4 ms·

You are the one confusing "player" and "authoring tool" as there absolutely are players with all the functionality of the flash player and more, they are just c

by shkkmo 5y ago

You are the one confusing "player" and "authoring tool" as there absolutely are players with all the functionality of the flash player and more, they are just called browsers. What's more there absolutely are "html5" experiences that rival the old flash experiences. In most ways these experiences are much better. Perhaps as an old commerical flash developer youbhave a rosy memory of flash in the naughts. Back in the day, the only time I wasn't pissed to see flash loading was when I played flash games, every other use of flash was generally awful and I would usually immediately close a page if it started loading flash. As much as I hate the bloat and SPAification of the web, it is still far better than what most sites did with flash. The demise of flash is complicated and has a lot to do with the rise of mobile. Android did support flash but even on that platform, native games simply outperformed flash games and the market demand shifted. If Apple had supported flash on iOS, this shift would probably have been slower but flash would still have lost out.

somehnacct3757 5y ago
Adobe Air could target mobile platforms with negligible degradation and generated swfs for web, too. I and most other serious flash devs in this era had a toolchain where you built once in AS3 and published to web and mobile using frameworks like Starling. Flash died not because it couldn't do mobile. Thinking this is part of the hit job orchestrated by Apple. Flash died because browser games can't be taxed by Apple. The same thing is happening today with progressive web apps. Ask yourself what Apple could have against those, and now look backwards at their stance on Flash.
- shkkmo 5y ago
  > Flash died not because it couldn't do mobile. I never said it couldn't do mobile. I said it couldn't do mobile as well as native. Flash died faster because of apple, but was always going to die due to the combination of the rise of app stores, mobile battery issues, and the advancement of web standards. Apple did the work to integrate flash into the iPhone before they rejected it. I think it is interesting that Apple gets all the blame here since the decline of flash also coincides pretty directly with it's acquisition by Adobe. Youtube's early moves to offer non-flash video also had significant effects. While I am a big critic to Apple's approach to called gardens, the decision against flash was as much prescient as it was causative of the decline of flash.
  - somehnacct3757 5y ago
    In my experience, having worked closely with these technologies in my day job during this era, the average person talking about it has an oversimplified view of the technologies and comes to the wrong conclusions. Adobe did not want Flash to die, and their product manager was very involved in the community to figure out what needed to happen to prevent that. I don't think Adobe invested enough into those demands, but still there was steady investment made. If they had more time, and Apple wasn't such a bully, the tech could have evolved and survived. Adobe built Stage3D so that one API could target GPUs across desktop and mobile. Think WebGL, which was released around the same time. But production-ready due to the distribution advantage the flash player had over browsers at the time. Adobe funded open source projects such as Starling to create scenegraph-like APIs on top of Stage3D, providing an on-ramp for all existing AS3 devs to the new paradigm with their existing API knowledge and tool chain. At this point in the timeline, any AS3 dev could write cross platform games and apps if they picked up a handful of mobile GPU concepts like draw calls, texture maps, and bitmap fonts. (You could take all these things for granted in the traditional Flash scenegraph.) Unity existed at this point but did not yet have dedicated 2D libraries. You'd be rendering your 2D game onto a face in a 3D world, with a fixed camera. Total overkill. They wouldn't be as performant as Stage3D for a couple years. I disagree with the assessment that Adobe was a bad steward because I saw them trying with my own eyes. I also disagree that Flash couldn't do native apps with native performance because I built them with my own fingers. Lastly I disagree that web standards obsoleted Flash because where are the web games? Why aren't they playable on mobile safari? Why don't the web standards come with a dev environment and where are the dominant Flash monetization models? Apple played hardball so that the only way to be on their platform was to use their tech in their way signed off on by their reviewers and monetized by their app store. They also wrote FUD pieces like the famous Jobs letter. Who was the villain here? Is Apple justified robbing us of a Maker's renaissance era because it wasn't mobile ready at the literal dawn of mobile computing?
