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It's pretty wild that we still haven't reached parity with Macromedia Flash in the browser. I mean, nearly 20 years ago I, a rube, was making professional anim

It's pretty wild that we still haven't reached parity with Macromedia Flash in the browser. I mean, nearly 20 years ago I, a rube, was making professional animations in no time, and since then it got harder, and then less hard, but it's never been easier. Hell, some (if not many) animation studios still use old Flash copies to make cartoons that are airing today. This is super cool (and I'm a huge fan of Lottie), and I will probably check it out because I miss being able to make things easily but I can't help but feel sad that we're still making baby steps after a huge leap backwards. (Don't get me wrong I understand why Flash died, but HTML5 did not remotely live up to the hype.)

afavour 3y ago
While I agree I think that part of the reason is that requirements are so much more complex these days. No one had to make a Flash animation responsive to different phone sizes and orientations.
- doctorpangloss 3y ago
  Most video content today is 9:16 or 16:9 so… I’m not sure that matters.
  - afavour 3y ago
    Flash was a whole lot more than just video content back in the day. I have fond memories of applying wmode=transparent and having my Flash seamlessly fit into the rest of my page.
    - depereo 3y ago
      Yeah. Absolute ton of web interfaces in tech, to manage servers or VMs or storage arrays relied on flash interfaces. The transition off that was painful.
- freeone3000 3y ago
  Flash animation was vector-based and inherently scaled to an incredible variety of resolutions.
  - afavour 3y ago
    Resolutions, yes. Proportions, no.
- vendiddy 3y ago
  I don't think the added complexity is even remotely justified. Let's face it: things that used to be easy have become unnecessarily complex. PS - This project looks very cool!
- Cthulhu_ 3y ago
  But that's not an insurmountable challenge, and Adobe can (has?) add functionality to their tooling to support it.
theaiquestion 3y ago
Yeah I was in school and wanted to try making games - but that was the exact year that "flash is dead - HTML5 is going to replace it" And.... Yeah HTML gave us the canvas? No editor, no animations, no input. The real innovations were with ES5/2015. It utterly destroyed the "mess around and make some basic games". It's utterly laughable that "html5" was somehow the "alternative". We went from an editor that anyone can quickly create animations, games, etc to nothing - for over 10 years! And yeah to my knowledge we're _still_ not back to what we used to have.
Cthulhu_ 3y ago
See, it's not Flash per se, it's Macromedia / Adobe that never adapted the workflow to the modern web. And nowadays, even if they wouldn't want to target modern web as the output, they could put a runtime and compile it to WASM... just like Flash. The iPad and co dropped Flash support, but Adobe was too slow to updat their own stuff, and the existing Flash community didn't pick up again. I mean there's Adobe Animate that if I'm reading this right is the same product, but the ecosystem died.
- xyzzy_plugh 3y ago
  No, the capabilities were simply not there, nor where they portable. Sure, Adobe could have reinvented the entire platform, but it would likely have been a waste. And if it were so simple, someone else would have done it. Adobe Animate is not the same product.
thegeomaster 3y ago
I agree with you. Flash got a whole generation of animators and developers into the craft. HTML5 is like three levels of abstraction down - everything is technically possible, but the tooling was not there even after this many years. I would be interested to hear how Lottielab compares to Flash from your perspective.
deleted 3y ago
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afavour 3y ago

While I agree I think that part of the reason is that requirements are so much more complex these days. No one had to make a Flash animation responsive to different phone sizes and orientations.

doctorpangloss 3y ago
Most video content today is 9:16 or 16:9 so… I’m not sure that matters.
- afavour 3y ago
  Flash was a whole lot more than just video content back in the day. I have fond memories of applying wmode=transparent and having my Flash seamlessly fit into the rest of my page.
  - depereo 3y ago
    Yeah. Absolute ton of web interfaces in tech, to manage servers or VMs or storage arrays relied on flash interfaces. The transition off that was painful.
freeone3000 3y ago
Flash animation was vector-based and inherently scaled to an incredible variety of resolutions.
- afavour 3y ago
  Resolutions, yes. Proportions, no.
vendiddy 3y ago
I don't think the added complexity is even remotely justified. Let's face it: things that used to be easy have become unnecessarily complex. PS - This project looks very cool!
Cthulhu_ 3y ago
But that's not an insurmountable challenge, and Adobe can (has?) add functionality to their tooling to support it.

theaiquestion 3y ago

Yeah I was in school and wanted to try making games - but that was the exact year that "flash is dead - HTML5 is going to replace it" And.... Yeah HTML gave us the canvas? No editor, no animations, no input. The real innovations were with ES5/2015. It utterly destroyed the "mess around and make some basic games". It's utterly laughable that "html5" was somehow the "alternative". We went from an editor that anyone can quickly create animations, games, etc to nothing - for over 10 years! And yeah to my knowledge we're _still_ not back to what we used to have.

Cthulhu_ 3y ago

See, it's not Flash per se, it's Macromedia / Adobe that never adapted the workflow to the modern web. And nowadays, even if they wouldn't want to target modern web as the output, they could put a runtime and compile it to WASM... just like Flash. The iPad and co dropped Flash support, but Adobe was too slow to updat their own stuff, and the existing Flash community didn't pick up again. I mean there's Adobe Animate that if I'm reading this right is the same product, but the ecosystem died.

xyzzy_plugh 3y ago
No, the capabilities were simply not there, nor where they portable. Sure, Adobe could have reinvented the entire platform, but it would likely have been a waste. And if it were so simple, someone else would have done it. Adobe Animate is not the same product.

thegeomaster 3y ago

I agree with you. Flash got a whole generation of animators and developers into the craft. HTML5 is like three levels of abstraction down - everything is technically possible, but the tooling was not there even after this many years. I would be interested to hear how Lottielab compares to Flash from your perspective.

deleted 3y ago

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