4 ms·

Tracing the Sprawling Roots of Flash Preservation

65 points by cpeterso 6y ago

King-Aaron 6y ago
This was a real hit of nostalgia for me. I also started my web development career by building flash games and movies, and still haven't found any technology that comes close to being as 'easy' to work with. I've got so many half-finished movies and games I'd love to dust off and finish, but I guess they're all condemned to memories these days.
- bonestamp2 6y ago
  > I guess they're all condemned to memories these days Don't let them fade away! As mentioned in the article... check out ruffle: https://github.com/ruffle-rs/ruffle https://github.com/ruffle-rs/ruffle I was able to drop that on the page of a flash movie that I have hosted for nearly 20 years and it's working again without the flash player. It was insanely easy and works great!
echelon 6y ago
Flash needs to come back. It was incredibly elegant and easy to author. The format is open, so there's no reason we shouldn't resurrect it. HTML+JS+CSS is such a crappy alternative for animation. Looking forward, it'll be incredibly hard to archive our "modern" web animations. Everyone does it differently, and the results are spread across dozens of files and a hodgepodge of libraries. Flash is self-contained in a single file and the platform has everything you need baked in. Easy. You didn't even need a website for flash. You could download the swf and play it locally, like a movie file or gif. And you could even share them with friends. It was amazing. The only reason we don't have Flash is because of Steve Jobs. He killed it out of greed so he could gatekeep his platform.
- bonestamp2 6y ago
  > He killed it out of greed so he could gatekeep his platform. And maybe out of spite... I heard from an Adobe exec that it was payback for not agreeing to make Flash exclusive to mac (something Jobs had requested many years earlier).
- prox 6y ago
  I don’t feel flash necessarily needs to come back, but if we look at current content creation for the web, it is indeed poor in terms of animation or even experiments that can be easily authored. The web is made for coders one could say, not artists. Currently I work with Godot and I hope their html5 export might bring back some of that magic.
- aeontech 6y ago
  I agreed with everything you wrote wholeheartedly except for the very last line. The fact is that Adobe tried for years to get Flash to be stable and performant on Android... and failed. So, yeah, there were good technical reasons not to have it on mobile devices in that state. Adobe couldn't hack it, and they refused to open source it so that anyone else could give it a shot. It's sad, truly. They could have gifted it to the community once it became clear that they were not going to make any more money on it, and there could have been an evolution over time - certainly there were enough passionate developers who loved the platform... There's been nothing like Flash since then for ease of use and creativity... I know multiple people whose entire careers started with messing around with it as ten year old kids... Now kids are putting that creativity into Roblox or Minecraft I suppose, but it doesn't seem like the same sort of thing. shakes fist at cloud Although, on the bright side, Haxe [1] still exists, and is very very cool. [1]: https://haxe.org https://haxe.org
- ksec 6y ago
  I just wish Adobe Open Source Flash.
- brk 6y ago
  Flash needs to come back. I always associate Flash with security issues and massive resource utilization. While it made some thing easier to implement on a page, the "applet" concept of embedded things like Flash and Java also seems antiquated right now. Not really of a fan of resurrecting Flash.
  - zackbrown 6y ago
    "Flash" was the creation environment: code IDE + vector design + timeline animation tool. "Flash Player" was the portable applet-style runtime. > not really a fan of resurrecting Flash Sounds like you're not a fan of resurrecting Flash Player. The previous poster (GP) was pining for a resurrection of Flash. You're talking about different things.
    - ihuman 6y ago
      > "Flash" was the creation environment: code IDE + vector design + timeline animation tool I thought that still exists? Adobe renamed "Flash Professional" to "Adobe Animate", and they're continuing to update it.
      - zackbrown 6y ago
        Adobe Animate is a zombie. After Effects overshadows it for animation and Animate's "interactive application development" story is bloated and crufty. It's not adapted to the present-day software+hardware ecosystem like Flash&Player were in the 90's/00's -- and it never will be.
    - brk 6y ago
      Fair point, but I don't recall Flash "things" ever being usable in anything other than some form of a Flash Player, so if the player was suboptimal, it kinda ruins the whole thing, no?
      - zackbrown 6y ago
        > so if the player was suboptimal, it kinda ruins the whole thing, no? Agreed! Flash is dead for a reason, and that reason — while manifold and complicated and political and commercial — really boils down to Flash Player. Back to OP's claim: "Flash needs to come back". I believe they're really pining for (because I pine for) "a creative environment where design, animation, and code coexist — and where every project can be deployed to any device." That was the fulfilled promise of Flash&Player in the 90's/00's.[1] It will look technically different next time around (WASM? Native mobile targets? Native desktop targets? Modern collaboration/version control?), but I firmly agree with OP that creative environment needs to happen — will happen — again. [1] Incidentally, that's the presently fulfilled promise of Unity3D for games.
cft 6y ago
Flash is better than HTML5. If Google instead of Adobe bought Macromedia, and open sourced it (at least in the read-only mode like Android), things could have turned out very different: it could have been a part of Chromium and a web standard.
- ksec 6y ago
  >it could have been the part of Chromium and a web standard. This. Or Adobe could still open source it now.
  - whywhywhywhy 6y ago
    Adobe only really cared about Flash as a video player the rest of it got more and more neglected as time went on. I feel maybe when they were given the ultimatums to optimize it for mobile the talent just wasn’t left on the team to pull it off. A lot of people forget but a few years before the iPhone they did have a similar problem it used to run atrocious on Macs vs PCs even at similar specs but Apple managed to strong arm them into finally optimizing it properly to work the same.
    - egypturnash 6y ago
      They cared about it as a write-once-run-everywhere platform, too. There was a phase where they were pushing the heck out of that. They even crammed a few Flash palettes into Illustrator (and probably some of their other tools, but that's what I mostly use) - you'd know you'd opened one of those up when there was suddenly a weird little UI that was just different enough from the rest of the computer to drive you nuts, and your fans would spin up.
      - whywhywhywhy 6y ago
        I think that flash palette stuff was just a case of building that is easier for developers at the expense of users. They still do it today but with HTML, you can feel it booting up browsers just to display a few buttons out of laziness.
ChrisArchitect 6y ago
Not sure Flash has to come back, lots of obvious problems and evolution dictated otherwise. Someone mentioned "web is for coders, not artists" Unfortunately true. And moreso very recently. The influence of engineers and dev culture on "web design" has turned it into a very dev-heavy, over-engineered, coder paradise -- and killed a large chunk of the 'art' of web design. And taken flash with it of course. There's no tools for the artistry that Flash provided and so it's gone to the wayside. Hopefully moves with animation libraries and webgl etc will change that, seems to be a growing movement/increase in capabilities as far as ease of use/tools etc...
adwi 6y ago
Nice Reply All episode about tracking down and resurrecting an old Flash game: https://gimletmedia.com/shows/reply-all/j4hlx6 https://gimletmedia.com/shows/reply-all/j4hlx6

