Is Flash dead?
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- microkorg9
I still use Flash (Animate) I use to create generative art.
Same as I did 20+ years ago.
Not dead to me.- ooh sounds intereting. Got any examples to show off?Projectile
- Everything I've released on FXHash was built in Animate.
https://www.fxhash.x…microkorg - and these...
https://objkt.com/as…
https://objkt.com/as…microkorg - Love your work Microkorg ❤❤❤PhanLo
- dead for commerce... used by hobby artists on the side i guess..neverscared
- BusterBoy3
Anyone remember Flash Den? Started by a Melbourne based couple. Was a pretty ordinary competitor to some of the other Flash component sites around at the time.
Well it morphed into Envato and the company has been valued at around $6bill...the founders worth around $1.5bill.
Who woulda thunk it!
- Wow, I remember FlashDen. Some of the flash stuff was sub par compared to what you could get elsewhere but they had a lot of stuff.microkorg
- Did NOT know that it became Envato though. Pretty epic!microkorg
- Crazy. I see they never updated this page.
http://www.flashden.… to match the Envato brandingdbloc - Remember this one?
http://www.flashkit.…dbloc - https://i.pinimg.com…spl33nidoru
- oh yeah, Kit and Den,
didnt realize Envato was Den, cool!YakuZoku
- microkorg6
My folks brought round some old boxes from my childhood the other day. In there was a load of Creative Review CDRoms - Including the holy grail that was the Tomato/Underworld/AntiRom one!
Need to get a CDdrive hooked up to my mac to see if it works.
Was explaining to a designer in my team the history of creating CDRoms in Director ... then using Flash to build websites and why 'they' killed flash.
- PhanLo6
- Flash is to current web development what the original GTI is to a public transit_niko
- everything is a product or service and you must pay somehow, and if not, they will find a way to make you pay.shapesalad
- When Flash died...I had to reinvent myself, it was a huge financial blow to me.utopian
- Adobe Animate is pretty much identical (in terms of what you can do) to Flash and does it all without a plugin. Weird it never transitioned to that.fadein11
- same here utopian
+1000YakuZoku - I thought it was because flash ads were draining iphone batterydrgs
- grafician-1
Yes.
- :-(PhanLo
- I updated my machine recently so can't properly access my old Flash stuff properly as CS6 doesn't work.
Was great for generative stuffPhanLo - Touch Designer seems fun, I reckon I'll learn that properly next year.PhanLo
- Yeah, believe Apple and Adobe worked together on updates since it seemed most designers were using Apple to push them to the pay to play.hydro74
- zaq1
"How I still use Flash in 2022"
- evilpeacock7
This is a pretty nifty example of what can be done in the post-Flash web:
https://y-n10.com- 8-bit sweetprophetone
- !inteliboy
- runs way too slowStoicLevels
- PhanLo2
- The only thing that’s dead is .swf. The app itself has been renamed to Adobe Animate long time ago and is widely used for 2d animation.NBQ00
- @NBQ00 this!OBBTKN
- exactly NQBfadein11
- ah man... amit pitaru, mr doob bringing me backkingsteven
- brought a tear to my eye.dbloc
- Uhhh huh huh huh... his last name is Gay huh huh huhjagara
- drgs3
https://www.zdnet.com/article/so…
"The South African Revenue Service (SARS) has released this week its own custom web browser," reports ZDNet, "for the sole purpose of re-enabling Adobe Flash Player support, rather than port its existing website from using Flash to HTML-based web forms."
- shapesalad2
https://tympanus.net/codrops/202…
^ seems 'flash' websites are back, at least in style if not technically.
- monNom4
Twenty some years ago, when I was just first getting into web design I built a portfolio website in flash. Not a portfolio really because I didn't have any work to show, but more a website to show my capabilities. I didn't know javascript, I hardly knew html, heck, I hardly knew flash! But with some dedication and some were-here.com tutorials, I was able to learn enough to build out a concept website featuring animation, interactive movement, multi-channel audio, and an exploratory style of navigation.
