Comment by TheOtherHobbes

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.