[Thread] As a promised replacement for Flash, HTML5/JS is still in the stone age as a newbie-friendly animation/graphics-first authoring toolset
Flash had to die. It had too many knocks … Alexandra Ramos / ScreenRant : FarmVille Has Officially Shut Down After 11 Years Caleb Chen / Privacy News Online … : Privacy News Online | Weekly Review: January 1, 2021 Jenn Gidman / Newser : Adobe Flash Is Officially No More Paul Lilly / HotHardware.com News : FarmVille Put Out To Pasture On Facebook After 11 Year Run In Wake Of Adobe Flash Tweets: Glenn Gabe / @glenngabe : Interesting thread from @larsiusprime about Flash ending and what was supposed to take its place -> https://twitter.com/... Sachin Rekhi / @sachinrekhi : There is a startup opportunity in here waiting to be hatched https://twitter.com/... Mark Nunnikhoven / @marknca : 💯 key question now: what can be done to make the HTML5 stack experience more accessible? https://twitter.com/... Craig Mod / @craigmod : It's true. For as bad as it was, flash was accessible and brilliant in so many ways. I remember emailing Joshua Davis 20 years ago about my “flash experiments” and getting a response. Fun times! https://twitter.com/... Steve Ragan / @steved3 : Flash is gone... now Zombocom doesn't work. :-( That website was the only one that made me feel welcome. The infinite was possible at Zombocom. The unobtainable was unknown at Zombocom. Carlos Fenollosa / @cfenollosa : Flash is finally gone. With it, part of the history of the Internet. Thankfully the Internet Archive is preserving many games and animations, even though we won't be able to view them without an emulator. https://www.theverge.com/... Rob Sheridan / @rob_sheridan : In my first years as a designer, Flash was a revelation. It let me approach the early @nineinchnails websites as artfuck design experiences, back when the whole web was an art project. We mock Flash now, but it fostered a beautiful lost era of experiential web design. RIP. https://twitter.com/... https://twitter.com/... Christian rickson / @caerickson : Inevitable, but sad. Making weird animations and rock show promos with Flash in the 90s is what got me my first agency job despite having no degree or formal experience. That job changed my life. Thanks Flash, RIP. https://www.bbc.com/... David Firth / @david_firth : https://www.bbc.com/... I'd just like to add that Salad Fingers hasn't been released in the Flash format since episode 8 in 2007. The software to make it isn't discontinued, just the web player. Eoin McCarthy / @eoinmccarthy : NHS e-learning is going to fall on its arse isn't it? Adobe Flash Player is finally laid to rest https://www.bbc.co.uk/... @whatdotcd : RIP flash wouldn't be here without you. https://twitter.com/... Matt May / @mattmay : Today is the Adobe Flash end of life date. I come to bury Flash, not to praise it. As an animation platform, Flash launched the web into new directions. But once it became a UX platform, without the structure of web or OS apps, it left millions behind. (thread) @dietrich : Flash 3 is what hooked me, over 20 years ago. Summer 98 probably. It was SO exciting to get it... well, a cracked demo version - I couldn't afford software. And SO much fun to use. Me with CSS animations, last week: https://twitter.com/... https://twitter.com/... Andr Staltz / @andrestaltz : While it had its downsides, I share the sentiment that Flash was great for *both* non-coder creators and coders. ActionScript 3 was years ahead of JavaScript. In 2010 it was like TypeScript today. https://twitter.com/... Hanna Fridn / @hannafriden : I was very much pro the end of Flash, mainly because of the security risks. But this is all true. It was a huge loss for the creative community and I really miss all of the awesome stuff people made and the communities around Flash. https://twitter.com/... @tlakomy : When I was like 14 I was able to create a (really) simple game with Flash and post it on NewGrounds (where I was promptly downvoted into abyss, but that's another story) *Nothing* available in 2020 comes close to that experience https://twitter.com/... Francisco Tolmasky / @tolmasky : “Thoughts on Flash” was never about the open web and was instead, if anything, about Apple controlling the iPhone ecosystem (and eventually the AppStore). I can't believe there is still such a naive interpretation of this. https://twitter.com/... Tim Sweeney / @timsweeneyepic : @larsiusprime The doc everyone links to - including Wikipedia - has disappeared from Apple's website(!) @larsiusprime : Remember this? “Anything you can do with Flash you can do with JS+Canvas+SVG” Clearly written by a non-artist coder who never used