). Now, looking forward to PDF being abandoned for scientific publication and ‘white papers’.
ChrisMarshallNY 6y ago
One of my fave Flash animations was a Stick Figure Animation, called "Time to Die." I don't know if it can still be found anywhere, but it was a riot (and rather bloody). You would pick which weapon they would "test," and one of the choices would result in a Snake Pliskin-type of character getting loose, and slaughtering everyone.
davidgerard 6y ago
So, there have been a pile of open source Flash emulation efforts - gnash, Shumway ... They all seem to get half way then flounder. What's up with that?
dsthode 6y ago
I won't say it's not about time, but the decision to block the execution of flash content after said date and the removal of the downloads, complicates matters for system administrators. We have a legacy blade enclosure at the office that needs an old version of flash for configuration, and also our vSphere web interface is flash based.
ohsik 6y ago
It's time to go lol
tosh 6y ago
Steve Jobs on Flash 10 years ago: https://www.apple.com/hotnews/thoughts-on-flash/ https://www.apple.com/hotnews/thoughts-on-flash/
userbinator 6y ago
In other words, they are implicitly telling us that we should archive their entire site... although I suspect the IA has already done so. The only thing really bad about Flash was the security, but otherwise it is an extremely efficient vector/animation format that AFAIK none of the "open standards" have managed to come close to. Seeing Flash disappear, only to be replaced by SVG (yuck!), JavaScript, HTML, and CSS, was extremely disturbing. (I have written a SWF to PDF converter. Parsing the format itself is quite straightforward, I could've probably written most of a player if I went further and added the interactive stuff too.)
- snazz 6y ago
  Security, the fact that it was a closed standard, touchscreen support, battery life... most of the issues brought up by Steve Jobs are still valid: https://www.apple.com/hotnews/thoughts-on-flash/ https://www.apple.com/hotnews/thoughts-on-flash/
  - userbinator 6y ago
    the fact that it was a closed standard The standard has been freely available for over a decade now. touchscreen support That's an implementation issue. battery life Also an implementation issue. Jobs was talking only about video, but I bet the "instruction path length" from reading a file to rendering a vector graphic is probably an order of magnitude if not more for a browser reading an SVG than Flash reading a SWF. Those who have played Flash games will likely remember its very acceptable performance on a sub-GHz processor with 128MB of RAM or less. I don't think the HTML5 equivalent in a modern browser would even work on such a system. That said, it was much better when it was Macromedia Flash, i.e. after Adobe bought it they bloated it greatly (which is where most of the security problems came from.)
bgorman 6y ago
It would be nice if Adobe could release some of Flash player as open source, or at least help document the format to help preserve the content that made Adobe so much money in the past.
glaberficken 6y ago
Just to share this archival project: https://bluemaxima.org/flashpoint/ https://bluemaxima.org/flashpoint/ Basically it's a massive bundle of flash (and other plugins) together with a curated list of games and animations. It spawns a local web server to trick the games into "thinking" they are still being run on their original servers (this doesn't work for games that required a multiplayer server obviously, it's only to workaround the common portal exclusivity rights that were common in the golden era of Flash games). It's really a labor of love and an incredible window into a slice of web history from the early 2000's
taf2 6y ago
I remember around 2007 a tower defense came - desktop tower defense by hand drawn games... I guess that flash version is long gone but did find it nice wish someone would build an html5 version
terrycody 6y ago
Gosh, I always think the websites in the FLASH era is the most versatile and really have no limitations, just see today's websites, all plain, simple, and boring as hell. Yeah I can understand the vulnerabilities and slowdown of Flash, but it really shines at that golden age! R.I.P
- machiaweliczny 6y ago
