4 ms·

I genuinely wonder if Flash/Silverlight would have won without this single tool.

by ZiiS 4y ago

GuB-42 4y ago
I think Flash lost because it shot itself in the foot, Firebug or not. Flash was way beyond the web stack of that time in pretty much every aspect, and it would still have some advantages even today if it was still supported. But Adobe completely dropped the ball. The plugin was a buggy mess, which regularly topped the charts in term of vulnerabilities and accessibility was pretty bad, all fixable problems they didn't fix. Adobe also didn't work with browser vendors and web standardization bodies to improve integration, instead relying on the already obsolete nsapi. Browsers kept nsapi support just for Flash, but as some point, enough is enough. I believe that with a bit more care from Adobe, Flash could have been part of the web standards, and I think it would have been better that what we have now. I don't know much about Silverlight but it looks like a Flash knockoff that didn't fix any of the core issue Flash had.
- asddubs 4y ago
  i think the greatest thing we lost with flash is even non-technical people making something in an editor, hitting export, and getting a single small file that worked similarly enough to an image that it was trivial to just upload somewhere and have it be embedded there.
  - bornfreddy 4y ago
    This. I hated flash sites, but it gave non-technical people a chance to be creative. Designers especially loved it, though they often used it for wrong purposes (web pages) too. But good luck teaching them how to make that tetris clone in React nowadays...
- hinkley 4y ago
  Flash is a shining example of the concept, “Faster than Possible”. When all of the vendors have a similar product, you chose based on feature set and cost (not all costs are monetary). When only one vendor has an interesting feature set, you need to ask yourself why, and it it’s too good to be true.
JohnBooty 4y ago
Flash absolutely would have become more entrenched. You get the feeling that Apple wasn't going to support Adobe's Flash plugin on the iPhone, no matter what. Too battery-inefficient, too laden with security holes. They weren't going to pour billions into the iPhone just to have it be a delivery mechanism for Adobe's mess of a runtime. I see three alternate histories: 1. The iPhone launches without Flash, and it flops, because most of the Alexa top 500 is totally reliant on Flash. 2. The iPhone launches without Flash, just like in our timeline, and it's good enough that people still embrace it. Eventually this kills off Flash just like in our timeline, but it's a slower and more painful transition. 3. Apple agrees to support Flash on the iPhone, but only via an agreement with Adobe that lets Apple develop their own (safer, performant) Flash layer that stays in sync with Adobe's plugin via legally binding terms of the contract or whatever. In two out of these three alternate histories, we're still stuck with Flash today.
- ransom1538 4y ago
  "Too battery-inefficient, too laden with security holes." Lol. The reason Apple didn't support Flash was it was too good. If flash was supported 100% (practically natively) - there would be no point creating native apps in objective C (Flash was a full decade ahead). Flash devs would have coded circles around objective C devs. This could have screwed over the entire ios ecosystem. Once flash was dead and gone: SWIFT!
  - hajile 4y ago
    I ran flash on Android phones of the time and flash absolutely did have a huge affect on battery life. Given the number of bugs in Flash (and how long Adobe took to fix them), I believe this is also reasonable. I believe that competition was a real motivator, but it wasn't the only reason.
  - heleninboodler 4y ago
    > The reason Apple didn't support Flash was it was too good. The competition with native may have been part of the consideration, but this was far from the full argument. It was also much too bad. It was power hungry, as noted by others, because flash content tended to be driven by a million timers, but also, its interaction model was a disaster on touch screens. Even on desktop, one of the problems with Flash content was confusion about whether UI events were owned by some object inside the Flash widget or the enclosing browser. Plus, Flash was a whole universe of nonstandard UI elements that would have made uptake of the iphone interface more difficult. There is no part of me that believes the idea that "Flash devs could have coded circles around objective C devs." If the mobile app explosion had happened in Flash, it wouldn't have been an explosion. It would have been a flop.
Exness199507 4y ago

I genuinely wonder if Flash/Silverlight would have won without this single tool.

by ZiiS 4y ago

I genuinely wonder if Flash/Silverlight would have won without this single tool.

