5 ms·

Getting Rid of Flash

56 points by p4bl0 14y ago

emp_ 14y ago
Something like a game never really sounded like the problem, it actually is a good idea before all standards get dragged into something usable, flash being used to power content and annoying ads was the reason the platform got to this point, I think. This is exactly what flash was for, power things not possible in the browser until the standards catch up (animation, video), then moving to the next missing thing (i.e.: gaming, 3d worlds)
- ErikAugust 14y ago
  Yeah Flash has its uses for sure. But it's best not to design portfolio websites with it, etc.
- Wintamute 14y ago
  > This is exactly what flash was for I contest your use of the past tense here. I think it'd be fairer to say "this is exactly what Flash is for". Historically (mid 2000s) Flash was doing for simple content animation what it's doing now for 3D libraries like the one linked to by OP. In other words in the days before jQuery and <canvas> etc. simple high fidelity animation of basic 2D content just wasn't technically practical in the native browser, so Flash filled the gap. Browsers moved on, and now its 3D (and arguably secure/hardware accelerated video) where a plugin like Flash can be useful. Flash had its time driving content, and at that time (as thousands of agencies, businesses and developers can attest) it was the best tool for the job.
deleted 14y ago
[deleted]
olaf 14y ago
The original blog post of Nicolas Cannasse has a question mark at the end (very strange and confusing vibes, if the originator does not know ...), which is missing here, which makes me want to ask how serious Nicaolas Cannassee really is, what can he really offer right now? How serious is he really, I don't trust him. Does anyone use haxe successfully in a professional context and earns money through it, is this platform worth an investment (time, learning) or are there hidden maintenance-nightmares-producing or other shortcomings, which prevent professional reliable large scale use comparable to flash? I would like to read opinions of people who do successful business with haxe (edit: first hand info).
- p4bl0 14y ago
  I know a few people who use haXe professionally. One of them that I know personally is a professional Flash developer who used haXe exclusively for some times, because it had a better standard library than Flash (AS2 at this time) and generated lighter and faster SWF files. I remember him telling me that he made a somewhat huge (several hundred euros) donation to the project and that it still cost him less than buying the Macromedia Flash software. Since AS3 he's back to Flash thought. Some others I know through their work: Motion Twin [1] for instance, who are the creators of a lot of very successful Flash games. [1] http://motion-twin.com/ http://motion-twin.com/
  - gizmogwai 14y ago
    Motion-twin is Nicolas Cannasse's company. So they obviously use HaXe extensively.
    - olaf 14y ago
      Thanks for claryfying that, now p4bl0's post appears to me like more or less self promotion.
      - p4bl0 14y ago
        Huh what? I've never worked for Motion-Twin, and I actually never wrote any haXe or Flash myself. I'm just a programming language enthusiast (and student to an extent, since my PhD subject is in part about PL design) so I like to follow Nicolas Cannasse's work. I also happen to enjoy one of MT games (Alpha Bounce [1]) very much and to have web developers friends among whom one made me discover haXe years ago, talking very highly about the technology (that's how I discovered Cannasse's work too). [1] http://www.alphabounce.com/ http://www.alphabounce.com/
        olaf 14y ago
        Sorry, self promotion in the sense, that a fan praises haxe but does not do business himself, which was not, what I was asking for.
chipsy 14y ago
NME(The premier Haxe cross-platform gaming/media library) also just updated, adding some support for native OpenGL calls: http://www.haxenme.org/blog/2012/12/22/merry-christmas-nme-3-5-0-is-here/ http://www.haxenme.org/blog/2012/12/22/merry-christmas-nme-3... 2013 is shaping up to be a strong year for Haxe's gaming abilities.
mahmud 14y ago
Cannasse is the last person I expected to see leave Flash. Dude built a career around the platform and released more tools for it than any single individual.
- swah 14y ago
  The title doesn't properly summarize the article. He is just saying that because Haxe can target WebGL, he could now dump Flash when performance of WebGL is good enough.
winter_blue 14y ago
Uh, I know everyone going to yell at me, but... I think it would have been much much better, had Adobe open-sourced Flash and turned into a standard (like ECMA or something). This could saved everyone in the industry a huge amount of effort porting, rewriting, etc. stuff to work on a platform where every browser does things in its own (horribly) inconsistent way.
- jdonaldson 14y ago
  There's many reasons this didn't happen. Some of them Adobe's fault, some not. The main thing to realize is that Adobe based AS3 on many leading proposals for Ecmascript 4. Ecmascript 4 would lay the groundwork for future versions of javascript, etc. Flash would still be closed source, but the language would be useful elsewhere in the browser. Several people have described the political issues surrounding this ES4 situation in far more detail, and how we arguably ended up the worse for it: Resig: http://ejohn.org/blog/ecmascript-harmony/ http://ejohn.org/blog/ecmascript-harmony/ Canasse: http://ncannasse.free.fr/?p=82 http://ncannasse.free.fr/?p=82 Mike Chambers: http://www.mikechambers.com/blog/2008/08/14/actionscript-3-and-ecmascript-4/ http://www.mikechambers.com/blog/2008/08/14/actionscript-3-a... So, why didn't Adobe just open source the flash plugin? One main reason not to was Microsoft: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microsoft_Java_Virtual_Machine#Sun_vs._Microsoft http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microsoft_Java_Virtual_Machine#... Another reason was, naturally, control. Both for Adobe and for user development. The Flash player was quirky, but incredibly consistent with decent performance. There really was no other option... js, java applets, activeX, they all had significant weaknesses due to differing availability and performance. If you wait around long enough in web development, you will have seen this type of situation many times. Haxe is a "free agent" that can break this cycle imho. It is not tied to a company like Typescript or Dart, nor is it tied to corporate controlled committees like ES4. It has an incredibly gifted language author, and a great team of developers. It's also very mature at this point (> 5 years old). I've used Haxe professionally for just under 5 years now.
- swah 14y ago
  No sane person can deny the great things that have been written in Flash when JS in the browser was nothing - I wish I had ridden that wave.