  It was so simple to create 2D games. Is there some comparable engine/tool nowadays?
  - terrycody 6y ago
    I am not an expert in the gaming field, but you can check Godot engine for 2D games, people say it is a really amazing tool. Of course you can choose Unity, but many people now prefer Godot for 2D games. I mean, the Flash maybe not the best option for creating a game, but for Flash website era, I think those weird, funny, and highly interactive websites are really shining at the age, I miss that time!
cwojno 6y ago
Wait... this didn't happen like 5 years ago?
alexashka 6y ago
End of an era. I grew up learning how to use Flash and did little animations and even some websites in it. It was a lovely platform for non-programmer types.
1MachineElf 6y ago
The little HN reader in me thinks this is great news, but the other part of me is worried because %DAYJOB% is providing support for a product that depends majorly on Adobe Flash (and IE11).
bookmarkable 6y ago
I miss Flash. It was fun. The web was fun. We got paid to make stuff move around and come up with crazy image masking animations and just experiment. The product had to go, but sadly, it would have no place in today’s much more serious web anyway. Long live Macromedia and (F)uture Sp(lash) Animator.
kumarvvr 6y ago
Flash is a good candidate for webassembly as target. Add updated controls for touch, discourage usage of hover, and compile the flash player to web assembly, targeting animations, ads, etc. Then provide a paid cdn for deliveeing content. I remember using flash a long time ago, and what i loved most is the way you could do complex animations with such little effort.
- voldacar 6y ago
  If Adobe could re-release the flash IDE but make it target webassembly, it would probably be a hit if they marketed it right. I don't think there's anything since that has surpassed the flash development experience
askjdlkasdjsd 6y ago
Welcome news! This guy is trying to emulate x86 in the browser and run the actual Flash player within that: https://medium.com/leaningtech/running-flash-in-webassembly-using-cheerpx-an-update-d500b6fbc44e https://medium.com/leaningtech/running-flash-in-webassembly-...
zelly 6y ago
Probably because no one uses it since most of the world is on Chrome. If G is maintaining the Pepper flash player for free, why would Adobe need to bother.
senthilnayagam 6y ago
why did Adobe not open source core flash technology?
dandare 6y ago
I just came here to say the Flash IDE was the best vector graphics editor I knew and I have not find a replacement. The way the color of two objects was used to determine the boolean operation between them was brilliant. You could add a bezier point by dragging a selection through a surface, you could remove a bezier point by narrowing the surface. The aligning gizmo always worked the way you needed it to work.
WhyNotHugo 6y ago
TIL Flash still exists on other platforms. Flash was dropped around 10 years ago for Linux, and never existed on iOS. I'd no idea it was still a thing on other platforms. I do feel bad in that we've lost the ability to run lots of games, but most of them were to trivial to download/redistribute anyway, regrettably. Their fate was kinda already sealed.
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asmosoinio 6y ago
Discussion from 2017 when Adobe released the end-of-life information: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14848786 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14848786 - “We will stop updating and distributing the Flash Player at the end of 2020”
prvc 6y ago
Yet, somehow, Flash Player updates are now being distributed through Windows Update (to systems where Flash was never purposefully installed).
jdofaz 6y ago
I never played any flash games and I never really understood the difference between the flash and shockwave plugins for games, but , I always installed flash because it was a wonderful video player. Before flash video was common most things were quicktime and the quicktime plugin was SLOW. The other nice thing about flash is unlike quicktime there was a linux version. Sure, flash is obsolete and unloved now, but it really was better than what came before it.
dang 6y ago
All: Note that this thread has lots more comments than appear on this page. Click 'More' at the bottom to see the rest.

