5 ms·

In case people are too young to remember, Macromedia was well on its way to matching Adobe's application suite – except Macromedia apps had far better UX, bette

In case people are too young to remember, Macromedia was well on its way to matching Adobe's application suite – except Macromedia apps had far better UX, better performance, and better integration with the web. There's a good case that Adobe would no longer exist today had Adobe not acquired Macromedia.

MiddleEndian 4y ago
I still use Adobe Animate (formerly Macromedia Flash), for simple vector drawings. For example, you can just draw a circle, draw a line through it, delete part of the circle that is bisected on the line, then click and drag the line or the remaining curve to curve those two segments. It's so much easier than using the pen tool or having to deal with vectors in Illustrator.
- JoeyJoJoJr 4y ago
  Same here. I’ve never found a vector editing tool to be as intuitive as Animate/Flash.
coldtea 4y ago
>except Macromedia apps had far better UX, better performance, and better integration with the web Lest we only remember the roses smelling side, Macromedia also made the pile of crap called Flash. And Both Fireworks and Dreamweaver had their fair share of bugs under Macromedia too.
- shiftpgdn 4y ago
  Flash was an incredible accessible animation engine. There are dozens of “webtoons” that got their start as flash animations.
  - coldtea 4y ago
    It was accessible, but also insecure, and buggy. And aside from animations, it helped build the "landing page" nightmare - huge (for the download speeds of the time) pages, loading tons of assets, to do nothing. Or the even worse "flash-only website" which just showed some text and images, and had nightmarish navigation, slow download times, didn't use regular html widgets, and you couldn't copy and paste or take a bookmark of your position in it...
    - Jasper_ 4y ago
      The true neglect really started showing after Adobe bought the product. And your last paragraph could also apply to a lot of HTML5 apps, especially during the "AJAX" era. People didn't care about those things (and a lot of them still don't !) regardless of the technology used.
  - yamtaddle 4y ago
    Indeed—however much it "sucked", there's literally no replacement. We've simply lost a certain kind of very-accessible creation tool for rich, animation-heavy, potentially-interactive content.
    - coldtea 4y ago
      How is Adobe Animate, for one, not a replacement? And it even exports native HTML/JS code.
      - rchaud 4y ago
        If you have a Mac, I suggest Tumult Hype, which works very similarly, and has no subscription. Exports to HTML, GIF, OAML and MP4
  - klondike_klive 4y ago
    I wouldn't have a career without it, that's for sure. I made a cartoon called The Pygmy Shrew which went round the world and led to me going to Monaco to record Roger Moore!
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
- rchaud 4y ago
  Ah yes, the famously crap Flash. Thank goodness interactive experiences now require a full developer team, myriad NPM packages, and an application deployment pipeline. All for a web page that won't even work in a few years' time when some script necessary for the page to work ends up getting removed from whatever template they're using.
  - coldtea 4y ago
    >Thank goodness interactive experiences now require a full developer team Interactive experiences the kind Flash was used for, can now be done trivially without plugins AND be compatible with the rest of the page (e.g. history, copy paste, etc.). For some basic stuff Flash was used you can even do them in one line of CSS. You can even play video, sound, and trigger MIDI natively now, with just a few lines. More advanced stuff, you can it do with just canvas and at most a wrapper lib for higher level methods - no "NPM packages" or anything else required. For casual games or animation, there are tons of FOSS and even proprietary libs, with game-building templates and GUIs to do what Flash did, and even things Flash barely did, like 3D - and they all export to native web code running on all platforms - even mobile. And with lower resources that Flash did. So, yeah, the crap Flash.
    - rchaud 4y ago
      All I can say is, good luck navigating the Minesweeper field that are the caniuse.com tables for browser feature cross-compatibility. At least Flash worked everywhere, even on Android.
- artursapek 4y ago
  Flash itself was a work of art.
  - mountain_peak 4y ago
    It's a work of art because it was created by someone with a great sense of art - Johnathan Gay, who developed Dark Castle using tools that would end up becoming Flash/Director. [0] [0] https://quorten.github.io/quorten-blog1/blog/2019/05/18/silicon-beach-sf https://quorten.github.io/quorten-blog1/blog/2019/05/18/sili...
- xmonkee 4y ago
  I never curse on HN, but screw you, man. Nothing in my programming life has felt the way making animations and scripting them felt with Flash. You either missed out, or got suckered by steve jobs into thinking it's bad. It was overused, sure, but that's true of every new technology that's accessible and powerful.
  - coldtea 4y ago
  - rchaud 4y ago
    Thank you! Somebody that gets it. Building something in Flash visually felt far more concrete and rewarding vs having to write lines of code for CSS keyframes or SVG animations. Flash also just made it possible for non-programmers to build cool stuff. Today, that is pretty much impossible if you're not a programmer. Programmers often aren't artists, so when they're playing around, they build something that may only be of interest to them. Taking HN as an example, I have seen tons of posts about people excitedly describing their favourite static site generator. Not much there for others to really dig into and enjoy. And that's what we lose when the tools of creation are limited to those whose interests lie entirely elsewhere.
  - toiletfuneral 4y ago
  - dang 4y ago
    Please don't cross into personal attack on HN. Your comment would have been just fine without the first bit. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
- ChrisArchitect 4y ago
  It's pretty established now that for what we had at the time/the environment/and where the web was evolving, Flash was actually pretty damn good as far as UX for creators and the web has never regained that level of expression/ease yet. (despite all the technical problems and anti-open-web caveats)

MiddleEndian 4y ago

I still use Adobe Animate (formerly Macromedia Flash), for simple vector drawings. For example, you can just draw a circle, draw a line through it, delete part of the circle that is bisected on the line, then click and drag the line or the remaining curve to curve those two segments. It's so much easier than using the pen tool or having to deal with vectors in Illustrator.