56 points by p4bl0 14y ago

emp_ 14y ago

Something like a game never really sounded like the problem, it actually is a good idea before all standards get dragged into something usable, flash being used to power content and annoying ads was the reason the platform got to this point, I think. This is exactly what flash was for, power things not possible in the browser until the standards catch up (animation, video), then moving to the next missing thing (i.e.: gaming, 3d worlds)

ErikAugust 14y ago
Yeah Flash has its uses for sure. But it's best not to design portfolio websites with it, etc.
Wintamute 14y ago
> This is exactly what flash was for I contest your use of the past tense here. I think it'd be fairer to say "this is exactly what Flash is for". Historically (mid 2000s) Flash was doing for simple content animation what it's doing now for 3D libraries like the one linked to by OP. In other words in the days before jQuery and <canvas> etc. simple high fidelity animation of basic 2D content just wasn't technically practical in the native browser, so Flash filled the gap. Browsers moved on, and now its 3D (and arguably secure/hardware accelerated video) where a plugin like Flash can be useful. Flash had its time driving content, and at that time (as thousands of agencies, businesses and developers can attest) it was the best tool for the job.

deleted 14y ago

[deleted]

olaf 14y ago

The original blog post of Nicolas Cannasse has a question mark at the end (very strange and confusing vibes, if the originator does not know ...), which is missing here, which makes me want to ask how serious Nicaolas Cannassee really is, what can he really offer right now? How serious is he really, I don't trust him. Does anyone use haxe successfully in a professional context and earns money through it, is this platform worth an investment (time, learning) or are there hidden maintenance-nightmares-producing or other shortcomings, which prevent professional reliable large scale use comparable to flash? I would like to read opinions of people who do successful business with haxe (edit: first hand info).