Flash, equivalent to: “Anything you can do with a paintbrush you can also do with a toothpick and an infinite amount of time.” Nicolas Favre-Felix / @yowgi : @TimSweeneyEpic @larsiusprime That's unfortunate, it looks like it was removed around May-June this year. Thankfully the original is archived at the Wayback Machine, it's an interesting read after 10 years. https://web.archive.org/... @larsiusprime : HTML5 *at its very best* accomplishes most of 3), and is still in the stone age when it comes to 1) and 2). @larsiusprime : What really mattered about Flash, in my view: 1) For 95% of applications you can just distribute a single SWF file 2) You have a robust authoring tool that is animation/graphics-first and newbie friendly 3) You can send a link to your mom and she can just play it w/ no issues @larsiusprime : Ultimately this is all Adobe's fault. They just decided Flash wasn't the effort. This is ultimately the problem with all proprietary software platforms — the risk that the platform holder will one day just give up and let it rot but not let YOU pick up and carry the torch. @larsiusprime : The thing that REALLY REALLY pisses me off is all the people who beat the war drums for Flash's demise, very clearly did not understand what made it so special. “I don't see why this is valuable, therefore it is not valuable” Walt Mossberg / @waltmossberg : @tomwarren And I remember how Adobe allowed it to deteriorate into something that crashed your computer and was a vector for malware. Matt May / @mattmay : Today is bittersweet for me. I'm glad the web platform won. “HTML5” was in the first sentence I ever uttered to our CEO, in 2008. Still, I and many others poured our hearts into boiling the ocean of inaccessible Flash, quixotic though we were. It could have been so much more. Matt May / @mattmay : We had a plan to bring Flash accessibility cross-platform, but then in 2010, there was the Apple memo. Flash as a UI tool had peaked, and not long after, it was over. Flash lived out its last years as a great video player with a bunch of legacy content that withered on the vine. Zoid / @zoidctf : Two huge pieces of tech in gaming and the web are ending today: Adobe Flash and Farmville. Both reviled, but were also massively successful and changed how the web and gaming operate today. HTML5 came from #flash and basically every web game derived from #farmville Andy Khouri / @andykhouri : This is unbelievable for a certain generation of person. Flash enabled some of the most creative shit, and beyond the web too; so much TV animation has roots in the old handmade Flash cartoons. And of course away goes a whole style of beautiful but functionally useless websites. https://twitter.com/... Sarah Lefton / @sarahlefton : I was 22 and teaching at @parsonsdesign when Flash came out - I had a brilliant semester length class that brought in traditional artists twice my age and turned out experimental animators. Probably my career highlight. I had no idea what a great gig it was, I was too young. https://twitter.com/... Glenn Gabe / @glenngabe : It's over. My ActionScript coding skills are needed no longer :) -> Adobe ends support for Flash today and will start blocking Flash content from January 12; major browsers will block Flash content from January 1 https://www.theverge.com/... https://twitter.com/... Pj Perez / @pjperez : All those months learning to do Flash animation in 2005, gone to waste. https://twitter.com/... Joshua Hirsch / @joshuahirsch : Flash was my entry into the biz, and I have so many fond memories of the work, the community, and fighting with designers to remove all the frikkin alpha texture layers. https://www.theverge.com/... Gregory Adams / @grradams : No surprise this interview has been referenced so many times over the years. From privacy to Flash, among other things, Steve Jobs could always see around the corner. https://www.youtube.com/... https://twitter.com/... https://twitter.com/... Mike Mariano / @marianomike : Cheers to all my fellow former flash designers and developers! Flash was the software that helped me realize my love for art, design, and code. It also taught me never to rely on one specific tool because tools become obsolete. 🙂 https://twitter.com/... Rania Chatzi Morosan / @underflowr : Last day of Adobe Flash today and I kinda feel I'm saying goodbye to a childhood friend 😢 https://twitter.com/... Stephen Shankland / @stshank : I wrote about this a lot over the years, and I never heard anybody boasting that HTML etc was a “perfect replacement,” but yeah, it's been a long time and the open standards still are generally coder-first tools, not creator-first tools. https://twitter.com/...