5 ms·

This is true but it is a common misunderstanding imo. Nobody is arguing a tool like Flash shouldn’t exist; it should. People are arguing a runtime like Flash sh

by jchw 6y ago

This is true but it is a common misunderstanding imo. Nobody is arguing a tool like Flash shouldn’t exist; it should. People are arguing a runtime like Flash shouldn’t exist, and that HTML5 has all of the components that are needed to be that runtime and then some. A tool should give us what Flash did but with the HTML runtime. So why doesn’t that tool exist? Well... as far as I know it does. I’m pretty sure this is exactly what Adobe Animate is meant to be: https://www.adobe.com/products/animate.html https://www.adobe.com/products/animate.html So why isn’t it causing a Flash-style revolution? In my opinion... Because of YouTube. Twitter. Etc. Before everyone had heaps of bandwidth, you needed to consume smaller files. A full 1080p video was unfathomable with the codecs, compute and network bandwidth available in the early 2000s. Swf files however were small and easy to distribute. The perfect storm occurred due to the structure of early internet, and communities like Newgrounds flourished. I honestly think Flash just got a bit stale. It stopped being new and exciting, and for animations video sites were probably going to win out anyways. For games, a lot of indie devs now target PCs and game consoles. Unity and Construct export to HTML5. People wanted to do more advanced things to the point where Flash itself started doing things like 3D rendering, at which point the appealing aspects of Flash started to make less sense anyways. Many seem to argue passionately, probably from an emotional place, that Flash was killed. Honestly, I just don’t agree. Flash was dying either way. Everyone just gradually decided to cut off the life support. The era it ushered in will be missed, though.

its_simple 6y ago
Because no one knows about Animate, but everyone was forced to use Flash?
tapirl 6y ago
> Nobody is arguing a tool like Flash shouldn’t exist; it should. People are arguing a runtime like Flash shouldn’t exist, and that HTML5 has all of the components that are needed to be that runtime and then some. A tool should give us what Flash did but with the HTML runtime. The author doesn't argue a tool like Flash should exist. He just states the fact that HTML has still not caught up to fill the blank caused by Flash exiting yet, which is true IMO.
- jchw 6y ago
  If that’s their argument, it’s missing insight in my opinion. The Flash runtime itself is not particularly interesting, and in fact it’s full of undesirable problems. If you ignore the tooling of Flash, very little about it is appealing. If you even just ignore Flash itself and include Flex, Haxe, and other authoring tools that can deal in flash runtime, it still isn’t that appealing. These arguments get confusing because HTML, SVG and JavaScript are human readable and writeable. But that doesn’t mean the way someone should make animations in HTML5 is by typing coordinates into a text editor. If there really is a gap in the web runtime that Flash fills, what is it? Edit: also, I believe they are directly and indirectly arguing for the existence of such a tool: > 1) For 95% of applications you can just distribute a single SWF file > 2) You have a robust authoring tool that is animation/graphics-first and newbie friendly The first one is 100% technically possible with tooling; though admittedly better embedding of assets would be nice. The second one is just literally directly asking for such a tool.
  - wvenable 6y ago
    > The Flash runtime itself is not particularly interesting, and in fact it’s full of undesirable problems. If you ignore the tooling of Flash, very little about it is appealing. The runtime and the tooling go together. The reason why tooling doesn't exist for HTML5, SVG, and Javascript is it's just so damn complex and fiddly that it's impossible to paper-over and abstract with a robust authoring tool. Both sides of Flash were designed for the ease of this kind of development. There hasn't been a good high-level authoring tool for HTML in decades and the situation is getting worse, not better.
    - auroranil 6y ago
      > The runtime and the tooling go together. The reason why tooling doesn't exist for HTML5, SVG, and Javascript is it's just so damn complex and fiddly that it's impossible to paper-over and abstract with a robust authoring tool. Indeed. The fact that Flash is proprietary meant that all browsers had to use the same software (up to versioning and OS API implementations) to run SWF files. Now with HTML5, developers now have to deal with differences between different browsers (Chromium/Safari/Firefox are the most popular ones).
hypertele-Xii 6y ago
Adobe Animate costs 20$/month. I don't recall exactly how much Flash cost, but it sure wasn't that much. The barrier to entry is higher, thus popularity wanes.
- kaslai 6y ago
  If I recall correctly, it has always cost roughly as much as Photoshop during Adobe ownership. That is to say: prior to the Adobe CC pricing model, Flash cost many hundreds of dollars. I did a quick spot check on Archive.org and it looks like "Flash Professional 8" had a retail price of $700 in 2006. $20/mo is definitely a lower barrier to entry than a one-off $700 payment.
  - onion2k 6y ago
    A rep from Adobe once told me that about 90% of Photoshop installs were pirated (this was around 2002). I'd bet that a similar amount of Flash content was made using pirated copies of Flash.
    - DaiPlusPlus 6y ago
      Flash content on sites like AlbinoBlackSheep and the like, sure - but can you put a price on culture?
  - hypertele-Xii 6y ago
    Really? All those kids making those stick figure animations on the early web sites had access to 700$ software? Sounds amazing.
    - mkl 6y ago
      Piracy was easier and rampant back then. Adobe (and Microsoft, etc.) knew that the kids who learned on pirated copies would lead to legit sales later.
      - 6y ago
spyder 6y ago
Even for videos Flash was the best solution for a long time, almost every video sharing website used Flash video players until HTML5 video got developed.
- dingaling 6y ago
  All that 'HTML 5 video' did was move responsibility for the media player from an extension and into the browser, and wrap it in standard markup. So ironically the designer no longer just asks 'is Flash available on this platform?' but instead 'which codecs are available on this browser and platform?'.
- ksec 6y ago
  And apart from Video Codec improvement, many HTML5 video are still not as good as Flash Video Streaming. Mostly an implementation issues and not technical. But no one has the interest of improving it.
  - GeneticGenesis 6y ago
    This isn't accurate at all. HLML 5 video, MSE etc. have a world of improvements over the mess of FLV / Flash / RTMP streaming. Can you give some examples of what's wrong with HTML5 video streaming and these implementation issues? There's a huge community of video engineers working to make streaming video better, and we'd love to hear feedback.
anonymousab 6y ago
> So why isn’t it causing a Flash-style revolution? From the animators I've listened to, the answer is that Animate sucks to work with and is a royal pain in the butt, so they either use different tools or stick to older versions of Adobe or even Macromedia Flash/MX.