65 points by cpeterso 6y ago

This was a real hit of nostalgia for me. I also started my web development career by building flash games and movies, and still haven't found any technology that comes close to being as 'easy' to work with. I've got so many half-finished movies and games I'd love to dust off and finish, but I guess they're all condemned to memories these days.

bonestamp2 6y ago
> I guess they're all condemned to memories these days Don't let them fade away! As mentioned in the article... check out ruffle: https://github.com/ruffle-rs/ruffle https://github.com/ruffle-rs/ruffle I was able to drop that on the page of a flash movie that I have hosted for nearly 20 years and it's working again without the flash player. It was insanely easy and works great!

echelon 6y ago

Flash needs to come back. It was incredibly elegant and easy to author. The format is open, so there's no reason we shouldn't resurrect it. HTML+JS+CSS is such a crappy alternative for animation. Looking forward, it'll be incredibly hard to archive our "modern" web animations. Everyone does it differently, and the results are spread across dozens of files and a hodgepodge of libraries. Flash is self-contained in a single file and the platform has everything you need baked in. Easy. You didn't even need a website for flash. You could download the swf and play it locally, like a movie file or gif. And you could even share them with friends. It was amazing. The only reason we don't have Flash is because of Steve Jobs. He killed it out of greed so he could gatekeep his platform.