    - shkkmo 5y ago
      > because where are the web games? All over the place. I see them regularly posted to HN. Did you miss the entire '.io' trend of web games? The market is smaller because it was partially eaten by native mobile games, but it is alive an well. > Why aren't they playable on mobile safari? Aren't they? > Why don't the web standards come with a dev environment. That's not what standards are. There are a plethora of web development tools and frameworks that target the web. All of these target different needs and visions. > Is Apple justified robbing us of a Maker's renaissance era because it wasn't mobile ready at the literal dawn of mobile computing? > I disagree with the assessment that Adobe was a bad steward because I saw them trying with my own eyes. Adobe abandoned mobile flash development in 2011, when mobile was a fast growing, but still small part of the market. This is also when android more or less caught up with iOS in terms of adoption. If adobe had continued investing in mobile development, would flash have survived? In retrospect, this is the decision that put the final nail in flash's coffin as mobile won the eyeballs. If Apple had included flash in iOS, would that actually have saved flash? Was a closed source, proprietary ecosystem that was late to mobile ever really going to stay the dominant media delivery platform or even survive? We don't know the answer to these questions but placing all the blame on Steve Jobs is simply too simplistic to be true.
- hajile 5y ago
  I used Flash on my android devices back in the day (Firefox and others had support). Flash sucked on mobile. The VM wasn't as fast as JS JITs in the browser by a long shot. By the time the processors could keep up, Flash had already been dead for years. Adobe Air existed on mobile and it wasn't a good experience either.
JoeyJoJoJr 5y ago
Most of it comes down to an integrated and cohesive development/creative experience for the content author. The current tooling provides such a level of friction that people aren’t experimenting and pushing boundaries of web content like they did when Flash was popular. I typically work for creative digital agencies, and every single project requires so much tool/framework/library exploration now. Back in the day, you would always just use Flash, and you got the project done really fast. Everything takes so much longer now, and it’s because of tool fragmentation, or just plain lack of tools. If I ask the question, “what animation tool should I use for animated web content”, there just isn’t a good answer. Back in the day, you would just use Flash.
- shkkmo 5y ago
  > Back in the day, you would just use Flash. And back in the day, I would close your site as soon as it opened if it started loading a flash animation. Using flash for a website animation was never a good choice, at least not for the end user. I am perfectly happy to have a higher bar for rich web content if it means a less user hostile web than we had when flash was everywhere. If we really need a more integrated and cohesive experience for content authors, then go out and make it. The fact that one doesn't exist may indicate that there isn't a cohesive demand for such a tool.
  - JoeyJoJoJr 5y ago
    Flash was used for a massive variety of use-cases: Digital signage, touch screen kiosks, eLearning experiences, games, web animation, etc. No one is just gonna go out and build a new Flash along with its ecosystem. I used web animation as one obvious example, but the reality is that there is an extreme lacking of cohesion when you look at just about any part of developing for the web. The ecosystem is currently such a slippery foundation that creation of an authoring tool with the scope of Flash is basically impossible to achieve.
    - shkkmo 5y ago
      > The ecosystem is currently such a slippery foundation that creation of an authoring tool with the scope of Flash is basically impossible to achieve. I would say that the scale, scope and complexity of that ecosystem outgrew the ability of one or even a few tools to satisfy it. The idea that flash was ever going to survive as the one tool for interactive content, videos, games, animation and more is simply silly.

