45 ms·

Flash is still unsurpassed as the easiest publishing medium. JavaScript build system layer cake and "web standards" are a million times harder than just drawin

by echelon 5mo ago

Flash is still unsurpassed as the easiest publishing medium. JavaScript build system layer cake and "web standards" are a million times harder than just drawing some stuff, maybe writing a simple function, then building a static file that can be embedded anywhere and even downloaded. You have to spend so much time setting up any flash alternative, and the "standards" are worse. I hate Steve Jobs for killing Flash and Adobe for being such awful stewards of one of the most amazing web technologies. Kids growing up today have no idea how magical Flash was. It was like Roblox or Minecraft for web. Websites are still inferior to Flash of the early 2000s. It's taken decades and they can only mimic a fraction of its power. And none of its ease.

LeFantome 5mo ago
You know you can use Ruffle if you really want Flash right? https://ruffle.rs https://ruffle.rs But the only standard you need is WASM. All browsers support it. Use whatever you want to make it. In fact, Ruffle is just a WASM app.
- ameliaquining 5mo ago
  The problem is that, while there's no theoretical barrier to an authoring tool with a Director-like user experience that exports to Wasm, no one has actually written one, and it's not a small amount of work. (I agree that we're better off without Flash, but this particular problem is real and unsolved.)
- superkuh 5mo ago
  Ruffle is not complete or comprehensive. In my test of a dozen swf ruffle could successfully display about half. Compare to the actual flash plugin Shockwave Flash 11.2 r202 (11.2.202.643) in my retro machine browser which displayed them all perfectly.
  - aboardRat4 5mo ago
    What about lightspark? htps://lightspark.github.io
- thisislife2 5mo ago
  Or you can just use PaleMoon browser ( https://www.palemoon.org/ https://www.palemoon.org/ ) and install the original Flash player plug-in in it.
m104 5mo ago
Yeah but the execution still mattered. I'm a Flash / Shockwave fan as well but there's no point pretending that package was sufficient for the job it was pitched to do. Macromedia seemed to be on a really good track with Shockwave and Flash, but either didn't set up the technology for internet success, or really just sold out the goods with the Adobe acquisition. In any case, take heart though. If we did it once, we can do it again.
- intrasight 5mo ago
  But we won't because this isn't something that can be done by consensus or by an ad company.
drtz 5mo ago
> Websites are still inferior to Flash of the early 2000s. It's taken decades and they can only mimic a fraction of its power. Is this a troll? What could an application do with Flash in 2005 that we can't do with a modern web application today (excluding the obvious answer of runtime vulnerabilities that allowed apps to escape the sandbox)?
- ricardonunez 5mo ago
  what’s he is referring is the editor and the easy way of drawing things, still agree we can do things today but a easy to draw editor like that is missing. I was a fan of flash and fireworks.
  - radley 5mo ago
    The editor was a scripted timeline, similar to a video or animation timeline. It was fantastic for creatives, but counterintuitive for programmers, so most devs hated it.
- fdgfikgfv 5mo ago
  Flash had its problems but as a user, it looked sharper and smoother than even current websites. And its editor gave non-tech users ability to create amazing animations, interfaces, and even games.
  - dredmorbius 5mo ago
    Image-wise, SVGA + JS probably gets you the clarity. Standard gif / image animations not so much, if that's what you're referencing. This isn't my baliwick, so I've absolutely nothing to say about the ease with which these options can be created.
    - afiori 5mo ago
      Conceptually maybe you can compile flash to SVG+js but this has nothing to do with the point. Many insist (I have no direct experience) that the flash ecosystem (especially the editor) was and is unsurpassed as a publishing platform for interactive experiences. Today with the current focus on mobile+low latency+e-commerce optimizations flash would probably have shown a lot of limitations, yet JavaScript, SVG, canvas, http webgl etc still fail to provide a "competitor" to what flash used to be. The web simply went in a different direction, one that left many unsatisfied
turpentine 5mo ago
Magical? Those are some rose tinted glasses. Having to install a binary blob from a free-software hostile vendor that wanted a monopoly to load a website was always ridiculous ask. Flash was a constant embarassment of RCEs vulns and virtually non-existent Linux support.
- mvdtnz 5mo ago
  The overwhelming majority of computer users simply DO NOT CARE about things like "install a binary blob" or "free-software hostile vendor" or "non-existent Linux support". They installed the plugin and got a way better experience. > Flash was a constant embarassment of RCEs vulns I wonder if anyone has done an analysis of Flash versus Javascript (or other browser technology) vulns over their respective lifespans.
  - kstrauser 5mo ago
    If Flash hadn’t sucked harder than a neutron star, that would be an argument to have. People install lots of proprietary plugins today. Flash would’ve been just one more on that list. But it did suck, and badly. It crashed the browser all the freaking time, often hard enough to crash the whole OS. (“But the OS shouldn’t let that happen!” True, although even with that said, it was in the short list of common apps capable of crashing that badly. It was almost a talent.) Flash was horrid. While idea was fine, the implementation was terrible. No mobile OS could have run it solidly and without sucking batteries like no tomorrow. Flash in the right hands could have been nice. We’ll never know because that never happened.
    - radley 5mo ago
      > No mobile OS could have run it solidly and without sucking batteries like no tomorrow. By the time mobile could run Flash, it was too late. Between Apple & Adobe, it had no shot of making the transition. But before that, Flash was pretty amazing.
      - kstrauser 5mo ago
