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Flash is finally gone. With it, part of the history of the Internet. Thankfully the Internet Archive is preserving many games and animations, even though we won't be able to view them without an emulator.https://t.co/2Wq1Y16VdK
— Carlos Fenollosa (@cfenollosa) January 1, 2021
HTML5 *at its very best* accomplishes most of 3), and is still in the stone age when it comes to 1) and 2).
— Lars "Sweet Leaf" Doucet (@larsiusprime) December 30, 2020
This is unbelievable for a certain generation of person. Flash enabled some of the most creative shit, and beyond the web too; so much TV animation has roots in the old handmade Flash cartoons. And of course away goes a whole style of beautiful but functionally useless websites. https://t.co/oMMwIZC1Tk
— Andy Khouri (@andykhouri) December 31, 2020
It’s true. For as bad as it was, flash was accessible and brilliant in so many ways. I remember emailing Joshua Davis 20 years ago about my “flash experiments” and getting a response. Fun times! https://t.co/k9hfw3kuEN
— Craig Mod (@craigmod) January 2, 2021
No surprise this interview has been referenced so many times over the years. From privacy to Flash, among other things, Steve Jobs could always see around the corner.https://t.co/cuE5oKuwu0 https://t.co/ZZt8ZsGy5x pic.twitter.com/blyWJvxNey
— Gregory Adams (@grradams) December 31, 2020
In my first years as a designer, Flash was a revelation. It let me approach the early @nineinchnails websites as artfuck design experiences, back when the whole web was an art project. We mock Flash now, but it fostered a beautiful lost era of experiential web design. RIP. https://t.co/CXxKbE0XkL pic.twitter.com/T7ClySygDa
— Rob Sheridan (@rob_sheridan) January 1, 2021
Two huge pieces of tech in gaming and the web are ending today: Adobe Flash and Farmville. Both reviled, but were also massively successful and changed how the web and gaming operate today. HTML5 came from #flash and basically every web game derived from #farmville
— Zoid (@ZoidCTF) December 31, 2020
What really mattered about Flash, in my view:
— Lars "Sweet Leaf" Doucet (@larsiusprime) December 30, 2020
1) For 95% of applications you can just distribute a single SWF file
2) You have a robust authoring tool that is animation/graphics-first and newbie friendly
3) You can send a link to your mom and she can just play it w/ no issues
?
— Mark Nunnikhoven (@marknca) January 2, 2021
key question now: what can be done to make the HTML5 stack experience more accessible? https://t.co/Z1xALvTho9
While it had its downsides, I share the sentiment that Flash was great for *both* non-coder creators and coders. ActionScript 3 was years ahead of JavaScript. In 2010 it was like TypeScript today. https://t.co/YHEgIGhOpk
— André Staltz (@andrestaltz) December 31, 2020
The thing that REALLY REALLY pisses me off is all the people who beat the war drums for Flash's demise, very clearly did not understand what made it so special.
— Lars "Sweet Leaf" Doucet (@larsiusprime) December 30, 2020
"I don't see why this is valuable, therefore it is not valuable"
We had a plan to bring Flash accessibility cross-platform, but then in 2010, there was the Apple memo. Flash as a UI tool had peaked, and not long after, it was over.
— Matt May (@mattmay) December 31, 2020
Flash lived out its last years as a great video player with a bunch of legacy content that withered on the vine.
Inevitable, but sad. Making weird animations and rock show promos with Flash in the 90s is what got me my first agency job despite having no degree or formal experience. That job changed my life. Thanks Flash, RIP. https://t.co/4PiYBhhcG6
— Christian Ærickson (@caerickson) January 1, 2021
There is a startup opportunity in here waiting to be hatched https://t.co/PbU9xVyNXz
— Sachin Rekhi (@sachinrekhi) January 2, 2021
NHS e-learning is going to fall on its arse isn’t it?
— Eoin McCarthy (@eoinmccarthy) January 1, 2021
Adobe Flash Player is finally laid to rest https://t.co/FdDXe6Kvn2
Cheers to all my fellow former flash designers and developers! Flash was the software that helped me realize my love for art, design, and code.
— Mike Mariano (@marianomike) December 31, 2020
It also taught me never to rely on one specific tool because tools become obsolete. ? https://t.co/AeGxM9nCy9
Flash is gone... now Zombocom doesn't work. :-( That website was the only one that made me feel welcome.
— Steve Ragan (@SteveD3) January 2, 2021
The infinite was possible at Zombocom. The unobtainable was unknown at Zombocom.
Remember this? "Anything you can do with Flash you can do with JS+Canvas+SVG"
— Lars "Sweet Leaf" Doucet (@larsiusprime) December 30, 2020
Clearly written by a non-artist coder who never used Flash, equivalent to:
"Anything you can do with a paintbrush you can also do with a toothpick and an infinite amount of time."
The doc everyone links to - including Wikipedia - has disappeared from Apple’s website(!)
