4 ms·

Tell HN: I Miss Flash

18 points by lagniappe 3y ago

I'm not sorry for it, and I guess I don't have much to add. I miss it though.

flax 3y ago
Flash, the authoring tool wasn't very good for coding. It was great for visuals and animation, apparently, but I'm a programmer. Flash, the runtime was great.. except for the perennial security issues. But Flash, the platform on which to deploy my games and experiments made with FlashDevelop and AS3, is still unmatched by anything today. Flutter's pretty close, for mobile targets. The web performance and library support is still not quite there for games, but its getting there.
stop50 3y ago
The only thing i miss is the henry stickman series. But i have ruffle and archic've.org for that
pentaphobe 3y ago
Me too. That whole era evokes next level nostalgia for me Not just for the awesome creative pockets of animation it enabled (though that's a major factor), nor for the insane quantity of small and medium games it inspired (also a huge factor) I also miss the entirely unnecessary creative multimedia websites with their novel explorations of interaction. Despite (or perhaps because of?) their occasionally inscrutable design and usability, lack of accessibility and other opposing arguments; there was something exciting about the unhinged and pointless exploration of novelty, community of knowledge share..
MerelyMortal 3y ago
When I was a kid, it was very easy to make animations with it. I imagine it would have been easy to make games with it too, but I never bothered. I miss it and Visual Basic 6. (And operating systems that were just operating systems.)
etaioinshrdlu 3y ago
We miss the things we had during our youth which no longer exist or are not common anymore.
Ajay-p 3y ago
Same. It was very simple to make small games and visuals.
jimmar 3y ago
Adobe's tools for creating flash games and animations were awesome. I haven't seen anything similar for developing the same content targeting modern HTML. It feels like a major regression for the internet.
- CharlesW 3y ago
  > I haven't seen anything similar for developing the same content targeting modern HTML. It's called something different now, but the authoring tool is still available and targets modern, standards-based runtimes: https://www.adobe.com/products/animate.html https://www.adobe.com/products/animate.html
sp332 3y ago
Flash games and animations were not bad, but it crashed a lot and was terribly insecure for a web platform.
CharlesW 3y ago
If you miss the runtime, look into https://ruffle.rs/ https://ruffle.rs/ and consider contributing to the project. If you miss the authoring tool, it's now called Adobe Animate: https://www.adobe.com/products/animate.html https://www.adobe.com/products/animate.html If you miss Flash games and animations, there seem to be a bunch of archives. The FlashPoint Collection has preserved over 170,000 games and animations: https://flashpointarchive.org/ https://flashpointarchive.org/
nevernothing 3y ago
Me too. The software was so good that 25 years later there are still animators using the Macromedia version of Flash. If anyone wants to play around with tweening online: https://bestsnip.com/animation https://bestsnip.com/animation
leeeeep 3y ago
Nice. I miss jQuery and Vanilla Js too as opposed to react and using usecallback because of invalidating dom changes because of changing function references. But tech likes to get more complicated and deprecate swaths of tech/good games/code that can't be maintained.
nenaoki 3y ago
JPEXS[0] is very full-featured if you're interested in porting swfs. I revived this simple loop the other weekend and it was a breeze to extract the media; https://fwoofy.moe/ https://fwoofy.moe/ (sound warning) Original https://dagobah.net/flash/fwoofy.swf https://dagobah.net/flash/fwoofy.swf [0] https://github.com/jindrapetrik/jpexs-decompiler https://github.com/jindrapetrik/jpexs-decompiler

18 points by lagniappe 3y ago

I'm not sorry for it, and I guess I don't have much to add. I miss it though.

flax 3y ago

Flash, the authoring tool wasn't very good for coding. It was great for visuals and animation, apparently, but I'm a programmer. Flash, the runtime was great.. except for the perennial security issues. But Flash, the platform on which to deploy my games and experiments made with FlashDevelop and AS3, is still unmatched by anything today. Flutter's pretty close, for mobile targets. The web performance and library support is still not quite there for games, but its getting there.

stop50 3y ago

The only thing i miss is the henry stickman series. But i have ruffle and archic've.org for that

pentaphobe 3y ago

Me too. That whole era evokes next level nostalgia for me Not just for the awesome creative pockets of animation it enabled (though that's a major factor), nor for the insane quantity of small and medium games it inspired (also a huge factor) I also miss the entirely unnecessary creative multimedia websites with their novel explorations of interaction. Despite (or perhaps because of?) their occasionally inscrutable design and usability, lack of accessibility and other opposing arguments; there was something exciting about the unhinged and pointless exploration of novelty, community of knowledge share..

MerelyMortal 3y ago

When I was a kid, it was very easy to make animations with it. I imagine it would have been easy to make games with it too, but I never bothered. I miss it and Visual Basic 6. (And operating systems that were just operating systems.)

etaioinshrdlu 3y ago

We miss the things we had during our youth which no longer exist or are not common anymore.

Ajay-p 3y ago

Same. It was very simple to make small games and visuals.

jimmar 3y ago

Adobe's tools for creating flash games and animations were awesome. I haven't seen anything similar for developing the same content targeting modern HTML. It feels like a major regression for the internet.

CharlesW 3y ago
> I haven't seen anything similar for developing the same content targeting modern HTML. It's called something different now, but the authoring tool is still available and targets modern, standards-based runtimes: https://www.adobe.com/products/animate.html https://www.adobe.com/products/animate.html

sp332 3y ago

Flash games and animations were not bad, but it crashed a lot and was terribly insecure for a web platform.

CharlesW 3y ago

If you miss the runtime, look into https://ruffle.rs/ https://ruffle.rs/ and consider contributing to the project. If you miss the authoring tool, it's now called Adobe Animate: https://www.adobe.com/products/animate.html https://www.adobe.com/products/animate.html If you miss Flash games and animations, there seem to be a bunch of archives. The FlashPoint Collection has preserved over 170,000 games and animations: https://flashpointarchive.org/ https://flashpointarchive.org/

nevernothing 3y ago

Me too. The software was so good that 25 years later there are still animators using the Macromedia version of Flash. If anyone wants to play around with tweening online: https://bestsnip.com/animation https://bestsnip.com/animation

leeeeep 3y ago

Nice. I miss jQuery and Vanilla Js too as opposed to react and using usecallback because of invalidating dom changes because of changing function references. But tech likes to get more complicated and deprecate swaths of tech/good games/code that can't be maintained.

nenaoki 3y ago

JPEXS[0] is very full-featured if you're interested in porting swfs. I revived this simple loop the other weekend and it was a breeze to extract the media; https://fwoofy.moe/ https://fwoofy.moe/ (sound warning) Original https://dagobah.net/flash/fwoofy.swf https://dagobah.net/flash/fwoofy.swf [0] https://github.com/jindrapetrik/jpexs-decompiler https://github.com/jindrapetrik/jpexs-decompiler