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> Everyone already hated and was avoiding flash at that point. "Everyone"? I loved it. Kids loved it. The people who hated and killed it were programmers, and

> Everyone already hated and was avoiding flash at that point. "Everyone"? I loved it. Kids loved it. The people who hated and killed it were programmers, and to this day they haven't created any alternative that kids would love as much. It's similar to the murder of Dreamweaver. Actual designers who draw pixels on the screen loved it. Programmers hated it, pushed CSS instead, and visual editing of the web died.

jjoonathan 6y ago
If visual editing of the web died, why do I see squarespace ads everywhere?
- Wowfunhappy 6y ago
  Squarespace is template-based. The developer created the overall site structure/layout, and the user is just changing out the content. Their templates are quite flexible, and there's a lot of them, but it's not quite creating something original.
kelnos 6y ago
It's regrettable that there's no good replacement for it, but Flash had deep by-design security issues that there was no way to fix (in addition to the garden-variety security bugs that Adobe seemed too incompetent or unwilling to fix). Flash had to go.
andi999 6y ago
I found it totally inaccessible. I knew how to programm in C, C++98 with QT, Python, but I couldnt figure out just how to get started with flash. Somehow i must have missed the easy part of it.
- sireat 6y ago
  You could just write Actionscript . It was quite a pleasant and consistent experience compared to writing browser JS at the time(10+ years ago).
  - thedragonline 6y ago
    Matches my experience as well. It was a great language for experimenting with UI design (itemrenderers anyone?). It’s a bitter pill for me swallow to have to watch it fade away.
  - andi999 6y ago
    How to call it? Call it by using script tag in HTML? Call it from javascript? Fileextension '.as'?
    - cpeterso 6y ago
      You use Adobe's Flash IDE (now called "Adobe Animate") to compile ActionScript to a .swf binary file, which you then embed in a web page with an <object> or <embed> tag. Adobe Animate can now export animations and scripts to HTML5: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adobe_Animate https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adobe_Animate
      - andi999 6y ago
        Thanks. Does one always have to pay (Adobe Animate is trialware) to do Actionscript programming? Probably thats where I got stuck last time (wasnt looking too hard into paid solutions)
        catach 6y ago
        Flex [0] is the open source CLI compiler. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apache_Flex https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apache_Flex
Tiktaalik 6y ago
At the time Flash was used extensively for UI development, and artists were able to pretty easily create animations and author their own screens. Nowadays the technology has gone to other places and more than ever artists are locked out of the workflow and reliant on programmers to implement even the most trivial of things.
- gridlockd 6y ago
  Programmers have to make simple things more complicated, otherwise they will program themselves out of a living. https://www-users.cs.york.ac.uk/susan/joke/cpp.htm https://www-users.cs.york.ac.uk/susan/joke/cpp.htm
  - hutzlibu 6y ago
    I read the link. Can't tell, if it is meant for real or satire. Anyway, no. No good programmer needs to make things more complicated on purpose, to earn a living. The bugfilled world of IT is complicated enough as it is and always was like this.
    - deleted 6y ago
      [deleted]
    - eythian 6y ago
      The second paragraph is: > And yes, it is a spoof, obviously. That is obvious from its content alone, and it follows a long tradition of similar spoofs. However, enough people must have fallen for it, because Bjarne Stroustrup has felt the need to publish a rather irritated disclaimer in his FAQ!
    - gridlockd 6y ago
      > No good programmer needs to make things more complicated on purpose, to earn a living. Who said anything about "good" programmers? > The bugfilled world of IT is complicated enough as it is and always was like this. That doesn't mean we can't make it more complicated. Look, we got record numbers of people graduating with CS degrees, coming out of bootcamps, or just learning the trade straight off of Youtube. We have to find extra work for these people, otherwise our salaries are going to tank because of increased competition.
Bud 6y ago
"Visual editing of the web"? Flash was hostile to the open web, not a useful part of it.
- hutzlibu 6y ago
  But it enabled non-programmers to create beautiful things and release them on the web. So while it technically is hostile to open web - it did open up the web for many people, who would run away, when you tell them to learn html code first.
  - Bud 6y ago
    "Technically"? This isn't merely a technical point. HTML is an open standard, and Flash isn't and never was. Flash also never "opened up the web"; it opened up a proprietary way to do programming and avoid actually using the Web. As an aside, Flash is also extraordinarily inefficient and a plague security-wise, and always has been. Steve Jobs pointed this out a decade ago, of course. Meanwhile, HTML continues to have none of those problems.
Shorel 6y ago
I think Godot is a very strong candidate for something that people can love as much.

jjoonathan 6y ago

If visual editing of the web died, why do I see squarespace ads everywhere?