Installing Flash used to be one of the very first things I did when configuring a new system. Now? I can't even remember the last time I actually used it.

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mark-r 6y ago
Considering how often Flash was found to have a security bug, I've been actively avoiding it for years.
merlyn 6y ago
Because it is bundled in with most OSs now. You have it without even realizing it. ... For now ...

notRobot 6y ago

This has been a looooooong time coming. Very few websites still use flash. The only sad thing about it is that it'll become much harder to play thousands of old-school flash games.

jimbob45 6y ago
https://www.newgrounds.com/flash/player https://www.newgrounds.com/flash/player Newgrounds, at least, will never have its players lose the ability to play its old Flash games.

aclelland 6y ago

I'm still confused by the statement 'Flash-based content will be blocked from running in Adobe Flash Player after the EOL Date.' are they literally going to stop the flash player loading SWF files on the 1st of January?

user5994461 6y ago
Browsers will prevent from loading all flash content? They already block flash by default. The next step must be to remove the "run anyway" button and ignore the flash plugin.

Jonnax 6y ago

Is there a standalone player for old flash content? If people wanted to still view old things created in it.

lemcoe9 6y ago
You might take a look at Flashpoint: https://bluemaxima.org/flashpoint/ https://bluemaxima.org/flashpoint/
- pzmarzly 6y ago
  As well as the underlying Flash Projector: https://www.adobe.com/support/flashplayer/debug_downloads.html https://www.adobe.com/support/flashplayer/debug_downloads.ht... https://bluemaxima.org/flashpoint/datahub/How_Flashpoint_Works https://bluemaxima.org/flashpoint/datahub/How_Flashpoint_Wor... https://bluemaxima.org/flashpoint/datahub/Extracting_Flash_Games https://bluemaxima.org/flashpoint/datahub/Extracting_Flash_G...
RinTohsaka 6y ago
https://bluemaxima.org/flashpoint/ https://bluemaxima.org/flashpoint/ Flashpoint is an archival project
Wowfunhappy 6y ago
Yes, Adobe makes Flash Projector: • Windows: https://fpdownload.macromedia.com/pub/flashplayer/updaters/32/flashplayer_32_sa.exe https://fpdownload.macromedia.com/pub/flashplayer/updaters/3... • Mac: https://fpdownload.macromedia.com/pub/flashplayer/updaters/32/flashplayer_32_sa.dmg https://fpdownload.macromedia.com/pub/flashplayer/updaters/3... • Linux: https://fpdownload.macromedia.com/pub/flashplayer/updaters/32/flash_player_sa_linux.x86_64.tar.gz https://fpdownload.macromedia.com/pub/flashplayer/updaters/3... You can just open the swf file you want and run it directly. It's great. Linux users might alternately want to use the community-packaged Flatpak: https://flathub.org/apps/details/com.adobe.Flash-Player-Projector https://flathub.org/apps/details/com.adobe.Flash-Player-Proj... All other links come from https://www.adobe.com/support/flashplayer/debug_downloads.html https://www.adobe.com/support/flashplayer/debug_downloads.ht... Kind of stupid that these will also presumably be removed from Adobe's official download page, since this is exactly how Flash content ought to be run going forwards: as individual legacy files you've downloaded and inspected. I would advise downloading and backing up a copy now.

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Wowfunhappy 6y ago

I didn’t have Flash on my computer for several years, but I installed it last week. I'm planning to take the GRE, which is being given remotely due to Covid. A proctor watches you through your webcam, which I find this completely creepy, but what can I do? Anyway, this system apparently requires Flash.

elromulous 6y ago
This level of incompetence is exactly what I expect from the college board. They have no incentive to improve. They are a government funded "non profit" monopoly.
- Wowfunhappy 6y ago
  Well, they're using some larger system called "ProctorU", so it's not just the college board.
Majestic121 6y ago
What is a GRE ?
- gizmo686 6y ago
  A standard test for applying to grad schools.
  - andybak 6y ago
    What's a grad school? (not joking. Not a US citizen)
    - deleted 6y ago
      [deleted]
    - saghm 6y ago
      Somewhere you can get a masters (or doctorate) degree; "grad" here is short for "graduate", which is used to describe degrees one gets after receiving a bachelors (or "undergraduate" degree). Most major colleges in the US offer both graduate and undergraduate degrees, but the admissions process for a graduate degree is separate; once you get an undergraduate degree from an institution, you still need to apply to enroll in a graduate program there or elsewhere. It's not at all uncommon for people to attend grad school somewhere different than they went to undergrad, especially if they don't attend grad school immediately after undergrad (as some people work for several years before deciding to go back and get a masters degree).

ellisv 6y ago

Interestingly clicking on the link in Safari prompts a "Would you like to use Flash?" user dialog...

afrcnc 6y ago

This was announced in 2017. It's already removed from all browsers already.

calebegg 6y ago
Still works fine for me in Chrome 83.
- FakeRemore 6y ago
  Apparently it's being removed in January 2021. https://www.chromium.org/flash-roadmap#TOC-Flash-Support-Removed-from-Chromium-Target:-Chrome-88---Jan-2021- https://www.chromium.org/flash-roadmap#TOC-Flash-Support-Rem...
- afrcnc 6y ago
  Not by default, it doesn't
edgarvaldes 6y ago
The EOL was announced back then, with the same date of december 2020, as far as I recall.
michaelhoffman 6y ago
I knew Flash would not be supported further, but did not know that Adobe planned on totally removing even the old versions from their web site at that point. It seems like an unusual approach to the end of life for previously gratis software, even if there are special reasons for it in this case.
- rkagerer 6y ago
  Not only that, it sounds like the latest version(s) might already have a timebomb in them to prevent playback of content after the sunset date, and they seem to be aggressively pressuring everyone to stop using it: >Q: Will Adobe make previous versions of Adobe Flash Player available for download after 2020? >A: No. Adobe will be removing Flash Player download pages from its site and Flash-based content will be blocked from running in Adobe Flash Player after the EOL Date. >Q: If I find Flash Player available for download on a third-party website, can I use it? >A: No, these versions of Flash Player are not authorized by Adobe. Customers should not use unauthorized versions of Flash Player.

firloop 6y ago

I wonder how much this will enable another wave of "Adobo Flash Player Browser Toolbar"-like adware since the official source will be removed.

