Comment by echelon
1 day 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.
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.
I remember the time of browser plug-ins (not “extensions”). Everyone happily installed Flash, and the Crescendo midi plugin, and multiple other in-retrospect-ill-advised plugins to enable fun stuff to work in their browser.
The “everyone hates Flash” stuff came later. It served a purpose for quite a while and people loved it. Newgrounds was a place of magic.
FYI, just cause I discovered this recently and I was mildly mind blown: newgrounds is alive and kicking with new stuff.
I do miss kongregate tho.
I mean, flash was always a pain in the ass, even when you got it working. The animations and games were great and I'm a big fan of stuff that tries to make it easy to publish programs like that, but I was still a teenager when apple announced they weren't supporting it and I was genuinely happy because I was so annoyed using it even on a windows pc.
> Having to install a binary blob from a free-software hostile vendor that wanted a monopoly to load a website was always ridiculous ask.
The entire browser ecosystem started out closed source. Even JavaScript was written to interact with closed source Java Applets.
> Flash was a constant embarassment of RCEs vulns
Browsers still are the goto target for contests like Pwn2own. It is almost like inviting the entire world to run untrusted code on your computer is not a great idea, no matter how many security buzzwords browser makers like to throw arround.
> The entire browser ecosystem started out closed source.
That is completely, 100%, untrue and not remotely historically accurate. WorldWideWeb (the first web browser) was public domain. Lynx came out in 1992. Mozilla was open sourced in 1998. There was never a time when the "entire" browser ecosystem was closed source. It certainly didn't start that way.
> Even JavaScript was written to interact with closed source Java Applets.
No, it wasn't. From WP (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/JavaScript):
> Netscape decided to add a programming language to Navigator. They pursued two routes to achieve this: collaborating with Sun Microsystems to embed the Java language, while also hiring Brendan Eich to embed the Scheme language.
> The goal was a "language for the masses", "to help nonprogrammers create dynamic, interactive Web sites". Netscape management soon decided that the best option was for Eich to devise a new language, with syntax similar to Java and less like Scheme or other extant scripting languages.
> [...]
> The choice of the JavaScript name has caused confusion, implying that it is directly related to Java. At the time, the dot-com boom had begun and Java was a popular new language, so Eich considered the JavaScript name a marketing ploy by Netscape.
Some people might have used it for the purpose you claim, but that's not why it was invinted.
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Yeah but we were kids, we didn't give a shit about any of that. Kind of still don't give a shit about any of it tbh. There's security holes in everything anyway.
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.
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.
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[flagged]
I was an average-joe high school student back then.
People hated flash. Even non techies.
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The average person didnt really care what tech was involved, they dont romanticize software in the same way as tech inclined people do.
People hated it when apps were glitchy, when it wanted "constant" updates, or how they couldnt share a page because the entire site was some bloody flash applet.
> You're in the 0.001%. Your asks are arcane and orthogonal to most users of software, who just want their PC to do something neat and useful.
Right up until enshittification kicks in and suddenly everyone cares and there are shouts of destroying the evil techbros who are poisoning the minds of our youth to buy a new yacht.
Can you imagine the situation if Jobs hadn't killed Flash? Most of the commercial websites required a Flash blob to deliver full functionality even back then in the early 2000's. Adobe never even vaguely pretended to be the good guys, they would have enshittified as soon as they possibly could, as hard as they possibly could (as they have done with the rest of their software). The entire web would be held to ransom at this point.
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Sure, but Adobe was never going to solve them.
> 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)?
> What could an application do with Flash in 2005 that we can't do with a modern web application today
Show me the JavaScript framework (or tool that exports JS) that you can give it to a middle schooler and have them make a cartoon with audio and moving images that they can draw themselves, while responding to user input. Have the exported artifact be consistent across all major operating systems and browsers.
Yeah, Flash was never replaced
https://scratch.mit.edu/
https://threejs.org/
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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.
wasn't some of that smoothness because it ran at a 100hz tick without any way of adapting it (and still running existing code)? That was the complaint I kept hearing from people attempting to make flash on phones viable (this led to ludicrous battery consumption)
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It could be smooth AF in ways that a video on a service like YouTube never could be.
I didn't get into flash games at all, but I used to watch Flash animations.
Like, for instance, Salad Fingers: https://archive.org/details/flash_salad-fingers
This was intended for a slow 2004-era computer with a 4x3 (probably 1024x768) display, where it worked very well.
But it's not 2004 anymore; things are much faster and screens have gotten a lot bigger. Here in 2026, Salad Fingers renders out fine at higher resolutions, and at different aspect ratios. It works great on my desktop at 1080p, without stretching [and with some probably-unintentional extra content on the sides]. It even works on my pocket supercomputer's 3200x1440 20:9 display.
Vectors are fun, and they scale as technology improves. The lines remain smooth and defined. And with Flash, that's a built-in: An unaltered 22-year-old digital animation still looks crisp.
For contrast, if Salad Fingers had been published on YouTube way back around that time, it would have been in chonky fixed-pixel 320x240. Maybe that would be as good as it would ever get unless it were rendered and uploaded at higher resolutions later.
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.
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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.
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.
What was possible in Flash in 2005 in IE6 on a Duron processor with 32MB RAM is possible today in a gargantuan bloatware browser that eats all your hardware.
There was more unique content/UI in the Flash era.
This went away not only because flash died, but also as the internet commercialized.
I mean, consider this: McDonald’s used to be fun and colorful. Now every McDonald’s is boring and gray. And, wait, every store is boring and gray! And flash had nothing to do with that.
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.
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
Once upon a time this would have been my favorite Flash cartoon series.
“Season one” playlist: https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLSq76P-lbX8Ws6vgAAC2WhwSu...
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.
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.
But we won't because this isn't something that can be done by consensus or by an ad company.
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.
this seems like a huge gap in the market
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.
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.
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...
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.
You know you can use Ruffle if you really want Flash right?
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.
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.)
Or you can just use PaleMoon browser ( https://www.palemoon.org/ ) and install the original Flash player plug-in in it.
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.
What about lightspark?
htps://lightspark.github.io
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.
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
Yes compared to vibe coded stuff too. And it costed less money.
> "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).