Wowfunhappy 6y ago
Squarespace is template-based. The developer created the overall site structure/layout, and the user is just changing out the content. Their templates are quite flexible, and there's a lot of them, but it's not quite creating something original.

kelnos 6y ago

It's regrettable that there's no good replacement for it, but Flash had deep by-design security issues that there was no way to fix (in addition to the garden-variety security bugs that Adobe seemed too incompetent or unwilling to fix). Flash had to go.

andi999 6y ago

I found it totally inaccessible. I knew how to programm in C, C++98 with QT, Python, but I couldnt figure out just how to get started with flash. Somehow i must have missed the easy part of it.

sireat 6y ago
You could just write Actionscript . It was quite a pleasant and consistent experience compared to writing browser JS at the time(10+ years ago).
- thedragonline 6y ago
  Matches my experience as well. It was a great language for experimenting with UI design (itemrenderers anyone?). It’s a bitter pill for me swallow to have to watch it fade away.
- andi999 6y ago
  How to call it? Call it by using script tag in HTML? Call it from javascript? Fileextension '.as'?
  - cpeterso 6y ago
    You use Adobe's Flash IDE (now called "Adobe Animate") to compile ActionScript to a .swf binary file, which you then embed in a web page with an <object> or <embed> tag. Adobe Animate can now export animations and scripts to HTML5: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adobe_Animate https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adobe_Animate
    - andi999 6y ago
      Thanks. Does one always have to pay (Adobe Animate is trialware) to do Actionscript programming? Probably thats where I got stuck last time (wasnt looking too hard into paid solutions)
      - catach 6y ago
        Flex [0] is the open source CLI compiler. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apache_Flex https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apache_Flex

Tiktaalik 6y ago

At the time Flash was used extensively for UI development, and artists were able to pretty easily create animations and author their own screens. Nowadays the technology has gone to other places and more than ever artists are locked out of the workflow and reliant on programmers to implement even the most trivial of things.

gridlockd 6y ago
Programmers have to make simple things more complicated, otherwise they will program themselves out of a living. https://www-users.cs.york.ac.uk/susan/joke/cpp.htm https://www-users.cs.york.ac.uk/susan/joke/cpp.htm
- hutzlibu 6y ago
  I read the link. Can't tell, if it is meant for real or satire. Anyway, no. No good programmer needs to make things more complicated on purpose, to earn a living. The bugfilled world of IT is complicated enough as it is and always was like this.
  - deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]
  - eythian 6y ago
    The second paragraph is: > And yes, it is a spoof, obviously. That is obvious from its content alone, and it follows a long tradition of similar spoofs. However, enough people must have fallen for it, because Bjarne Stroustrup has felt the need to publish a rather irritated disclaimer in his FAQ!
  - gridlockd 6y ago
    > No good programmer needs to make things more complicated on purpose, to earn a living. Who said anything about "good" programmers? > The bugfilled world of IT is complicated enough as it is and always was like this. That doesn't mean we can't make it more complicated. Look, we got record numbers of people graduating with CS degrees, coming out of bootcamps, or just learning the trade straight off of Youtube. We have to find extra work for these people, otherwise our salaries are going to tank because of increased competition.

Bud 6y ago

"Visual editing of the web"? Flash was hostile to the open web, not a useful part of it.

hutzlibu 6y ago
But it enabled non-programmers to create beautiful things and release them on the web. So while it technically is hostile to open web - it did open up the web for many people, who would run away, when you tell them to learn html code first.
- Bud 6y ago
  "Technically"? This isn't merely a technical point. HTML is an open standard, and Flash isn't and never was. Flash also never "opened up the web"; it opened up a proprietary way to do programming and avoid actually using the Web. As an aside, Flash is also extraordinarily inefficient and a plague security-wise, and always has been. Steve Jobs pointed this out a decade ago, of course. Meanwhile, HTML continues to have none of those problems.

Shorel 6y ago

I think Godot is a very strong candidate for something that people can love as much.