htk 6y ago

I don't know if everyone here is familiar with this, but the decline of Flash began or was greatly influenced by Apple's decision to not let flash run on iPhones/iPads. Steve Jobs even wrote an open letter about it[1]. [1]https://www.apple.com/hotnews/thoughts-on-flash/ https://www.apple.com/hotnews/thoughts-on-flash/

chc 6y ago
Yep. At the time, it was kind of a controversial decision. Now it seems obvious.
- ChrisSD 6y ago
  That Flash should be deprecated wasn't controversial (at least amongst tech savvy people). What was controversial was not supporting it at all, because doing so locked out a lot of the web of the time. Especially certain enterprise sites but also a lot of video sites or even ordering a taxi in some cases. That said, the iPhone was in a particularly unique position to push through a change like this and force websites to adapt. iPhones were becoming popular with upper management so a website that didn't work for them was actually considered an issue worth addressing. Nowadays Chrome would also have a good chance of forcing similar changes.
uhhyeahdude 6y ago
That is one of the more well-reasoned and thoroughly explained pieces of corporate communication I’ve read. I wonder if the “Jobs style” has been widely adopted in the corporate world; I feel like I see it more and more often these days.
cxr 6y ago
The other thing that was always notable about this letter is Jobs's own use of the term "PCs" to refer generically to a form factor (that would include Macs), and not the long-dead trademark for IBM's product line of home computers from the 1980s.
- DannyB2 6y ago

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azinman2 6y ago

“Adobe will be removing Flash Player download pages from its site and Flash-based content will be blocked from running in Adobe Flash Player after the EOL Date.” This blocking seems really dumb to me. At least throw up a warning. It will cause old web content to be completely inaccessible, throwing away years of human creativity. Most likely there will be some legacy systems somewhere that will then use a hacked version of flash laden with malware because it’s the only thing available so some legacy system written by long gone people can be used.

cryptoz 6y ago
I think hacked versions of Flash are statistically more likely to be secure than the official version, though. Why do you think that the official Flash player would provide a secure environment going forward? It never has, and so without Adobe's active support, I imagine it would get even worse. Official Flash has always been a security nightmare.
- Wowfunhappy 6y ago
  > I think hacked versions of Flash are statistically more likely to be secure than the official version, though. I would think exactly the opposite, primarily because you have no idea who put together that hacked copy. God knows there is already enough malware that pretends to be an update to Adobe Flash.
TeddyDD 6y ago
> It will cause old web content to be completely inaccessible, throwing away years of human creativity. Good. It's great lesson for content creators and consumers about relying on proprietary formats.
- doublerabbit 6y ago
  > Good. It's great lesson for content creators and consumers about relying on proprietary formats. How old are you? There is nothing wrong using proprietary formats and at the time there were no other alternatives. Macromedia were the pioneers of internet animation. Even with HTML5 today there still isn't anything that allows me to produce a quick web animation with the likes of the Macromedia Flash. Adding that Flash would always produce the same result on any device that could support it. Mobile Phones, Symbian and even Palm tablets all supported it at one point. Proprietary isn't the issue here, it's the monopoly that Adobe is. Adobe could of more and happy propped this up but no; like all major buyouts, bleed the product out to die. If it wasn't for Macromedia, Adobe wouldn't be what it is today.

FillardMillmore 6y ago

What are we to do about all the useful tools, pages and games that were either written in or utilized Flash? I realize some of this stuff will be rewritten in HTML5, but what about the things that are not? How will we preserve all those classic flash games that we wasted our time playing in the early 2000s?

shadowgovt 6y ago
shrug Never build a towering edifice on a closed-source, closed-protocol, single-company-owned engine and infrastructure ever again, because there is no solution to this problem?
- DannyB2 6y ago
  Absolutely. And that was a bit obvious in the late 80's. Somewhat obvious in the 90's. Very obvious in the early 2000's.
- Wowfunhappy 6y ago
  You're right, we should all write software exclusively for Linux, and then only on RISC-V CPUs! :)
  - acdha 6y ago
    A better way of looking at this is from the perspective of where they make money: targeting Windows makes sense because it's core to Microsoft's business, their reputation is heavily linked to it via all of those enterprise contracts, and their revenue scales directly with the number of people using Windows. In contrast, Flash was an Adobe acquisition which they never had a clear vision for and the model of selling tools but giving away the runtime for free meant that your app being popular didn't make more money for them. Anything security-exposed like this needs substantial amounts of ongoing maintenance funding but from Adobe's perspective that was mostly overhead or something Google would subsidize for them.
  - RandomGuyDTB 6y ago
    This but unironically. I can get C code from the 70s to compile in GCC but I can't get Windows programs released twenty or so years ago to run in Win10. Open software will always be easier to support and always be more stable than proprietary software, because one invites a free community of maintainers and the other one tells them that they aren't welcome. In the short-term, writing for proprietary systems is fine, but if you want your application to be use-able after you die you should probably open-source your stuff and make it compatible with free platforms.

cosmotic 6y ago

If it's of such low value that it's being discontinued and all the browser vendors are blocking it; why not open source?