JoeyJoJoJr 4y ago
Same here. I’ve never found a vector editing tool to be as intuitive as Animate/Flash.

coldtea 4y ago

>except Macromedia apps had far better UX, better performance, and better integration with the web Lest we only remember the roses smelling side, Macromedia also made the pile of crap called Flash. And Both Fireworks and Dreamweaver had their fair share of bugs under Macromedia too.

shiftpgdn 4y ago
Flash was an incredible accessible animation engine. There are dozens of “webtoons” that got their start as flash animations.
- coldtea 4y ago
  It was accessible, but also insecure, and buggy. And aside from animations, it helped build the "landing page" nightmare - huge (for the download speeds of the time) pages, loading tons of assets, to do nothing. Or the even worse "flash-only website" which just showed some text and images, and had nightmarish navigation, slow download times, didn't use regular html widgets, and you couldn't copy and paste or take a bookmark of your position in it...
  - Jasper_ 4y ago
    The true neglect really started showing after Adobe bought the product. And your last paragraph could also apply to a lot of HTML5 apps, especially during the "AJAX" era. People didn't care about those things (and a lot of them still don't !) regardless of the technology used.
- yamtaddle 4y ago
  Indeed—however much it "sucked", there's literally no replacement. We've simply lost a certain kind of very-accessible creation tool for rich, animation-heavy, potentially-interactive content.
  - coldtea 4y ago
    How is Adobe Animate, for one, not a replacement? And it even exports native HTML/JS code.
    - rchaud 4y ago
      If you have a Mac, I suggest Tumult Hype, which works very similarly, and has no subscription. Exports to HTML, GIF, OAML and MP4
- klondike_klive 4y ago
  I wouldn't have a career without it, that's for sure. I made a cartoon called The Pygmy Shrew which went round the world and led to me going to Monaco to record Roger Moore!
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
rchaud 4y ago
Ah yes, the famously crap Flash. Thank goodness interactive experiences now require a full developer team, myriad NPM packages, and an application deployment pipeline. All for a web page that won't even work in a few years' time when some script necessary for the page to work ends up getting removed from whatever template they're using.
- coldtea 4y ago
  >Thank goodness interactive experiences now require a full developer team Interactive experiences the kind Flash was used for, can now be done trivially without plugins AND be compatible with the rest of the page (e.g. history, copy paste, etc.). For some basic stuff Flash was used you can even do them in one line of CSS. You can even play video, sound, and trigger MIDI natively now, with just a few lines. More advanced stuff, you can it do with just canvas and at most a wrapper lib for higher level methods - no "NPM packages" or anything else required. For casual games or animation, there are tons of FOSS and even proprietary libs, with game-building templates and GUIs to do what Flash did, and even things Flash barely did, like 3D - and they all export to native web code running on all platforms - even mobile. And with lower resources that Flash did. So, yeah, the crap Flash.
  - rchaud 4y ago
    All I can say is, good luck navigating the Minesweeper field that are the caniuse.com tables for browser feature cross-compatibility. At least Flash worked everywhere, even on Android.
artursapek 4y ago
Flash itself was a work of art.
- mountain_peak 4y ago
  It's a work of art because it was created by someone with a great sense of art - Johnathan Gay, who developed Dark Castle using tools that would end up becoming Flash/Director. [0] [0] https://quorten.github.io/quorten-blog1/blog/2019/05/18/silicon-beach-sf https://quorten.github.io/quorten-blog1/blog/2019/05/18/sili...
xmonkee 4y ago
I never curse on HN, but screw you, man. Nothing in my programming life has felt the way making animations and scripting them felt with Flash. You either missed out, or got suckered by steve jobs into thinking it's bad. It was overused, sure, but that's true of every new technology that's accessible and powerful.
- coldtea 4y ago
- rchaud 4y ago
  Thank you! Somebody that gets it. Building something in Flash visually felt far more concrete and rewarding vs having to write lines of code for CSS keyframes or SVG animations. Flash also just made it possible for non-programmers to build cool stuff. Today, that is pretty much impossible if you're not a programmer. Programmers often aren't artists, so when they're playing around, they build something that may only be of interest to them. Taking HN as an example, I have seen tons of posts about people excitedly describing their favourite static site generator. Not much there for others to really dig into and enjoy. And that's what we lose when the tools of creation are limited to those whose interests lie entirely elsewhere.
- toiletfuneral 4y ago
- dang 4y ago
  Please don't cross into personal attack on HN. Your comment would have been just fine without the first bit. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
ChrisArchitect 4y ago
It's pretty established now that for what we had at the time/the environment/and where the web was evolving, Flash was actually pretty damn good as far as UX for creators and the web has never regained that level of expression/ease yet. (despite all the technical problems and anti-open-web caveats)