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[Orz]

I used to see these all the time from about 2000-2007.  Are they still being made?  And if not, what was responsible for the "golden age"?  I always assumed Flash must have had a really good interface between '00-07, but maybe I just got old and stopped going on Newgrounds.

[ProgramGamer]

Well, HTML5 kinda killed Flash by promising to do everything it could do except better and more securely, and the nail in the coffin is that Adobe is deprecating Flash in 2020. There are still web game portals around though, they just don't use Flash anymore.

[Raptor85]

I'd say HTML5 was more of the final nail in the coffin by replacing flash for things like video players (youtube/twitch), flash games were already kinda on their way out as a whole with the rise of mobile games and the lack of flash support on mobile browsers.

2000-2007 was a golden age of flash because browser writers didn't give a flying fuck about security, executing native code if the website so much as asks politely, it's why it was also the golden age of viruses and spyware.

[Richard Kain]

I still blame Adobe.

The golden age for Flash occurred simply because there was nothing else comparable to it on the web. Flash provided an efficient alternative to full-on video. Flash animations could take up a fraction of the space that streaming videos did, allowing them to load up far faster in the earlier days of the internet. (where speed was even more important) It also allowed for a level of interactivity that you didn't see anywhere else.

Video streaming was also significant, as Flash was one of the first platforms to really offer and promote this feature in a cross-browser capacity. Streaming videos through the Flash player involved far less work than trying to use any other solution, and consistently delivered better results.

The rise of mobile devices saw some of the first major pushback to Flash. Under Adobe's questionable guidance, the Flash player introduced certain security holes. These offered companies like Apple an excuse to bar the Flash player from mobile browsers on their very popular iPhone platform. The long-in-development HTML5 standard also started providing features to allow developers to get streaming video and dynamic drawing without resorting to Flash. Once major browsers started shifting away from providing plug-in support, it was pretty much over.

In truth, HTML5 still doesn't have the same kind of features that Flash enjoyed, and has never had a comparable editing interface for creating vector-based animations. Attempting to ape that environment requires multiple disparate javascript libraries. The real modern comparison is middle-ware, such as Unity, with capable HTML5 exporters.

[Daid]

The rise of mobile devices saw some of the first major pushback to Flash. Under Adobe's questionable guidance, the Flash player introduced certain security holes. These offered companies like Apple an excuse to bar the Flash player from mobile browsers on their very popular iPhone platform.

Did you know they actually had flash working on the first iPhone during development and removed it before launch? I met someone who worked with Apple on the iPhone development and launch, and there are some interresting stories there.
Another reason to remove flash, next to all the security issues, was battery life. It simply killed your battery.

Also note that SVG can actually do a lot of animation and scripting that flash had as well. But there is simply no IDE for it. I think that's what made flash stand out, people without a lot of experience could make stuff with it quite easy.

[s0]

Flash was pretty shit and im not sad about its demise

[Raptor85]

first extension installed in any new browser for me was generally flashblock :D

I later wrote and maintained a firefox extension for a few years that hijacked the video players for youtube/etc and piped the file directly into an embedded mplayer or vlc window, worked so much better than the flash video player i was even able to watch HD video on my old thinkpad with it.  I'm really glad HTML5 video took off though, I was pretty freaking sick of updating it for every single api change in firefox...

[Türbo Bröther]

Hopefully Java is next.

[pelle]

Hopefully Java is next.

Pretty much dead already in browsers. Only sad thing about it is that java4k died because of it and I had more ideas for that (plus getting the old java4k games to run is a bit of work these days with plugins being barely allowed to run).

I actually looked up and played an old Flash game earlier this week. Was rewarded with a computer grinding to a halt and had to hard reboot to get it back. Not a common occurrence these days. Flash was exactly as stable as I remembered it. Happy it is dead. Plugins in browsers was a bad idea and the implementation/API was worse. Standard html video tag should have been introduced much earlier and flash would never have become mainstream.

[gimymblert]

I always preferred superman to flash anyway

[JWK5]

With the Flash's body moving as fast as it does his bowels probably squeeze feces out so fast they launch like rockets. It is shameful that there is no comic where during the villain's monologue the Flash, in a blurry split second, bares his ass and torpedoes a turd straight into the villain's face.

There's no way you can recover from that, the sheer humiliation and psychological damage alone would carry on for years. Aside from the villain becoming a running joke to all his or her minions, the shock and awe from it would buy the Flash plenty of time to wipe the floor with every enemy in the vicinity. The Flash could leverage this further by carrying around a backpack full of fibrous food that he could rapidly eat and digest on the spot and then machine gun fire out turds at crowds of bewildered enemies.

Comics would be so much more entertaining if they really took into account the depravity and immaturity of real human beings. People are fucked up, people with superpowers would be even more fucked up.


If you didn't already guess, this whole post is a metaphor for why nobody makes Flash videos and games anymore.

[ProgramGamer]

The above post reminded be of a particular moment in a game grumps episode:

https://youtu.be/6H-sqdJSYSA?t=593

[Türbo Bröther]

It don't remind me of nothin', this is the first time I heard any of this shit.

[Schoq]

Flash was always terrible to put up with and probably even worse than I remember. I spit on its grave

[J-Snake]

Hopefully Java is next.

Last time I checked the local industry in Germany 2 months ago, Java was still used by seemingly 90% of them (only few used C# instead), be it because of legacy baggage or not. And it was almost irrelevant where to look at, Java was involved in e-learning companies, smart-home, CAD-like software creation etc.

At the lowest driver level for embedded systems, typically C is used. However, Java was still wide spread on higher levels.

[ProgramGamer]

We’re talking about java in a browser environment specifically though, not the entire field of java development.

[s0]

We’re talking about java in a browser environment specifically though, not the entire field of java development.

i think java for browsers is already dead tbh, and probably even deader than flash. i can't even remember the last time i needed it.

[Richard Kain]

Yes, the expansion of javascript killed off the need for Java applets in browsers. These days, even Java-fueled web applications would use javascript for front-end deployment. The establishment of javascript as a more full-featured programming language, and making it standardized for browsers was one of the biggest shifts achieved in the adoption of HTML5. Before that point javascript was a joke that most web developers tolerated.

It would be nice to see more web-pages focused on the kind of experiences that were empowered by Flash. Obviously we won't be seeing Flash return, that ship has not only sailed, but been torpedoed and is rapidly approaching the sea floor. But the kind of interactive, animated sites that its tools fostered were pretty neat, and I do miss them. Homestar Runner was one of my favorite sites, and you just can't get the same experience from YouTube. They did some really clever things with those tools, and I miss that type of web-page.

[Ordnas]

I still remember the anger of all that people that worked hard to learn Flash, and those fatigue thrown away. From a programmer perspective is not a problem to learn a new language, but from a designer and a not-daily developer is something sad, some sort of investment went bad. Anyway better HTLM5 of course.

[Pfotegeist]

I remember flash games were incredibly interesting, complicated, and ever higher artistic endeavors were made.

Flash is dead, all hail the idle clicker game. And sometimes "the game" that nobody has been told they're playing.