dharmab 6y ago
Flash evolved into Adobe Animate, which is used today for many television shows: https://www.adobe.com/products/animate.html https://www.adobe.com/products/animate.html https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Flash_animated_television_series https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Flash_animated_televis... Disclaimer: I work for Adobe, but not on Animate.
- Dylan16807 6y ago
  I doubt open sourcing the player would hurt that revenue stream.
  - deleted 6y ago
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DannyB2 6y ago
Good question. Why not open source? All it takes is someone (or group) interested enough to expend the resources necessary to re-implement it. But browsers are not going to support binary extensions. So an implementation might be in WebAssembly / JavaScript -- but then Flash becomes just a translation or transpile layer onto existing web technology. If nobody implements an open source Flash, that is the proof that it is not sufficiently interesting to anyone with resources to build it.
macspoofing 6y ago
I suspect the Flash runtime has a bunch of patent-encumbered, licensed software and codecs and the effort to secure those licenses for open-source release is too much effort/money.

srathi 6y ago

Someone please give this memo to Citibank which still uses Flash for their virtual credit card number feature! [1] [1] https://www.cardbenefits.citi.com/Products/Virtual-Account-Numbers https://www.cardbenefits.citi.com/Products/Virtual-Account-N...

morganvachon 6y ago
Not to mention Trustwave, which requires a Flash plugin to load their PCI compliance interface. The irony is deafening.
- guerrilla 6y ago
  That made me laugh out loud, but it's somewhat on part with that circus.
mehrdadn 6y ago
I dunno, maybe it's better if no one does. I expect they'd just remove the feature instead of rewriting it.
- e40 6y ago
  They'll lose me as a customer if they do. I suspect there are lots of other people in the same boat.
  - mehrdadn 6y ago
    Yeah, I'm not sure they'll care. Bank of America did exactly this. :\ Maybe Citi will feel differently but I wouldn't keep my hopes up.
  - jdofaz 6y ago
    CapitalOne also offers virtual numbers but only from a browser extension called Eno
    - 6y ago

tekstar 6y ago

Don't worry, there will still be thousands of sites hosting flash player update exes just waiting for you to download

vangelis 6y ago

The internet would be a lot duller without some of the creativity Flash animations allowed, imagine a world without Cirno's Perfect Math Class. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V_bQNPG2OyE& https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V_bQNPG2OyE&

egberts1 6y ago

I think I can speak for millions of security-minded folks: Well, it’s about time.

j-james 6y ago

Newgrounds has done a lot of work on preserving old Flash content. Some standouts are their own Flash player and an SWF to MP4 converter, but what I find most interesting is Ruffle. Ruffle is a Flash emulator written in Rust that can be used as a browser extension, a desktop client, or a website polyfill. It's still a work in progress, but eventually websites with heavy use of Flash content (like many late-2000s webcomics, or even Newgrounds itself) could use the polyfill to replace Flash content with WASM blobs. The roadmap was updated recently, and provides a good overview of Ruffle's current capabilities. There's also a demo instance that can run arbitary SWFs, with a few examples available. https://www.newgrounds.com/flash/player https://www.newgrounds.com/flash/player https://github.com/Herschel/Swivel https://github.com/Herschel/Swivel https://github.com/ruffle-rs/ruffle https://github.com/ruffle-rs/ruffle Roadmap: https://github.com/ruffle-rs/ruffle/wiki/Roadmap https://github.com/ruffle-rs/ruffle/wiki/Roadmap Demo: http://ruffle-rs.s3-website-us-west-1.amazonaws.com/builds/web-demo/index.html?file=synj1.swf http://ruffle-rs.s3-website-us-west-1.amazonaws.com/builds/w...

triangleman 6y ago
This guy is trying to emulate x86 in the browser and run the actual Flash player within that: https://medium.com/leaningtech/running-flash-in-webassembly-using-cheerpx-an-update-d500b6fbc44e https://medium.com/leaningtech/running-flash-in-webassembly-...
- apignotti 6y ago
  Here is 'this guy' :-). Feel free to drop any question on Twitter. https://twitter.com/alexpignotti https://twitter.com/alexpignotti
  - nextaccountic 6y ago
    Hello! Big props for doing that! Is any of this open source?
    - fouc 6y ago

hartator 6y ago

We still don’t have an easy way to make Flash-like games that work in the browser across platform. Shame on Adobe for killing all Macromedia products. Fireworks, Macromedia, and Flash.

dpcan 6y ago
I still use Fireworks every day. It's the best graphic design tool ever created in my opinion. Everything else has become so complicated. With my Adobe Cloud subscription they still let me download it thankfully, but I'm a little worried that in 5 years, when I upgrade my PC, I'll never be able to install it again.

qwertox 6y ago

I don't get it why my Windows 10 installation is still downloading updates for Flash Player. I deselected it in some setting which was to be found somewhere (Windows 10 settings are a horrible maze), but for some reason it still thinks it needs to protect me from this deactivated piece of malware.