That website got me my first real job, where I actually learned how to design and build websites. They told me later that they made their hiring decision on the spot when they saw it, because they hadn't seen anything like it before. That's a pretty powerful tool to have lost, especially for someone just starting out.
I learned actionscript because of flash. Because I knew actionscript, I was able to figure out javascript, and c++ and java, and python, and on and on. I don't know that I would have gotten over that initial hurdle in learning to code were it not for the direct feedback and powerful toolkit within flash. You got so much for such little effort that it made learning to code really approachable.
I recall a hire later in my career, who I was asking about his portfolio website (built in flash). It seemed so sophisticated to me and I imagined that he must have achieved the interactive animation with some very clever code. But it turned out that it was all just timeline animation and gotos. He had just figured out how to achieve his vision using the simple tools in flash, and not knowing how to code didn't stop him.
Flash wasn't all good of course. It sucked trying to integrate with a cms. It was completely opaque to search engines. There was a lack of standardization and accessibility. AS3 was a nightmare for many. And later it became a security liability to even have it installed, but in its prime, flash was a tool that allowed non technical designers the ability to create rich experiences beyond anything available today. And I'm sad for this new generation of designers that website design is now exclusively an act of stacking up blocks of responsive content on a very long page. I can only imagine how impenetrable it must all seem now, and for such little creative benefit.
So this is my love story and lament for flash. It was a great tool. And it's a tragedy we lost it as designers.
- great story. you touch on I think the key thing about flash. It allowed timeline based visual animators to create interactive experiencesdkoblesky
- as you said, you could do it from a timeline or a code perspective....eithe... waydkoblesky
- +1 you summed up my experiences/sentimen... about flash to a teehotroddy
- Direct feedback of AS, and the forgiving syntax of AS1 was perfect for a beginner to learn. I wouldn't know where a young designer could start these days.shapesalad
- My story was similar to you. I'd tried to make a little interactive animation loop, just happened to be in banner like dimensions, it got me my first jobshapesalad
- I then learnt AS1 fully by messing about trying things at work, due to producers giving generous deadlines.shapesalad
- When they hired a junior Dev guy, on his first microsite project he caved and I had to code the thing. Even though I was supposed to be a designer.shapesalad
- Thanks to AS1, after effect expressions, javascript, html, css, php etc.... all easy to learn and understand.shapesalad
- Loved the tool, and done lots of money thanks to it, Flash freelance gigs helped me a lot to raise my family, be sure. Rip!! :(OBBTKN
- Continuity4
I think it's a little unfair to lump all of the blame for Flash's demise on Apple and Steve Jobs.
Without a doubt, he had a lot to do with it, but there was also the fact that technologies — notably HTML, CSS and jQuery — were evolving concurrently, to the degree that they were taking away some of Flash's lustre.
The thing with Flash, though, is that it was already under heavy assault — long before Jobs jumped on that bandwagon — from this cunt:
Jakob Fucking Nielsen despised Flash. In fact, he despised anything on the web that didn't add up to his idea of how it should look and work. Hated originality, hated great design, hated the experimentation that made the period from 1999 to 2003 so awesome online.
And guess what? He fucking won. If the web now looks like one giant same-y WP template, we really have him to thank for it. Steve Jobs came in years later with his iPhone rationale, but really, Flash was already fighting a losing battle against Nielsen.