Papazsazsa 5mo ago
You'll get hammered for this on HN, but the web was magical and weird with Flash around, and now it feels quite vanilla and boring. I long for the days of weird experimental art and goofy animations and bonkers UIs.
- dpark 5mo ago
  It was a fun and experimental time for sure. Way more stuff was weird in a good way. Standards hadn’t settled. All kinds of fun stuff was created in Flash that could not have been built with the standardized web tech of the day. I don’t really miss Flash but I do miss the early internet sometimes and Flash was part of that. (Remember when it was FutureSplash?) I would be remiss if I didn’t post the most early-Internet-type thing I’ve encountered in a long time. Dungeon Soup. https://m.youtube.com/@DungeonSoup https://m.youtube.com/@DungeonSoup Once upon a time this would have been my favorite Flash cartoon series. “Season one” playlist: https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLSq76P-lbX8Ws6vgAAC2WhwSuBwFyzJWJ&si=AnUE8xGM0EMhPdOL https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLSq76P-lbX8Ws6vgAAC2WhwSu...
- zelphirkalt 5mo ago
  I would rather say, that now the web feels like being handed turds at every turn, and needing to wear a hazmat suit, if one wants to stay clean. Not what I would call boring. More like infuriating.
fragmede 5mo ago
Compared to the best that someone can vibe code? Not to show my age, but we were kids when flash came out. That copy of macro media? I don't know about you. We spent hours and hours and hours with that spend hours and hours and hours with vibecoding and tell me that you really can't accomplish similar shit. Then you just to deploy it you and I might be to smart to just paste your Vercel API key in ChatGPT, but pretend you're 16 right now. I can tell you how much tsc sucks off the top of my head but what I can't do is tell you to hit ctrl+enter in Claude desktop to play movie. What kids know today is how magical Claude desktop and ChatGPT are. The deploy story is trivial. just give the AI the key. We can judge someone for being dumb enough to do that, but unless you're selling consulting services, it's not nice to laugh. if you are selling consulting services then let's talk sales channels lol
- watwut 5mo ago
  Yes compared to vibe coded stuff too. And it costed less money.
LooseMarmoset 5mo ago
this is unfortunately, the most revisionist take I can imagine. I don’t mean this in a personal way, mind you but while it may have been magical to publish interactive websites, using flash, that magic is utterly outweighed by the mundane vulnerabilities that flash was riddled with. It’s safe to say we all miss sites like Homestar runner, and I had a co- worker who generated many meme – worthy flash presentations of his coworkers, which were hysterical. however, flash generated security vulnerabilities on the daily, and unfortunately, these vulnerabilities were very conveniently cross platform. These vulnerabilities, which Adobe couldn’t, or wouldn’t, resolve resulted in many many lost hours fixing virus – and Trojan horse – infested PCs, Macs, and cell phones. Adobe never managed to sandbox flash at all. I miss a lot of old flash content, and I’m sure many people miss the ease with which you could create interactive content for websites. The fault here lies squarely on Adobe, who wouldn’t fix the situation.
m463 5mo ago
I would think: 1) macromedia -> 2) adobe -> 3) steve jobs I think 2 was the root cause, not #1 or #3. https://web.archive.org/web/20170615060422/https://www.apple.com/hotnews/thoughts-on-flash/ https://web.archive.org/web/20170615060422/https://www.apple... That said, I wonder how easy it is to publish on apple? I think of xcode in sort of the same way sj complaining about adobe being cross-platform and slow.
spankibalt 5mo ago
> "Websites are still inferior to Flash of the early 2000s. It's taken decades and they can only mimic a fraction of its power. And none of its ease." Somewhat mirrors my experience with all those rubbish non-PDF formats for digital document publishing, e. g. ePub: Often terminally ugly and utterly useless on top of it (not properly citeable, et cetera).
thisislife2 5mo ago
Those downvoting you have no idea of what you are talking about. Flash was what truly brought multimedia to the internet. You could make complex vector animations so easily in it, and it would only take a few minutes to load on a dialup or ISDN because of its small size (10's or 100's of KB). At one point, it used to power the whole of Youtube (and many other video sites). "Web applications" in this era actually meant something built with Flash. And it did all this on ancient hardware. Flash used to run on 90+ % of internet connected PCs at one point if I remember right. And because of that, you could count on Flash player more than the browsers they ran in. Adobe 100% screwed it up.
- TheOtherHobbes 5mo ago
  I have less rosy memories of self-indulgent Flash loading pages which took forever over dialup and contributed nothing. And a lot of weird-for-the-sake-of-it UI experiments. There were also fun sites and games and generally silliness, but there was a lot of Flash slop. Was it a more interesting web? It was more experimental and colourful. The Flash/Kai's Power Tools/Fireworks maximalist period was more inventive, but the UX wasn't necessarily friendlier. It was a great time to be running a design agency, but not always a great time to be an ordinary user. What actually killed Flash? Social media. That took the user interest, siloed it, and cut off the oxygen of individual attention. Which is why even if someone reinvented a simple animation -> js etc tool it wouldn't make a difference. The attention isn't there to support a culture where creative sites become memes in their own right and search engines make them easy to find.
kalleboo 5mo ago
What I never understand is why we never got a Flash-level authoring tool that exported to modern JavaScript/Canvas. Ruffle shows it can be done. Adobe could have retuned Animate to do it, but instead let it languish as a niche animation tool for some animation studios to use before trying to kill it.
- monknomo 5mo ago
  this seems like a huge gap in the market