pull_my_finger 6y ago

Good thing Haxe[1] and OpenFl[2] are around and doing well. [1] - https://haxe.org/ https://haxe.org/ [2] - https://www.openfl.org/ https://www.openfl.org/

ryanmarsh 6y ago

Don’t let the door hit you in the ass on the way out

pengaru 6y ago

Kongregate's John Cooney did a flash games postmortem @ GDC which seems appropriate here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=65crLKNQR0E https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=65crLKNQR0E

jason0597 6y ago

Why can't Adobe open source flash? It would be a massive help to people trying to create alternative implementations of flash to keep legacy websites working

throw_m239339 6y ago
The compiler to generate SWF files is open source I believe. Not the player. I imagine it's burdened with licensed software and patents of all kind. Or they just don't want to do anything with it anymore, which is equally valid.
macintux 6y ago
It was terribly insecure throughout its life. I can only imagine how many more security vulnerabilities would be exposed once it goes open source.
- jason0597 6y ago
  Does it really matter now? Pretty sure only nostalgic web users use flash to view old games, clips and such
  - macintux 6y ago
    Apparently bank logins, online exams...
yokto 6y ago
There's a fairly popular open source letter to petition to open source flash: https://github.com/open-source-flash/open-source-flash https://github.com/open-source-flash/open-source-flash But it doesn't look like it made Adobe change it's mind...

throw_m239339 6y ago

Flash became popular because of 2 things: 1/ Its IDE which made creating creative and interactive content mixing video/vector graphics sounds and code easier 2/ it's API that provided things that were not possible when browsers had none of these API (video streaming, socket programming...). At some point you could even write 2D shaders or inject C/C++ code with something called Alchemy. Point 2 is now largely covered by browser web API, although one might argue that the performances might not be always as good as they were in flash, especially when it comes to vector graphics or realtime audio processing. But 3D and webgl are more performant than flash in the browser. Point 1: well there isn't really an equivalent, and even Adobe Animate isn't really doing exactly what flash did when it comes to authoring content for browsers. So there is still a potential market here. I'd like to see something node based when it comes to coding. Artists love their nodes. The real problem is obviously running old flash content like games. Some of these games were really good. I remember playing one which was a hotel management simulator and it was really really fun. But it's a bit like a these jar games in the 2000' one cannot run on modern mobile phones anymore. Without an effort to preserve these, they will all be lost.

pier25 6y ago
> Point 1: well there isn't really an equivalent The other day I was researching how to add simple procedural animations to some web-based interactive content for a museum. This would have been a breeze with Flash. You just passed the .fla to the animator/illustrator and they would create the item in the library for you. Then you could simply animate that display object in your code and the artist would be able to modify it without breaking anything. I came up with this solution using DragonBones[1] so that the artists could work on their own. And then I could render those animations with Pixi[3]. I agree an all-in-one solution would be much nicer but not sure there is a market for it. [1] http://dragonbones.com/en/index.html http://dragonbones.com/en/index.html [2] https://pixijs.io/examples/#/plugin-dragonbones/eyetracking.js https://pixijs.io/examples/#/plugin-dragonbones/eyetracking....
- MayeulC 6y ago
  Wouldn't something like this work in a game engine that can export to Webassembly, like Godot? Though in either case, you lose the web platform, with its accessibility (aria, screen readers) and forward compatibility (like the one we had with the move to smartphones, etc).

pmlnr 6y ago

Happy Tree Friends, Weebls' Stuff, z0r.de - the internet would be - will be! - different without Flash.

sitzkrieg 6y ago

my biggest hope is that government entities stop making training content in flash. the freaking DISA cybersecurity training is in flash for crying out loud

matlo 6y ago

RIP

omnibrain 6y ago

I have http://www.vatican.va/various/cappelle/sistina_vr/index.html http://www.vatican.va/various/cappelle/sistina_vr/index.html in my bookmarks. A really beautiful depiction of the Sixtine Chapel. But I have no Idea how to load it on a modern OS. I have also no idea if the vatican has plans to update ist for more modern technologies. There are even more http://www.vatican.va/various/basiliche/index_en.html http://www.vatican.va/various/basiliche/index_en.html if you dig around a little, but I have no clue how to preserve them...

cairoshikobon 6y ago

Does this mean we won't be able to access zombo.com anymore ? Truly an end of an era :(

cpeterso 6y ago
Welcome to HTML5 Zombo Com! The only limit is yourself. https://html5zombo.com/ https://html5zombo.com/

tomklein 6y ago

I’ve got flashbacks to the time when I started creating my first website at a young age in the 2000s. Flash was this unreachable height for me and I just started testing HTML and how the internet even works. Now I’m a full time software engineer and happy on how far the web has gone until today :)

pier25 6y ago

Adobe announced it in 2017. That's how it's done, Apple.