- If you read what I wrote I am not dunking on Apple or 'Steve'. It was a reality that Apple dealt...that was very Steve Jobs. I said 'genius'dkoblesky
- The worship of Steve Jobs clouds people's mindsdkoblesky
- No one 'won' or 'lost'. Technology changed. People had to adjustdkoblesky
- No, no, I'm not saying you're dumping it all on SJ. It's a very popular narrative online, though, that it was Jobs that did for Flash.Continuity
- When, really, it was much more that arsehole Nielsen.Continuity
- Uh this guy also has been hating on PDF for well over a decade and that’s doing just finenb
- He's anti-PDF, too? Christ.Continuity
- Hmm, while Nielsen made a splash, outside of prof web, no one would ever know who he was. The iphone, on the other hand, dictated people's lives in tech.formed
- Except that web usability is baked into web design....and he and others made that happen.dkoblesky
- Nielsen? He was the antithesis of good design. Did you see his website back then? It was all a horrible joke that insulted good design.formed
- This guy wanted to sell a book and that's what he accomplished. He was a ton of hype. Jobs killed Flash. Flash was evolving just as much as trends in CSS and JSCyBrainX
- ...and it was infinitely easier to use for a lot of things.CyBrainX
- No one can defeat that foreheadpango
- Jobs didn’t kill flash. Adobe did.monospaced
- ^ yep, when they hired neilsen. i think this episode was all before iPhones existedkingsteven
- I always thought he was a joke. "Weblinks must always be the same color". Usability taken to the extreme where everything is the same.Nutter
- ^ He always came across as a frothing at the mouth culty.Continuity
- https://i.ebayimg.co…adrok
- yuekit0
I remember when AS3 launched Adobe was making a serious push for it to be used for what they called rich applications. In other words Flash would not just be for banner ads and marketing sites, it would be the the underlying technology for portals and other large-scale data-driven web apps. I think they envisioned it taking over a significant portion of the web eventually. Talk about getting ahead of yourself!
Flash came close to being a serious player. At the same time there were always issues with Flash taking on such a role...even if he had ulterior motive Jobs wasn't making things up when he listed its shortcomings.
- SteveJobs0
I remember when I'd get in heated debates with other QBN'ers on here back in the day.
Boy those were the days!
Idk, to me it was exciting times for many of us. It was a huge creative outlet that seemingly had no boundaries in terms of what could be achieved. There was an entire community showing off visually interesting interactive pieces that inspired others. And some people actually made a living on the technology. It really felt like 'the future', as much as anything could in those days.
I won't defend it beyond that. It had it's faults. It was hated by many who felt forced to learn it to stay competitive in their jobs, and ultimately, wielded by far too many who didn't really understand it, know how to use it correctly, and more importantly, *when* to use it. Imo, it's those reasons that made its fate inevitable. (Oh, and Steve Jobs <takes a bow>)
- Agree. It was an explosion of creativity. I remember flash sites that were so beautiful and so weird....dkoblesky
- It was exciting for US, but let's not get myopic here. Mobile and social media has genuinely changed the world over the past decade.yuekit
- That is the real revolution, not some artsy portfolio site. Billions of people in the developing world gaining access to knowledge and communication.yuekit
- nb5
To some extent, those of us who are nostalgic for the Flash days are looking at it in a good light. We're looking at the creativity, the fun, the possibilities and all the great work that came out of it.
We're ignoring all the mind-numbing bullshit and browser-crushing ad garbage that came along with it. The endless "this website has a script that is causing your computer..." or whatever. The beachball of death because of an embedded ad on a myspace page.
For me, some days I look at the web and hate what it's become. We replaced our world of bloated Flash (that at least allowed creativity) with bloated front-end frameworks (that were designed specifically to save money by reducing creativity.)
We're lazy, and we're letting fucking software engineers dictate culture.