by echelon 5mo ago

LeFantome 5mo ago

You know you can use Ruffle if you really want Flash right? https://ruffle.rs https://ruffle.rs But the only standard you need is WASM. All browsers support it. Use whatever you want to make it. In fact, Ruffle is just a WASM app.

ameliaquining 5mo ago
The problem is that, while there's no theoretical barrier to an authoring tool with a Director-like user experience that exports to Wasm, no one has actually written one, and it's not a small amount of work. (I agree that we're better off without Flash, but this particular problem is real and unsolved.)
superkuh 5mo ago
Ruffle is not complete or comprehensive. In my test of a dozen swf ruffle could successfully display about half. Compare to the actual flash plugin Shockwave Flash 11.2 r202 (11.2.202.643) in my retro machine browser which displayed them all perfectly.
- aboardRat4 5mo ago
  What about lightspark? htps://lightspark.github.io
thisislife2 5mo ago
Or you can just use PaleMoon browser ( https://www.palemoon.org/ https://www.palemoon.org/ ) and install the original Flash player plug-in in it.

m104 5mo ago

Yeah but the execution still mattered. I'm a Flash / Shockwave fan as well but there's no point pretending that package was sufficient for the job it was pitched to do. Macromedia seemed to be on a really good track with Shockwave and Flash, but either didn't set up the technology for internet success, or really just sold out the goods with the Adobe acquisition. In any case, take heart though. If we did it once, we can do it again.

intrasight 5mo ago
But we won't because this isn't something that can be done by consensus or by an ad company.

drtz 5mo ago

> Websites are still inferior to Flash of the early 2000s. It's taken decades and they can only mimic a fraction of its power. Is this a troll? What could an application do with Flash in 2005 that we can't do with a modern web application today (excluding the obvious answer of runtime vulnerabilities that allowed apps to escape the sandbox)?

