Yeah there is a bit of nostalgia for me, admittedly. Modern canvas with a decent lib can produce flash-like/flash-superior content but the tooling is aimed at engineers while flash was aimed at creatives/general public (imho), hence why we got so much trash (accessability) but also why we got so much incredible stuff (again, accessability)
Maybe everyone and their uncle had a website back then too but today everything is soaked up and formatted for profit by a select few (fb, google, tiktok, …)
Yeah, they won because they made things easy imho. Lower barrier to entry === higher user base. I would contest your ‘everyone and their uncle had a site’ comment, though - for flash you still had to be ‘in the know’ or curious of how the flash games/animations were made, and then be inquisitve and resourceful enough to get yourself a ‘copy’ of your preferred flash ide, then figure out how to package/host/etc. Sites like livejournal/tumblr are more akin to what you are describing imo.
Just to clarify, everyone had a website but not everyobe had a flash game ofc. But, when you went to Bobs website he had links to other websittes (lots of peopke had like carousel links) and so on, and you stumbled upon horrors and gems alike…
We made it so whole programs and commercial games could run directly in your browser, and then package them with their own copy of Chromium because fuck you.
Yeah but we have HTML5 now which is better than Flash ever was.
I’m glad Flash is dead. I got tired of having to constantly update it.
Edit: Also mobile gaming is the modern equivalent of Flash games. You just don’t see it that way because you didn’t grow up with it. I do miss the days when games could just be games without being heavily monetized, but there are still plenty of decent, simple mobile games available that don’t have any microtransactions and thus heavily resemble the Flash games you played in your childhood. You just have to be willing to seek them out.
we have HTML5 now which is better than Flash ever was
In some ways, sure. In others?
Trying to download HTML5 games sucks (there is no container format). Trying to play them locally sucks too (simple http server). If preservation efforts here can match how it has gone for Flash content, it’ll likely be only thanks to web crawlers people are using now.
Vector graphics was a huge technical feature that (even if still technically possible) has been largely abandoned. Even ignoring visual style, it’s less data to load (esp. w/simpler stuff). Particularly for animations (even a 1min18s clip is ~5x larger when rasterized), it seems silly to me that Google didn’t attempt some sort of HTML5 vector video support (for an extreme example, see the 10-hour homestar runner complilations on YT) which could likely also be used (at least partially) for digital presentations. Vector being rendered natively at runtime means content creators(/platforms) aren’t required to export/store videos in multiple resolutions (which for individuals, might just mean not supporting the higher ones).
Also, WebGL errors and Unity DRM making it even worse, though I’m not sure how much those are still present. Personally I have lost WebGL game data (unclear why, thankfully this isn’t always important) more often than I ever remember with Flash.
Yeah I acknowledge modern web is superior to flash in another comment, but argue the accessability has gone down. Also I was not ‘growing up with it,’ I was getting paid to write actionscript, then as3, then as3 inside of adobe flex/eclipse.
I’m on a Macromedia kick this morning but the internet really died when adobe bought flash, turning point for me personally lol
Flash was hells response to programming languages though. Where is uh that web stuff that should revolution everything, html5 mebbe?
Yeah there is a bit of nostalgia for me, admittedly. Modern canvas with a decent lib can produce flash-like/flash-superior content but the tooling is aimed at engineers while flash was aimed at creatives/general public (imho), hence why we got so much trash (accessability) but also why we got so much incredible stuff (again, accessability)
Maybe everyone and their uncle had a website back then too but today everything is soaked up and formatted for profit by a select few (fb, google, tiktok, …)
Yeah, they won because they made things easy imho. Lower barrier to entry === higher user base. I would contest your ‘everyone and their uncle had a site’ comment, though - for flash you still had to be ‘in the know’ or curious of how the flash games/animations were made, and then be inquisitve and resourceful enough to get yourself a ‘copy’ of your preferred flash ide, then figure out how to package/host/etc. Sites like livejournal/tumblr are more akin to what you are describing imo.
Just to clarify, everyone had a website but not everyobe had a flash game ofc. But, when you went to Bobs website he had links to other websittes (lots of peopke had like carousel links) and so on, and you stumbled upon horrors and gems alike…
We made it so whole programs and commercial games could run directly in your browser, and then package them with their own copy of Chromium because fuck you.
Yeah but we have HTML5 now which is better than Flash ever was.
I’m glad Flash is dead. I got tired of having to constantly update it.
Edit: Also mobile gaming is the modern equivalent of Flash games. You just don’t see it that way because you didn’t grow up with it. I do miss the days when games could just be games without being heavily monetized, but there are still plenty of decent, simple mobile games available that don’t have any microtransactions and thus heavily resemble the Flash games you played in your childhood. You just have to be willing to seek them out.
In some ways, sure. In others?
Trying to download HTML5 games sucks (there is no container format). Trying to play them locally sucks too (simple http server). If preservation efforts here can match how it has gone for Flash content, it’ll likely be only thanks to web crawlers people are using now.
Vector graphics was a huge technical feature that (even if still technically possible) has been largely abandoned. Even ignoring visual style, it’s less data to load (esp. w/simpler stuff). Particularly for animations (even a 1min18s clip is ~5x larger when rasterized), it seems silly to me that Google didn’t attempt some sort of HTML5 vector video support (for an extreme example, see the 10-hour homestar runner complilations on YT) which could likely also be used (at least partially) for digital presentations. Vector being rendered natively at runtime means content creators(/platforms) aren’t required to export/store videos in multiple resolutions (which for individuals, might just mean not supporting the higher ones).
Also, WebGL errors and Unity DRM making it even worse, though I’m not sure how much those are still present. Personally I have lost WebGL game data (unclear why, thankfully this isn’t always important) more often than I ever remember with Flash.
Yeah I acknowledge modern web is superior to flash in another comment, but argue the accessability has gone down. Also I was not ‘growing up with it,’ I was getting paid to write actionscript, then as3, then as3 inside of adobe flex/eclipse.