micheljansen 6y ago

Flash was a dumpster fire of performance and security issues and being a closed platform in direct competition with the web we have today, I won’t shed a tear over this. What will be sorely missed though, are the brilliant authoring tools that Flash came with. For a very short time in history there was one tool that allowed designers and developers to truly collaborate on rich interactive experiences. It was amazing what that unlocked.

bbayer 6y ago

Flash Player itself has a lot of security vulnerabilities but Adobe Flash as IDE still has no competitor even today IMHO. There is no such tool that combines code and graphics with ease like Adobe Flash. You can use it as an animator, you can use it as graphic designer, you can use it as developer. All these features just came together perfectly and it made sense. I am still missing this usability.

saos 6y ago

Good news

haolez 6y ago

Genuine question: if Flash weren't a security nightmare, would it be a better environment for producing games and dynamic content than what we have today? I've never done anything in Flash.

andai 6y ago
Add-on question: what do we have today? Has anything filled this void?
- stjo 6y ago
  HTML5, the canvas API and all the new browser APIs right after it.
  - haolez 6y ago
    But we are probably missing the IDE/animation editor, which were one of the biggest selling points.
    - andai 6y ago
      Exactly, I was asking about authoring tools.
- asdf9240 6y ago
  How about Godot?

thePunisher 6y ago

Flash Player is possibly the worst piece of software ever written, with literally HUNDREDS of vulnerabilities discovered so far. If I tried I most likely couldn't produce that many vulnerabilities in software. Anyway, if Adobe had rewritten Flash in Rust it could've lived on for years and years. Instead they were completely clueless on how to fix it.

qwerty456127 6y ago

I feel like I'm going to make a a VirtualBox image dedicated purely for Flash viewing.

anessaiver 6y ago

Looks like we only have a short time left to sit the younger generation down and force them to sit through all of Strong Bad's emails.

Wowfunhappy 6y ago

So, while it's still easily available, are there any particular flash games or content I should check out?

aasasd 6y ago

I hoped to live to the day when Flash is dead, so at least something good has happened in my life (a few years ago already). Now, looking forward to PDF being abandoned for scientific publication and ‘white papers’.

ChrisMarshallNY 6y ago

One of my fave Flash animations was a Stick Figure Animation, called "Time to Die." I don't know if it can still be found anywhere, but it was a riot (and rather bloody). You would pick which weapon they would "test," and one of the choices would result in a Snake Pliskin-type of character getting loose, and slaughtering everyone.

davidgerard 6y ago

So, there have been a pile of open source Flash emulation efforts - gnash, Shumway ... They all seem to get half way then flounder. What's up with that?

dsthode 6y ago

I won't say it's not about time, but the decision to block the execution of flash content after said date and the removal of the downloads, complicates matters for system administrators. We have a legacy blade enclosure at the office that needs an old version of flash for configuration, and also our vSphere web interface is flash based.

ohsik 6y ago

It's time to go lol

tosh 6y ago

Steve Jobs on Flash 10 years ago: https://www.apple.com/hotnews/thoughts-on-flash/ https://www.apple.com/hotnews/thoughts-on-flash/

userbinator 6y ago

In other words, they are implicitly telling us that we should archive their entire site... although I suspect the IA has already done so. The only thing really bad about Flash was the security, but otherwise it is an extremely efficient vector/animation format that AFAIK none of the "open standards" have managed to come close to. Seeing Flash disappear, only to be replaced by SVG (yuck!), JavaScript, HTML, and CSS, was extremely disturbing. (I have written a SWF to PDF converter. Parsing the format itself is quite straightforward, I could've probably written most of a player if I went further and added the interactive stuff too.)

snazz 6y ago
Security, the fact that it was a closed standard, touchscreen support, battery life... most of the issues brought up by Steve Jobs are still valid: https://www.apple.com/hotnews/thoughts-on-flash/ https://www.apple.com/hotnews/thoughts-on-flash/
- userbinator 6y ago
  the fact that it was a closed standard The standard has been freely available for over a decade now. touchscreen support That's an implementation issue. battery life Also an implementation issue. Jobs was talking only about video, but I bet the "instruction path length" from reading a file to rendering a vector graphic is probably an order of magnitude if not more for a browser reading an SVG than Flash reading a SWF. Those who have played Flash games will likely remember its very acceptable performance on a sub-GHz processor with 128MB of RAM or less. I don't think the HTML5 equivalent in a modern browser would even work on such a system. That said, it was much better when it was Macromedia Flash, i.e. after Adobe bought it they bloated it greatly (which is where most of the security problems came from.)