ricardonunez 5mo ago
what’s he is referring is the editor and the easy way of drawing things, still agree we can do things today but a easy to draw editor like that is missing. I was a fan of flash and fireworks.
- radley 5mo ago
  The editor was a scripted timeline, similar to a video or animation timeline. It was fantastic for creatives, but counterintuitive for programmers, so most devs hated it.
fdgfikgfv 5mo ago
Flash had its problems but as a user, it looked sharper and smoother than even current websites. And its editor gave non-tech users ability to create amazing animations, interfaces, and even games.
- dredmorbius 5mo ago
  Image-wise, SVGA + JS probably gets you the clarity. Standard gif / image animations not so much, if that's what you're referencing. This isn't my baliwick, so I've absolutely nothing to say about the ease with which these options can be created.
  - afiori 5mo ago
    Conceptually maybe you can compile flash to SVG+js but this has nothing to do with the point. Many insist (I have no direct experience) that the flash ecosystem (especially the editor) was and is unsurpassed as a publishing platform for interactive experiences. Today with the current focus on mobile+low latency+e-commerce optimizations flash would probably have shown a lot of limitations, yet JavaScript, SVG, canvas, http webgl etc still fail to provide a "competitor" to what flash used to be. The web simply went in a different direction, one that left many unsatisfied

turpentine 5mo ago

Magical? Those are some rose tinted glasses. Having to install a binary blob from a free-software hostile vendor that wanted a monopoly to load a website was always ridiculous ask. Flash was a constant embarassment of RCEs vulns and virtually non-existent Linux support.

mvdtnz 5mo ago
The overwhelming majority of computer users simply DO NOT CARE about things like "install a binary blob" or "free-software hostile vendor" or "non-existent Linux support". They installed the plugin and got a way better experience. > Flash was a constant embarassment of RCEs vulns I wonder if anyone has done an analysis of Flash versus Javascript (or other browser technology) vulns over their respective lifespans.
- kstrauser 5mo ago
  If Flash hadn’t sucked harder than a neutron star, that would be an argument to have. People install lots of proprietary plugins today. Flash would’ve been just one more on that list. But it did suck, and badly. It crashed the browser all the freaking time, often hard enough to crash the whole OS. (“But the OS shouldn’t let that happen!” True, although even with that said, it was in the short list of common apps capable of crashing that badly. It was almost a talent.) Flash was horrid. While idea was fine, the implementation was terrible. No mobile OS could have run it solidly and without sucking batteries like no tomorrow. Flash in the right hands could have been nice. We’ll never know because that never happened.
  - radley 5mo ago
    > No mobile OS could have run it solidly and without sucking batteries like no tomorrow. By the time mobile could run Flash, it was too late. Between Apple & Adobe, it had no shot of making the transition. But before that, Flash was pretty amazing.
    - kstrauser 5mo ago

Papazsazsa 5mo ago

You'll get hammered for this on HN, but the web was magical and weird with Flash around, and now it feels quite vanilla and boring. I long for the days of weird experimental art and goofy animations and bonkers UIs.

dpark 5mo ago
It was a fun and experimental time for sure. Way more stuff was weird in a good way. Standards hadn’t settled. All kinds of fun stuff was created in Flash that could not have been built with the standardized web tech of the day. I don’t really miss Flash but I do miss the early internet sometimes and Flash was part of that. (Remember when it was FutureSplash?) I would be remiss if I didn’t post the most early-Internet-type thing I’ve encountered in a long time. Dungeon Soup. https://m.youtube.com/@DungeonSoup https://m.youtube.com/@DungeonSoup Once upon a time this would have been my favorite Flash cartoon series. “Season one” playlist: https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLSq76P-lbX8Ws6vgAAC2WhwSuBwFyzJWJ&si=AnUE8xGM0EMhPdOL https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLSq76P-lbX8Ws6vgAAC2WhwSu...
zelphirkalt 5mo ago
I would rather say, that now the web feels like being handed turds at every turn, and needing to wear a hazmat suit, if one wants to stay clean. Not what I would call boring. More like infuriating.