- (Almost) everything is a generic, scrolling pile of images and text all made for a phone. It's damn boring.formed
- I went to siteinpire and clicked on 10 websites - all the same, all boring and ugly on a computer. Sad.formed
- Jobs did a marvelous job of killing it, but alas, I do own Apple stock and, from a biz perspective, it was brilliant.formed
- I think we are seeing the end. With the exception of massive sites, Wix, etc., will kill the small/med firms.formed
- AI will kill it all. It'll be here in 5 years. Check out what openAI are doing with text to code to site.shapesalad
- I don't miss Flash. Shit animation tools. Was happy to go back to AEdkoblesky
- A lot of creative work came out of that era but you have to ask what was the return on investment on all of those Flash sites? Did anyone visit them more thanyuekit
- once? People use the web to get stuff done, if they want an immersive experience there are other mediums that are better for that.yuekit
- For a time a lot of artists had a wonderful (somewhat) code free interactive playground...easily distributed to lots of people....that does not exist anymoredkoblesky
- Art vs money. A classic debate. Money wins the battles but in the long run, art wins the war.nb
- I never got the dis on Flash, it was awesome! I think the hate was from jelly devs. Long live the flash intro!atomholc
- Html5 can do most of what Flash did except the comic-style vector animations and characters that nobody really wants to see any longer.NBQ00
- In the end the internet has become mostly about simplicity, minimalism, clean navigation to focus on the content. I don’t want goofy intros anymore on websites.NBQ00
- And Joshua Davis can go fuck himself.NBQ00
- Agree with post and that this trancends Flash; HTML/CSS/JS sites can do open + performant creative things, but the market has pushed to templated CMSs.evilpeacock
- https://www.samuelda… petty similar to old flash sites, except you grind your scroll wheel..shapesalad
- I made more money in the early 2000's building Flash based website than in the past few years building HTML/CSS/JS sites. Fuck you Apple.utopian
- I look back on things like Hell.com and what Hi-Res was doing with sites and can see what some of you are saying. There's still tools to get that type of workben_
- done, but there seems to be way fewer risks being taken these days.ben_
- fwiw I don't even remember if hell.com was flash, but that spirit is the thing I'm referring to.ben_
- https://www.albinobl…cherub
- The internet is boring now. The way people like it. Stripping your data in a soul-less uni-style. Folk love it though.
Never underestimate people love of boringPhanLo - Hi-Res was doing some inspiring stuff. With mobile driving everything these days, it's all but killed web design, imho.formed
- grafician0
^pretty sure Flash was dead when you needed to learn Actionscript to do anything good with it...
Don't blame Steve, blame fucking Adobe for buying Macromedia to kill the competition and in the process ruin the web.
Blame also the shitty advertising industry, although many earned a lot of bread doing flash banners and stuff...
- still remember getting $250 per flash banner back in the days...grafician
- Nobody ever mentions that for years all those banners didn't allow using AS3 because their tracking was AS2-based.evilpeacock
- not to mention the insane optimisations like "make it under 200kb" while today a simple blog loads 10MB of jsgrafician
- I had to spend days to optimise assets, JPG 60-75% tops if you wanted anything decent looking while still small filesize, while today ppl upload 10MB directlygrafician
- idk but I think Flash was an amazing medium for design and web art, didn't deserved to be squashed by these big corporations...grafician
- People don’t use 10MB of JS in a banner adnb
- lol nb have you opened any website on mobile recentlygrafician
- dkoblesky0
Since this discussion is about that state of technology from 10-12 years ago, and since the name 'Steve' keeps getting dropped in comments....I thought this little brilliant film would be enjoyable.
"Steve is not happy"
- dkoblesky2
My take on this....interested in other thoughts.
Flash was very dependent on CPU speed to work. People that worked on desktops with the fastest CPUs designed them. The work could be great, but only on desktop where the CPU did the work.
Along comes the iPhone, which had a CPU with a fraction of the power of a desktop CPU. But it surfed the web so it *seemed* like it should run flash sites but really could not for the most part.
Steve Jobs, master marketer, knew this. He did not want to have his new baby look like it could not run the most advanced websites, so he came up with his famous letter in which he refused to put Flash on the iPhone....citing security, battery life, crashes, etc. He never came out and said 'look, the iPhone cannot run these sites because they are designed for desktop computers which are ten times faster than the iPhone.' He made it look like it was a Flash problem. Genius deflection
Everything in web design changed within months. A colleague of mine who was always cutting edge immediately killed his flash portfolio site and redesigned in with just HTML. He knew what was happening.