— Tim Sweeney (@TimSweeneyEpic) December 31, 2020
RIP flash wouldn’t be here without you. https://t.co/DtvQLpEiFx
— Trev?r (@whatdotcd) January 1, 2021
It's over. My ActionScript coding skills are needed no longer :) -> Adobe ends support for Flash today and will start blocking Flash content from January 12; major browsers will block Flash content from January 1 https://t.co/55cF5mxrib pic.twitter.com/LQRWRJ3BuN
— Glenn Gabe (@glenngabe) December 31, 2020
“Thoughts on Flash” was never about the open web and was instead, if anything, about Apple controlling the iPhone ecosystem (and eventually the AppStore). I can’t believe there is still such a naive interpretation of this. https://t.co/lUJ7Mzoqlu
— Francisco Tolmasky (@tolmasky) December 30, 2020
And I remember how Adobe allowed it to deteriorate into something that crashed your computer and was a vector for malware.
— Walt Mossberg (@waltmossberg) December 31, 2020
Interesting thread from @larsiusprime about Flash ending and what was supposed to take its place -> [Thread] As a promised replacement for Flash, HTML5/JS is still in the stone age as a newbie-friendly animation/graphics-first authoring toolset https://t.co/txrDZhAtyA
— Glenn Gabe (@glenngabe) January 2, 2021
I was very much pro the end of Flash, mainly because of the security risks.
— Hanna Fridén (@HannaFriden) December 31, 2020
But this is all true. It was a huge loss for the creative community and I really miss all of the awesome stuff people made and the communities around Flash. https://t.co/PbvmCSkJll
When I was like 14 I was able to create a (really) simple game with Flash and post it on NewGrounds (where I was promptly downvoted into abyss, but that's another story)
— Tomasz Łakomy (@tlakomy) December 31, 2020
*Nothing* available in 2020 comes close to that experience https://t.co/3M5SzpIoSA
That's unfortunate, it looks like it was removed around May-June this year. Thankfully the original is archived at the Wayback Machine, it's an interesting read after 10 years. https://t.co/LcwJKnlLRi
— Nicolas Favre-Felix (@yowgi) December 31, 2020
Ultimately this is all Adobe's fault. They just decided Flash wasn't the effort.
— Lars "Sweet Leaf" Doucet (@larsiusprime) December 30, 2020
This is ultimately the problem with all proprietary software platforms -- the risk that the platform holder will one day just give up and let it rot but not let YOU pick up and carry the torch.
Flash 3 is what hooked me, over 20 years ago. Summer 98 probably. It was SO exciting to get it... well, a cracked demo version - I couldn't afford software. And SO much fun to use.
— dietrich (@dietrich) December 31, 2020
Me with CSS animations, last week:https://t.co/GMG1skE5ge https://t.co/ZuMprLzMHy
I was 22 and teaching at @parsonsdesign when Flash came out - I had a brilliant semester length class that brought in traditional artists twice my age and turned out experimental animators. Probably my career highlight. I had no idea what a great gig it was, I was too young. https://t.co/CvR9y8HIRO
— Sarah Lefton (@sarahlefton) December 31, 2020
Flash was my entry into the biz, and I have so many fond memories of the work, the community, and fighting with designers to remove all the frikkin alpha texture layers. https://t.co/7xz4MSvtmF
— Joshua Hirsch (@joshuahirsch) December 31, 2020
Last day of Adobe Flash today and I kinda feel I’m saying goodbye to a childhood friend ? https://t.co/nUrbZDjzGh
— Rania Chatzi Morosan (@underflowR) December 31, 2020
Today is the Adobe Flash end of life date.
— Matt May (@mattmay) December 31, 2020
I come to bury Flash, not to praise it.
As an animation platform, Flash launched the web into new directions. But once it became a UX platform, without the structure of web or OS apps, it left millions behind. (thread)
https://t.co/78wOqh9eSC
— David Firth (Salad Fingers) (@DAVID_FIRTH) January 1, 2021
I'd just like to add that Salad Fingers hasn't been released in the Flash format since episode 8 in 2007. The software to make it isn't discontinued, just the web player.
All those months learning to do Flash animation in 2005, gone to waste. https://t.co/qbwTEfrdoE
— Pj Perez (@PjPerez) December 31, 2020
I wrote about this a lot over the years, and I never heard anybody boasting that HTML etc was a “perfect replacement,” but yeah, it’s been a long time and the open standards still are generally coder-first tools, not creator-first tools. https://t.co/RfIQjK6ZIz
— Stephen Shankland (@stshank) December 31, 2020
Today is bittersweet for me. I'm glad the web platform won. "HTML5" was in the first sentence I ever uttered to our CEO, in 2008.
— Matt May (@mattmay) December 31, 2020
Still, I and many others poured our hearts into boiling the ocean of inaccessible Flash, quixotic though we were.
It could have been so much more.
Why did Flash have to die? My best explanation: Jakob Nielsen, the internet’s foremost critic of bad usability practices, was right all along. https://t.co/9PM3I6i5H4 new @readtedium
— Ernie Smith (@ShortFormErnie) January 1, 2021
Great piece by @ShortFormErnie on Flash, which was integral to the internet but also dying for, like, a million years. https://t.co/JmHibKx8jv
— James daSilva (OOO until Jan. 4) (@James_daSilva) January 2, 2021