3 ms·

Flash did not integrate well with the rest of the page and was an utter nightmare with respect to accessibility and responsive design. It was also buggy, prone

Flash did not integrate well with the rest of the page and was an utter nightmare with respect to accessibility and responsive design. It was also buggy, prone to memory leaks and crashing, and required the end-user to install or update arbitrary code on their machine, with all the headache and security implications that necessitates. Support and performance was also horrible on mobile when it was available at all. Flash was pretty and had decent tooling, but it sucked pretty hard compared to today's options.

josefrichter 5y ago
Those are exactly the problems that Adobe was supposed to solve. And it’s not like it was mission impossible. I’d say everything we have today still sucks compared to Flash. Building a website with the level of interactivity, micro interactions and animations using today’s technology is super complicated and almost impossible for a single person.
- CharlesW 5y ago
  > [Web integration, accessibility, and responsive design] are exactly the problems that Adobe was supposed to solve. And it’s not like it was mission impossible. "Solve" is weird in this context, but Adobe did make good progress in each of these areas, first by supporting some of them in Flash Player, and ultimately by abandoning the proprietary runtime. > Building a website with the level of interactivity, micro interactions and animations using today’s technology is super complicated and almost impossible for a single person. Flash was never for this (other than in a "if all you've got is a hammer, everything looks like a nail" sense), but if that's your benchmark then you can still do that with Adobe Animate.
  - relaxing 5y ago
    Some people only had the skill to wield a GUI builder/animation timeline-type hammer, and deploying to the web was the only nail that mattered. For them to have access and distribution to that audience was killer, and we’re all worse off for the lack.
VWWHFSfQ 5y ago
Yes everyone is aware of the problems with flash. The point was that nothing today compares with how nice the development tools and experience were for it.
- CharlesW 5y ago
  > The point was that nothing today compares with how nice the development tools and experience were for it. You'll be happy to learn that Adobe Animate is the Flash Professional (née Macromedia Flash, née FutureSplash Animator) development tool/experience: https://www.adobe.com/products/animate.html https://www.adobe.com/products/animate.html
  - jawishhameed 5y ago
    We released a Lottie exporter plugin for Adobe Animate (currently available as an alpha release) so that all the skill and experience people had gained with Flash/Animate can be used to create Lottie animations! https://lottiefiles.com/plugins/animate https://lottiefiles.com/plugins/animate Disclosure: I work at LottieFiles.

josefrichter 5y ago

Those are exactly the problems that Adobe was supposed to solve. And it’s not like it was mission impossible. I’d say everything we have today still sucks compared to Flash. Building a website with the level of interactivity, micro interactions and animations using today’s technology is super complicated and almost impossible for a single person.

CharlesW 5y ago
> [Web integration, accessibility, and responsive design] are exactly the problems that Adobe was supposed to solve. And it’s not like it was mission impossible. "Solve" is weird in this context, but Adobe did make good progress in each of these areas, first by supporting some of them in Flash Player, and ultimately by abandoning the proprietary runtime. > Building a website with the level of interactivity, micro interactions and animations using today’s technology is super complicated and almost impossible for a single person. Flash was never for this (other than in a "if all you've got is a hammer, everything looks like a nail" sense), but if that's your benchmark then you can still do that with Adobe Animate.
- relaxing 5y ago
  Some people only had the skill to wield a GUI builder/animation timeline-type hammer, and deploying to the web was the only nail that mattered. For them to have access and distribution to that audience was killer, and we’re all worse off for the lack.

VWWHFSfQ 5y ago

Yes everyone is aware of the problems with flash. The point was that nothing today compares with how nice the development tools and experience were for it.

CharlesW 5y ago
> The point was that nothing today compares with how nice the development tools and experience were for it. You'll be happy to learn that Adobe Animate is the Flash Professional (née Macromedia Flash, née FutureSplash Animator) development tool/experience: https://www.adobe.com/products/animate.html https://www.adobe.com/products/animate.html
- jawishhameed 5y ago
  We released a Lottie exporter plugin for Adobe Animate (currently available as an alpha release) so that all the skill and experience people had gained with Flash/Animate can be used to create Lottie animations! https://lottiefiles.com/plugins/animate https://lottiefiles.com/plugins/animate Disclosure: I work at LottieFiles.