bgorman 6y ago

It would be nice if Adobe could release some of Flash player as open source, or at least help document the format to help preserve the content that made Adobe so much money in the past.

glaberficken 6y ago

Just to share this archival project: https://bluemaxima.org/flashpoint/ https://bluemaxima.org/flashpoint/ Basically it's a massive bundle of flash (and other plugins) together with a curated list of games and animations. It spawns a local web server to trick the games into "thinking" they are still being run on their original servers (this doesn't work for games that required a multiplayer server obviously, it's only to workaround the common portal exclusivity rights that were common in the golden era of Flash games). It's really a labor of love and an incredible window into a slice of web history from the early 2000's

taf2 6y ago

I remember around 2007 a tower defense came - desktop tower defense by hand drawn games... I guess that flash version is long gone but did find it nice wish someone would build an html5 version

terrycody 6y ago

Gosh, I always think the websites in the FLASH era is the most versatile and really have no limitations, just see today's websites, all plain, simple, and boring as hell. Yeah I can understand the vulnerabilities and slowdown of Flash, but it really shines at that golden age! R.I.P

machiaweliczny 6y ago
It was so simple to create 2D games. Is there some comparable engine/tool nowadays?
- terrycody 6y ago
  I am not an expert in the gaming field, but you can check Godot engine for 2D games, people say it is a really amazing tool. Of course you can choose Unity, but many people now prefer Godot for 2D games. I mean, the Flash maybe not the best option for creating a game, but for Flash website era, I think those weird, funny, and highly interactive websites are really shining at the age, I miss that time!

cwojno 6y ago

Wait... this didn't happen like 5 years ago?

alexashka 6y ago

End of an era. I grew up learning how to use Flash and did little animations and even some websites in it. It was a lovely platform for non-programmer types.

1MachineElf 6y ago

The little HN reader in me thinks this is great news, but the other part of me is worried because %DAYJOB% is providing support for a product that depends majorly on Adobe Flash (and IE11).

bookmarkable 6y ago

I miss Flash. It was fun. The web was fun. We got paid to make stuff move around and come up with crazy image masking animations and just experiment. The product had to go, but sadly, it would have no place in today’s much more serious web anyway. Long live Macromedia and (F)uture Sp(lash) Animator.

kumarvvr 6y ago

Flash is a good candidate for webassembly as target. Add updated controls for touch, discourage usage of hover, and compile the flash player to web assembly, targeting animations, ads, etc. Then provide a paid cdn for deliveeing content. I remember using flash a long time ago, and what i loved most is the way you could do complex animations with such little effort.

voldacar 6y ago
If Adobe could re-release the flash IDE but make it target webassembly, it would probably be a hit if they marketed it right. I don't think there's anything since that has surpassed the flash development experience

askjdlkasdjsd 6y ago

Welcome news! This guy is trying to emulate x86 in the browser and run the actual Flash player within that: https://medium.com/leaningtech/running-flash-in-webassembly-using-cheerpx-an-update-d500b6fbc44e https://medium.com/leaningtech/running-flash-in-webassembly-...

zelly 6y ago

Probably because no one uses it since most of the world is on Chrome. If G is maintaining the Pepper flash player for free, why would Adobe need to bother.

senthilnayagam 6y ago

why did Adobe not open source core flash technology?

dandare 6y ago

I just came here to say the Flash IDE was the best vector graphics editor I knew and I have not find a replacement. The way the color of two objects was used to determine the boolean operation between them was brilliant. You could add a bezier point by dragging a selection through a surface, you could remove a bezier point by narrowing the surface. The aligning gizmo always worked the way you needed it to work.

WhyNotHugo 6y ago

TIL Flash still exists on other platforms. Flash was dropped around 10 years ago for Linux, and never existed on iOS. I'd no idea it was still a thing on other platforms. I do feel bad in that we've lost the ability to run lots of games, but most of them were to trivial to download/redistribute anyway, regrettably. Their fate was kinda already sealed.

deleted 6y ago

[deleted]

asmosoinio 6y ago

Discussion from 2017 when Adobe released the end-of-life information: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14848786 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14848786 - “We will stop updating and distributing the Flash Player at the end of 2020”

prvc 6y ago

Yet, somehow, Flash Player updates are now being distributed through Windows Update (to systems where Flash was never purposefully installed).

jdofaz 6y ago

I never played any flash games and I never really understood the difference between the flash and shockwave plugins for games, but , I always installed flash because it was a wonderful video player. Before flash video was common most things were quicktime and the quicktime plugin was SLOW. The other nice thing about flash is unlike quicktime there was a linux version. Sure, flash is obsolete and unloved now, but it really was better than what came before it.

dang 6y ago

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