bonestamp2 6y ago
> He killed it out of greed so he could gatekeep his platform. And maybe out of spite... I heard from an Adobe exec that it was payback for not agreeing to make Flash exclusive to mac (something Jobs had requested many years earlier).
prox 6y ago
I don’t feel flash necessarily needs to come back, but if we look at current content creation for the web, it is indeed poor in terms of animation or even experiments that can be easily authored. The web is made for coders one could say, not artists. Currently I work with Godot and I hope their html5 export might bring back some of that magic.
aeontech 6y ago
I agreed with everything you wrote wholeheartedly except for the very last line. The fact is that Adobe tried for years to get Flash to be stable and performant on Android... and failed. So, yeah, there were good technical reasons not to have it on mobile devices in that state. Adobe couldn't hack it, and they refused to open source it so that anyone else could give it a shot. It's sad, truly. They could have gifted it to the community once it became clear that they were not going to make any more money on it, and there could have been an evolution over time - certainly there were enough passionate developers who loved the platform... There's been nothing like Flash since then for ease of use and creativity... I know multiple people whose entire careers started with messing around with it as ten year old kids... Now kids are putting that creativity into Roblox or Minecraft I suppose, but it doesn't seem like the same sort of thing. shakes fist at cloud Although, on the bright side, Haxe [1] still exists, and is very very cool. [1]: https://haxe.org https://haxe.org
ksec 6y ago
I just wish Adobe Open Source Flash.
brk 6y ago
Flash needs to come back. I always associate Flash with security issues and massive resource utilization. While it made some thing easier to implement on a page, the "applet" concept of embedded things like Flash and Java also seems antiquated right now. Not really of a fan of resurrecting Flash.
- zackbrown 6y ago
  "Flash" was the creation environment: code IDE + vector design + timeline animation tool. "Flash Player" was the portable applet-style runtime. > not really a fan of resurrecting Flash Sounds like you're not a fan of resurrecting Flash Player. The previous poster (GP) was pining for a resurrection of Flash. You're talking about different things.
  - ihuman 6y ago
    > "Flash" was the creation environment: code IDE + vector design + timeline animation tool I thought that still exists? Adobe renamed "Flash Professional" to "Adobe Animate", and they're continuing to update it.
    - zackbrown 6y ago
      Adobe Animate is a zombie. After Effects overshadows it for animation and Animate's "interactive application development" story is bloated and crufty. It's not adapted to the present-day software+hardware ecosystem like Flash&Player were in the 90's/00's -- and it never will be.
  - brk 6y ago
    Fair point, but I don't recall Flash "things" ever being usable in anything other than some form of a Flash Player, so if the player was suboptimal, it kinda ruins the whole thing, no?
    - zackbrown 6y ago
      > so if the player was suboptimal, it kinda ruins the whole thing, no? Agreed! Flash is dead for a reason, and that reason — while manifold and complicated and political and commercial — really boils down to Flash Player. Back to OP's claim: "Flash needs to come back". I believe they're really pining for (because I pine for) "a creative environment where design, animation, and code coexist — and where every project can be deployed to any device." That was the fulfilled promise of Flash&Player in the 90's/00's.[1] It will look technically different next time around (WASM? Native mobile targets? Native desktop targets? Modern collaboration/version control?), but I firmly agree with OP that creative environment needs to happen — will happen — again. [1] Incidentally, that's the presently fulfilled promise of Unity3D for games.

cft 6y ago

Flash is better than HTML5. If Google instead of Adobe bought Macromedia, and open sourced it (at least in the read-only mode like Android), things could have turned out very different: it could have been a part of Chromium and a web standard.

ksec 6y ago
>it could have been the part of Chromium and a web standard. This. Or Adobe could still open source it now.
- whywhywhywhy 6y ago
  Adobe only really cared about Flash as a video player the rest of it got more and more neglected as time went on. I feel maybe when they were given the ultimatums to optimize it for mobile the talent just wasn’t left on the team to pull it off. A lot of people forget but a few years before the iPhone they did have a similar problem it used to run atrocious on Macs vs PCs even at similar specs but Apple managed to strong arm them into finally optimizing it properly to work the same.
  - egypturnash 6y ago
    They cared about it as a write-once-run-everywhere platform, too. There was a phase where they were pushing the heck out of that. They even crammed a few Flash palettes into Illustrator (and probably some of their other tools, but that's what I mostly use) - you'd know you'd opened one of those up when there was suddenly a weird little UI that was just different enough from the rest of the computer to drive you nuts, and your fans would spin up.
    - whywhywhywhy 6y ago
      I think that flash palette stuff was just a case of building that is easier for developers at the expense of users. They still do it today but with HTML, you can feel it booting up browsers just to display a few buttons out of laziness.

ChrisArchitect 6y ago

Not sure Flash has to come back, lots of obvious problems and evolution dictated otherwise. Someone mentioned "web is for coders, not artists" Unfortunately true. And moreso very recently. The influence of engineers and dev culture on "web design" has turned it into a very dev-heavy, over-engineered, coder paradise -- and killed a large chunk of the 'art' of web design. And taken flash with it of course. There's no tools for the artistry that Flash provided and so it's gone to the wayside. Hopefully moves with animation libraries and webgl etc will change that, seems to be a growing movement/increase in capabilities as far as ease of use/tools etc...

adwi 6y ago

Nice Reply All episode about tracking down and resurrecting an old Flash game: https://gimletmedia.com/shows/reply-all/j4hlx6 https://gimletmedia.com/shows/reply-all/j4hlx6