fragmede 5mo ago

Compared to the best that someone can vibe code? Not to show my age, but we were kids when flash came out. That copy of macro media? I don't know about you. We spent hours and hours and hours with that spend hours and hours and hours with vibecoding and tell me that you really can't accomplish similar shit. Then you just to deploy it you and I might be to smart to just paste your Vercel API key in ChatGPT, but pretend you're 16 right now. I can tell you how much tsc sucks off the top of my head but what I can't do is tell you to hit ctrl+enter in Claude desktop to play movie. What kids know today is how magical Claude desktop and ChatGPT are. The deploy story is trivial. just give the AI the key. We can judge someone for being dumb enough to do that, but unless you're selling consulting services, it's not nice to laugh. if you are selling consulting services then let's talk sales channels lol

watwut 5mo ago
Yes compared to vibe coded stuff too. And it costed less money.

LooseMarmoset 5mo ago

this is unfortunately, the most revisionist take I can imagine. I don’t mean this in a personal way, mind you but while it may have been magical to publish interactive websites, using flash, that magic is utterly outweighed by the mundane vulnerabilities that flash was riddled with. It’s safe to say we all miss sites like Homestar runner, and I had a co- worker who generated many meme – worthy flash presentations of his coworkers, which were hysterical. however, flash generated security vulnerabilities on the daily, and unfortunately, these vulnerabilities were very conveniently cross platform. These vulnerabilities, which Adobe couldn’t, or wouldn’t, resolve resulted in many many lost hours fixing virus – and Trojan horse – infested PCs, Macs, and cell phones. Adobe never managed to sandbox flash at all. I miss a lot of old flash content, and I’m sure many people miss the ease with which you could create interactive content for websites. The fault here lies squarely on Adobe, who wouldn’t fix the situation.

m463 5mo ago

I would think: 1) macromedia -> 2) adobe -> 3) steve jobs I think 2 was the root cause, not #1 or #3. https://web.archive.org/web/20170615060422/https://www.apple.com/hotnews/thoughts-on-flash/ https://web.archive.org/web/20170615060422/https://www.apple... That said, I wonder how easy it is to publish on apple? I think of xcode in sort of the same way sj complaining about adobe being cross-platform and slow.

spankibalt 5mo ago

> "Websites are still inferior to Flash of the early 2000s. It's taken decades and they can only mimic a fraction of its power. And none of its ease." Somewhat mirrors my experience with all those rubbish non-PDF formats for digital document publishing, e. g. ePub: Often terminally ugly and utterly useless on top of it (not properly citeable, et cetera).

thisislife2 5mo ago

Those downvoting you have no idea of what you are talking about. Flash was what truly brought multimedia to the internet. You could make complex vector animations so easily in it, and it would only take a few minutes to load on a dialup or ISDN because of its small size (10's or 100's of KB). At one point, it used to power the whole of Youtube (and many other video sites). "Web applications" in this era actually meant something built with Flash. And it did all this on ancient hardware. Flash used to run on 90+ % of internet connected PCs at one point if I remember right. And because of that, you could count on Flash player more than the browsers they ran in. Adobe 100% screwed it up.

TheOtherHobbes 5mo ago
I have less rosy memories of self-indulgent Flash loading pages which took forever over dialup and contributed nothing. And a lot of weird-for-the-sake-of-it UI experiments. There were also fun sites and games and generally silliness, but there was a lot of Flash slop. Was it a more interesting web? It was more experimental and colourful. The Flash/Kai's Power Tools/Fireworks maximalist period was more inventive, but the UX wasn't necessarily friendlier. It was a great time to be running a design agency, but not always a great time to be an ordinary user. What actually killed Flash? Social media. That took the user interest, siloed it, and cut off the oxygen of individual attention. Which is why even if someone reinvented a simple animation -> js etc tool it wouldn't make a difference. The attention isn't there to support a culture where creative sites become memes in their own right and search engines make them easy to find.

kalleboo 5mo ago

What I never understand is why we never got a Flash-level authoring tool that exported to modern JavaScript/Canvas. Ruffle shows it can be done. Adobe could have retuned Animate to do it, but instead let it languish as a niche animation tool for some animation studios to use before trying to kill it.

monknomo 5mo ago
this seems like a huge gap in the market