p4bl0 14y ago
I know a few people who use haXe professionally. One of them that I know personally is a professional Flash developer who used haXe exclusively for some times, because it had a better standard library than Flash (AS2 at this time) and generated lighter and faster SWF files. I remember him telling me that he made a somewhat huge (several hundred euros) donation to the project and that it still cost him less than buying the Macromedia Flash software. Since AS3 he's back to Flash thought. Some others I know through their work: Motion Twin [1] for instance, who are the creators of a lot of very successful Flash games. [1] http://motion-twin.com/ http://motion-twin.com/
- gizmogwai 14y ago
  Motion-twin is Nicolas Cannasse's company. So they obviously use HaXe extensively.
  - olaf 14y ago
    Thanks for claryfying that, now p4bl0's post appears to me like more or less self promotion.
    - p4bl0 14y ago
      Huh what? I've never worked for Motion-Twin, and I actually never wrote any haXe or Flash myself. I'm just a programming language enthusiast (and student to an extent, since my PhD subject is in part about PL design) so I like to follow Nicolas Cannasse's work. I also happen to enjoy one of MT games (Alpha Bounce [1]) very much and to have web developers friends among whom one made me discover haXe years ago, talking very highly about the technology (that's how I discovered Cannasse's work too). [1] http://www.alphabounce.com/ http://www.alphabounce.com/
      - olaf 14y ago
        Sorry, self promotion in the sense, that a fan praises haxe but does not do business himself, which was not, what I was asking for.

chipsy 14y ago

NME(The premier Haxe cross-platform gaming/media library) also just updated, adding some support for native OpenGL calls: http://www.haxenme.org/blog/2012/12/22/merry-christmas-nme-3-5-0-is-here/ http://www.haxenme.org/blog/2012/12/22/merry-christmas-nme-3... 2013 is shaping up to be a strong year for Haxe's gaming abilities.

mahmud 14y ago

Cannasse is the last person I expected to see leave Flash. Dude built a career around the platform and released more tools for it than any single individual.

swah 14y ago
The title doesn't properly summarize the article. He is just saying that because Haxe can target WebGL, he could now dump Flash when performance of WebGL is good enough.

winter_blue 14y ago

Uh, I know everyone going to yell at me, but... I think it would have been much much better, had Adobe open-sourced Flash and turned into a standard (like ECMA or something). This could saved everyone in the industry a huge amount of effort porting, rewriting, etc. stuff to work on a platform where every browser does things in its own (horribly) inconsistent way.

jdonaldson 14y ago
There's many reasons this didn't happen. Some of them Adobe's fault, some not. The main thing to realize is that Adobe based AS3 on many leading proposals for Ecmascript 4. Ecmascript 4 would lay the groundwork for future versions of javascript, etc. Flash would still be closed source, but the language would be useful elsewhere in the browser. Several people have described the political issues surrounding this ES4 situation in far more detail, and how we arguably ended up the worse for it: Resig: http://ejohn.org/blog/ecmascript-harmony/ http://ejohn.org/blog/ecmascript-harmony/ Canasse: http://ncannasse.free.fr/?p=82 http://ncannasse.free.fr/?p=82 Mike Chambers: http://www.mikechambers.com/blog/2008/08/14/actionscript-3-and-ecmascript-4/ http://www.mikechambers.com/blog/2008/08/14/actionscript-3-a... So, why didn't Adobe just open source the flash plugin? One main reason not to was Microsoft: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microsoft_Java_Virtual_Machine#Sun_vs._Microsoft http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microsoft_Java_Virtual_Machine#... Another reason was, naturally, control. Both for Adobe and for user development. The Flash player was quirky, but incredibly consistent with decent performance. There really was no other option... js, java applets, activeX, they all had significant weaknesses due to differing availability and performance. If you wait around long enough in web development, you will have seen this type of situation many times. Haxe is a "free agent" that can break this cycle imho. It is not tied to a company like Typescript or Dart, nor is it tied to corporate controlled committees like ES4. It has an incredibly gifted language author, and a great team of developers. It's also very mature at this point (> 5 years old). I've used Haxe professionally for just under 5 years now.
swah 14y ago
No sane person can deny the great things that have been written in Flash when JS in the browser was nothing - I wish I had ridden that wave.