by jchw 6y ago

its_simple 6y ago

Because no one knows about Animate, but everyone was forced to use Flash?

tapirl 6y ago

> Nobody is arguing a tool like Flash shouldn’t exist; it should. People are arguing a runtime like Flash shouldn’t exist, and that HTML5 has all of the components that are needed to be that runtime and then some. A tool should give us what Flash did but with the HTML runtime. The author doesn't argue a tool like Flash should exist. He just states the fact that HTML has still not caught up to fill the blank caused by Flash exiting yet, which is true IMO.

jchw 6y ago
If that’s their argument, it’s missing insight in my opinion. The Flash runtime itself is not particularly interesting, and in fact it’s full of undesirable problems. If you ignore the tooling of Flash, very little about it is appealing. If you even just ignore Flash itself and include Flex, Haxe, and other authoring tools that can deal in flash runtime, it still isn’t that appealing. These arguments get confusing because HTML, SVG and JavaScript are human readable and writeable. But that doesn’t mean the way someone should make animations in HTML5 is by typing coordinates into a text editor. If there really is a gap in the web runtime that Flash fills, what is it? Edit: also, I believe they are directly and indirectly arguing for the existence of such a tool: > 1) For 95% of applications you can just distribute a single SWF file > 2) You have a robust authoring tool that is animation/graphics-first and newbie friendly The first one is 100% technically possible with tooling; though admittedly better embedding of assets would be nice. The second one is just literally directly asking for such a tool.
- wvenable 6y ago
  > The Flash runtime itself is not particularly interesting, and in fact it’s full of undesirable problems. If you ignore the tooling of Flash, very little about it is appealing. The runtime and the tooling go together. The reason why tooling doesn't exist for HTML5, SVG, and Javascript is it's just so damn complex and fiddly that it's impossible to paper-over and abstract with a robust authoring tool. Both sides of Flash were designed for the ease of this kind of development. There hasn't been a good high-level authoring tool for HTML in decades and the situation is getting worse, not better.
  - auroranil 6y ago
    > The runtime and the tooling go together. The reason why tooling doesn't exist for HTML5, SVG, and Javascript is it's just so damn complex and fiddly that it's impossible to paper-over and abstract with a robust authoring tool. Indeed. The fact that Flash is proprietary meant that all browsers had to use the same software (up to versioning and OS API implementations) to run SWF files. Now with HTML5, developers now have to deal with differences between different browsers (Chromium/Safari/Firefox are the most popular ones).

hypertele-Xii 6y ago

Adobe Animate costs 20$/month. I don't recall exactly how much Flash cost, but it sure wasn't that much. The barrier to entry is higher, thus popularity wanes.

kaslai 6y ago
If I recall correctly, it has always cost roughly as much as Photoshop during Adobe ownership. That is to say: prior to the Adobe CC pricing model, Flash cost many hundreds of dollars. I did a quick spot check on Archive.org and it looks like "Flash Professional 8" had a retail price of $700 in 2006. $20/mo is definitely a lower barrier to entry than a one-off $700 payment.
- onion2k 6y ago
  A rep from Adobe once told me that about 90% of Photoshop installs were pirated (this was around 2002). I'd bet that a similar amount of Flash content was made using pirated copies of Flash.
  - DaiPlusPlus 6y ago
    Flash content on sites like AlbinoBlackSheep and the like, sure - but can you put a price on culture?
- hypertele-Xii 6y ago
  Really? All those kids making those stick figure animations on the early web sites had access to 700$ software? Sounds amazing.
  - mkl 6y ago
    Piracy was easier and rampant back then. Adobe (and Microsoft, etc.) knew that the kids who learned on pirated copies would lead to legit sales later.
    - 6y ago

spyder 6y ago

Even for videos Flash was the best solution for a long time, almost every video sharing website used Flash video players until HTML5 video got developed.

dingaling 6y ago
All that 'HTML 5 video' did was move responsibility for the media player from an extension and into the browser, and wrap it in standard markup. So ironically the designer no longer just asks 'is Flash available on this platform?' but instead 'which codecs are available on this browser and platform?'.
ksec 6y ago
And apart from Video Codec improvement, many HTML5 video are still not as good as Flash Video Streaming. Mostly an implementation issues and not technical. But no one has the interest of improving it.
- GeneticGenesis 6y ago
  This isn't accurate at all. HLML 5 video, MSE etc. have a world of improvements over the mess of FLV / Flash / RTMP streaming. Can you give some examples of what's wrong with HTML5 video streaming and these implementation issues? There's a huge community of video engineers working to make streaming video better, and we'd love to hear feedback.

anonymousab 6y ago

> So why isn’t it causing a Flash-style revolution? From the animators I've listened to, the answer is that Animate sucks to work with and is a royal pain in the butt, so they either use different tools or stick to older versions of Adobe or even Macromedia Flash/MX.