Flash was extremely successful, and it was a really great abstraction. What failed was Adobe's implementation, not the idea. Same with Java. JVM had (and AFAIK

Flash was extremely successful, and it was a really great abstraction. What failed was Adobe's implementation, not the idea. Same with Java. JVM had (and AFAIK still has) a horrible cold startup time which locked the entire browser up, causing the user to curse profanely.