by shkkmo 5y ago

somehnacct3757 5y ago

Adobe Air could target mobile platforms with negligible degradation and generated swfs for web, too. I and most other serious flash devs in this era had a toolchain where you built once in AS3 and published to web and mobile using frameworks like Starling. Flash died not because it couldn't do mobile. Thinking this is part of the hit job orchestrated by Apple. Flash died because browser games can't be taxed by Apple. The same thing is happening today with progressive web apps. Ask yourself what Apple could have against those, and now look backwards at their stance on Flash.

shkkmo 5y ago
> Flash died not because it couldn't do mobile. I never said it couldn't do mobile. I said it couldn't do mobile as well as native. Flash died faster because of apple, but was always going to die due to the combination of the rise of app stores, mobile battery issues, and the advancement of web standards. Apple did the work to integrate flash into the iPhone before they rejected it. I think it is interesting that Apple gets all the blame here since the decline of flash also coincides pretty directly with it's acquisition by Adobe. Youtube's early moves to offer non-flash video also had significant effects. While I am a big critic to Apple's approach to called gardens, the decision against flash was as much prescient as it was causative of the decline of flash.
- somehnacct3757 5y ago
  In my experience, having worked closely with these technologies in my day job during this era, the average person talking about it has an oversimplified view of the technologies and comes to the wrong conclusions. Adobe did not want Flash to die, and their product manager was very involved in the community to figure out what needed to happen to prevent that. I don't think Adobe invested enough into those demands, but still there was steady investment made. If they had more time, and Apple wasn't such a bully, the tech could have evolved and survived. Adobe built Stage3D so that one API could target GPUs across desktop and mobile. Think WebGL, which was released around the same time. But production-ready due to the distribution advantage the flash player had over browsers at the time. Adobe funded open source projects such as Starling to create scenegraph-like APIs on top of Stage3D, providing an on-ramp for all existing AS3 devs to the new paradigm with their existing API knowledge and tool chain. At this point in the timeline, any AS3 dev could write cross platform games and apps if they picked up a handful of mobile GPU concepts like draw calls, texture maps, and bitmap fonts. (You could take all these things for granted in the traditional Flash scenegraph.) Unity existed at this point but did not yet have dedicated 2D libraries. You'd be rendering your 2D game onto a face in a 3D world, with a fixed camera. Total overkill. They wouldn't be as performant as Stage3D for a couple years. I disagree with the assessment that Adobe was a bad steward because I saw them trying with my own eyes. I also disagree that Flash couldn't do native apps with native performance because I built them with my own fingers. Lastly I disagree that web standards obsoleted Flash because where are the web games? Why aren't they playable on mobile safari? Why don't the web standards come with a dev environment and where are the dominant Flash monetization models? Apple played hardball so that the only way to be on their platform was to use their tech in their way signed off on by their reviewers and monetized by their app store. They also wrote FUD pieces like the famous Jobs letter. Who was the villain here? Is Apple justified robbing us of a Maker's renaissance era because it wasn't mobile ready at the literal dawn of mobile computing?
  - shkkmo 5y ago
    > because where are the web games? All over the place. I see them regularly posted to HN. Did you miss the entire '.io' trend of web games? The market is smaller because it was partially eaten by native mobile games, but it is alive an well. > Why aren't they playable on mobile safari? Aren't they? > Why don't the web standards come with a dev environment. That's not what standards are. There are a plethora of web development tools and frameworks that target the web. All of these target different needs and visions. > Is Apple justified robbing us of a Maker's renaissance era because it wasn't mobile ready at the literal dawn of mobile computing? > I disagree with the assessment that Adobe was a bad steward because I saw them trying with my own eyes. Adobe abandoned mobile flash development in 2011, when mobile was a fast growing, but still small part of the market. This is also when android more or less caught up with iOS in terms of adoption. If adobe had continued investing in mobile development, would flash have survived? In retrospect, this is the decision that put the final nail in flash's coffin as mobile won the eyeballs. If Apple had included flash in iOS, would that actually have saved flash? Was a closed source, proprietary ecosystem that was late to mobile ever really going to stay the dominant media delivery platform or even survive? We don't know the answer to these questions but placing all the blame on Steve Jobs is simply too simplistic to be true.
hajile 5y ago
I used Flash on my android devices back in the day (Firefox and others had support). Flash sucked on mobile. The VM wasn't as fast as JS JITs in the browser by a long shot. By the time the processors could keep up, Flash had already been dead for years. Adobe Air existed on mobile and it wasn't a good experience either.

JoeyJoJoJr 5y ago

Most of it comes down to an integrated and cohesive development/creative experience for the content author. The current tooling provides such a level of friction that people aren’t experimenting and pushing boundaries of web content like they did when Flash was popular. I typically work for creative digital agencies, and every single project requires so much tool/framework/library exploration now. Back in the day, you would always just use Flash, and you got the project done really fast. Everything takes so much longer now, and it’s because of tool fragmentation, or just plain lack of tools. If I ask the question, “what animation tool should I use for animated web content”, there just isn’t a good answer. Back in the day, you would just use Flash.

shkkmo 5y ago
> Back in the day, you would just use Flash. And back in the day, I would close your site as soon as it opened if it started loading a flash animation. Using flash for a website animation was never a good choice, at least not for the end user. I am perfectly happy to have a higher bar for rich web content if it means a less user hostile web than we had when flash was everywhere. If we really need a more integrated and cohesive experience for content authors, then go out and make it. The fact that one doesn't exist may indicate that there isn't a cohesive demand for such a tool.
- JoeyJoJoJr 5y ago
  Flash was used for a massive variety of use-cases: Digital signage, touch screen kiosks, eLearning experiences, games, web animation, etc. No one is just gonna go out and build a new Flash along with its ecosystem. I used web animation as one obvious example, but the reality is that there is an extreme lacking of cohesion when you look at just about any part of developing for the web. The ecosystem is currently such a slippery foundation that creation of an authoring tool with the scope of Flash is basically impossible to achieve.
  - shkkmo 5y ago
    > The ecosystem is currently such a slippery foundation that creation of an authoring tool with the scope of Flash is basically impossible to achieve. I would say that the scale, scope and complexity of that ecosystem outgrew the ability of one or even a few tools to satisfy it. The idea that flash was ever going to survive as the one tool for interactive content, videos, games, animation and more is simply silly.