I think Flash lost because it shot itself in the foot, Firebug or not. Flash was way beyond the web stack of that time in pretty much every aspect, and it would still have some advantages even today if it was still supported. But Adobe completely dropped the ball. The plugin was a buggy mess, which regularly topped the charts in term of vulnerabilities and accessibility was pretty bad, all fixable problems they didn't fix. Adobe also didn't work with browser vendors and web standardization bodies to improve integration, instead relying on the already obsolete nsapi. Browsers kept nsapi support just for Flash, but as some point, enough is enough. I believe that with a bit more care from Adobe, Flash could have been part of the web standards, and I think it would have been better that what we have now. I don't know much about Silverlight but it looks like a Flash knockoff that didn't fix any of the core issue Flash had.

asddubs 4y ago
i think the greatest thing we lost with flash is even non-technical people making something in an editor, hitting export, and getting a single small file that worked similarly enough to an image that it was trivial to just upload somewhere and have it be embedded there.
- bornfreddy 4y ago
  This. I hated flash sites, but it gave non-technical people a chance to be creative. Designers especially loved it, though they often used it for wrong purposes (web pages) too. But good luck teaching them how to make that tetris clone in React nowadays...
hinkley 4y ago
Flash is a shining example of the concept, “Faster than Possible”. When all of the vendors have a similar product, you chose based on feature set and cost (not all costs are monetary). When only one vendor has an interesting feature set, you need to ask yourself why, and it it’s too good to be true.

JohnBooty 4y ago

Flash absolutely would have become more entrenched. You get the feeling that Apple wasn't going to support Adobe's Flash plugin on the iPhone, no matter what. Too battery-inefficient, too laden with security holes. They weren't going to pour billions into the iPhone just to have it be a delivery mechanism for Adobe's mess of a runtime. I see three alternate histories: 1. The iPhone launches without Flash, and it flops, because most of the Alexa top 500 is totally reliant on Flash. 2. The iPhone launches without Flash, just like in our timeline, and it's good enough that people still embrace it. Eventually this kills off Flash just like in our timeline, but it's a slower and more painful transition. 3. Apple agrees to support Flash on the iPhone, but only via an agreement with Adobe that lets Apple develop their own (safer, performant) Flash layer that stays in sync with Adobe's plugin via legally binding terms of the contract or whatever. In two out of these three alternate histories, we're still stuck with Flash today.

ransom1538 4y ago
"Too battery-inefficient, too laden with security holes." Lol. The reason Apple didn't support Flash was it was too good. If flash was supported 100% (practically natively) - there would be no point creating native apps in objective C (Flash was a full decade ahead). Flash devs would have coded circles around objective C devs. This could have screwed over the entire ios ecosystem. Once flash was dead and gone: SWIFT!
- hajile 4y ago
  I ran flash on Android phones of the time and flash absolutely did have a huge affect on battery life. Given the number of bugs in Flash (and how long Adobe took to fix them), I believe this is also reasonable. I believe that competition was a real motivator, but it wasn't the only reason.
- heleninboodler 4y ago
  > The reason Apple didn't support Flash was it was too good. The competition with native may have been part of the consideration, but this was far from the full argument. It was also much too bad. It was power hungry, as noted by others, because flash content tended to be driven by a million timers, but also, its interaction model was a disaster on touch screens. Even on desktop, one of the problems with Flash content was confusion about whether UI events were owned by some object inside the Flash widget or the enclosing browser. Plus, Flash was a whole universe of nonstandard UI elements that would have made uptake of the iphone interface more difficult. There is no part of me that believes the idea that "Flash devs could have coded circles around objective C devs." If the mobile app explosion had happened in Flash, it wouldn't have been an explosion. It would have been a flop.

Exness199507 4y ago