In the end, it was really inevitable. The proliferation of mobile devices that were slower and ran on less bandwidth meant that the design world had to adjust. Thus mobile friendly flash-less web sites became the norm.
I remember that Google made noises that the Android would run Flash anyway, despite Jobs statement, but they probably did this to fuck with Apple and get some publicity. In the end Android never really ran Flash either.
Could Adobe have done something? Probably, but they would have had to immediately make Flash so it could produce lower bandwidth and CPU intensive designs. But they were Adobe, so moved slowly. By the time they even came up with anything....i remember some feeble attempts to do something....everyone had an iphone or android phone in their pocket and web design was all mobile friendly and HTML only. Flash was practically dead by then.
- Adobe is the only company that could have saved flash. Blaming Apple so retardedly ignorant.monospaced
- I love when you create a discussion and someone downvotes it without saying anything. LOLdkoblesky
- Blaming a device that had less than 2% of the phone market is so childish and stupid it’s not worth a sentence let alone this whole write upmonospaced
- I am not 'blaming' anything...where do you get that?dkoblesky
- If your argument was correct (it’s not) then the phones that DID run flash (most of them) would have succeeded. But adobe didn’t care. At all.monospaced
- Oh....you think I am bashing Apple? I did say Jobs was a marketing genius...wasn't that enough?dkoblesky
- Steve wasn’t wrong btw. Flash didn’t work on mobile phones. It sucked for web seo. It was left behind. By adobe.monospaced
- what is your take on the death of Flash then monospaced?dkoblesky
- Adobe didn’t make a mobile worthy product and never adapted it to work on android or iOS.monospaced
- Remember. Flash isn’t an Apple product. It sucked foe mobile. Proof is that it failed even with MAJORITY MARKET SHARE FOR A DECADEmonospaced
- Adobe is to blame. They fcuked up Macromedia!grafician
- Wanna bet Macromedia would've found a way to run Flash on mobiles and make it great? Adobe just bought Macromedia to kill the competition.grafician
- Now Adobe lost the product design market, the iPad market, even Photoshop is not #1 for many workflows, fuck em!grafician
- If somebody replaces Ae with a good app, Adobe will be dead in 3-5 yearsgrafician
- nb1
You’re insane if you think there weren’t behind-the-scenes meetings for many many months where Jobs tried to strong arm Adobe into investing their own resources into making Flash that could work on iPhone. Or, to make something that would produce Flash-like content but not kill the iPhone experience and battery life.
You think Apple just walked out with the iphone one day and was like “ok here’s our new product, hope y’all hate Flash with us now, our company depends on it!”
Have you even worked for a company before.
- Apple in the end bet that people would prefer the iPhone to Flash and they were right. Nobody cares about Flash except the people who worked in itnb
- Maybe all that happened. Doesn't change things. Jobs is still a 'genius' ok? Of a sortdkoblesky
- Jobs is 100% the exec who is like “why are we spending Apple money to help make Adobe successful? Fuck Adobe. We work at Apple.”nb
- I work for one of the largest companies on the planet....ok?dkoblesky
- And that’s completely what he’s supposed to do as the leader of his company.nb
- this is why I called him a 'marketing genius'
Adobe is who failed heredkoblesky - Amazing how personal people get about global conglomeratedkoblesky
- Um, yeah I agree with you. The letter and all that was a way to control the conversation when Apple started to lose control of the narrative.nb
- What nb said is correct. iPhones (mobile devices in general) beats Flash. But this forum cares because many of use worked with Flash for 10 yearsdkoblesky
- Then why did flash not flourish on android which had the majority market share globally for many years before and after iOS???monospaced
- Simply put, if flash was gonna live on mobile it failed to do so on the platform it was allowed on. And adobe shit the bed. They failed.monospaced
- iPhone had a slim market share for years. It was a joke at first. Why blame the underdog for a shitty flash not working on it? Pshhhhmonospaced
