Some of you might remember when a 3mb flash animation could pack in some 5 minutes of animation, with the more advanced ones even having chapter/scene selectors, which could also include clickable easter eggs and other kinds of interactions during the scenes.
I miss Flash
Homestar wya?
The problem isn’t animation - as you said there is raster video and also animated SVGs.
The problem is that there is no way to package interactive content like there was. Flash wasn’t just animation, it was also games. And even flash animations often had interactive bits, like homestar runner Easter eggs.
You can technically do it with JavaScript and HTML, but it’s difficult now and unfeasible back when flash died. Not only did the tools not exist, but html didn’t even have things like
canvasyet for the tools to use.That’s not really true. You can do animation in HTML5 just like you could in flash. In fact, there are even quite a few ways you can acomplish the same.
- HTML5 + JS
- CSS + JS
- There are multiple flash player projects running in WASM or JS
- Animated SVG + JS
All of that allows for animation, games and interactivity, no problem.
There are dozens of tools that allow you to build flash-like animation and package it easily. Tons of game engines allow to export to HTML5, just at the press of a button. And there are still websites hosting browser games that fill that spot. There’s even HTML5 browser games that run in VR.
But there are two big caveats:
- With much more performance, storage and internet bandwidth, there’s no reason to go for flash-style skeletal animations. That’s not because it’s not possible, but because we have better alternatives.
- Nobody hosts their own websites anymore and most platforms (large ones like Youtube, Facebook or Reddit, but also small ones like Lemmy) don’t allow you to just upload whatever HTML5 code you want. So if you want to reach more people, you’ll just upload a video instead.
I actually use Flash nearly every day at work. Legacy support is no joke. We have a multi-million dollar system that is all controlled by a computer that is dual-booting Win11 and WinXP. Because the control program is coded in Flash. It’s coded in Flash because there are a lot of moving parts, and the program displays their current positions. And dynamically moving objects is like the one thing that Flash does really really well. Instead of trying to re-program it in a new language, the manufacturer just fucking ships WinXP. Win11 is on another partition, and is only booted when you need to connect to the internet to run firmware updates on the various motors.
Hey, if it ain’t broke
Flash was always broken, as any Adobe software…
Except they weren’t always Adobe.
A lot of comments on here saying “but X is better”. Y’all are missing the point though. These “better technologies” are not being used in the creative and fun ways that flash was - not to the scale that we saw in peak Newgrounds/HomestarRunner era. It goes to show that no one company should ever control tools and the stuff our works are built upon. A lesson we, as a society, sure struggle to learn.
Don’t get me wrong, my rose tinted glasses aren’t all the way on. I remember critical infrastructure systems developed in flash of all fucking things.
But a very real piece of the creative internet died with flash. Maybe it’s a coincidence, and it’s the corpo-sites we all congregate around now to blame. I don’t know. Peak internet was 2000-2010 and I’ll stake my flag on that hill - don’t @ me.
k
congregate@
Streaming video killed whatever Flash was.
Flash took the binary categories of animation and video game and made it into a spectrum. Even when they were mostly animations, there would be some interactive elements. It was apparently a technical horror show, but it was used to create unique pieces of art that define a narrow era.
That’s true, but there is a project called “ruffle” now, which is written in Rust and can play .swf files. So if you really want, you can still build Flash animations and share them online.
Ruffle also runs in browsers, thanks to wasm.
As a desktop Linux use, Flash was a pain in my existence.
That shitty plugin that never worked right in Linux because fuck Linux users, amiright?
Then whole sites were written in Flash, hurting web interoperability and degrading standards. Of course many public services, banks, followed the trend because shiny.
Fuck those dark ages. The day that shit died was a good day indeed.
I harbor hate for not many things, but Flash is one of them.
Microsoft Silverlight: “Hold my beer”
That name brings up repressed memories. Curse you for making me remember that abominable software
Like zombo com where you can do anything. The only limit is yourself.
Removed by mod
Nostalgia goggles in effect. Flash was crap while every other tech caught up and surpassed it. Even today CSS/HTML is replacing Javascript in their area simply because people realize it has gotten that good. People acting like there is no alternatives but in reality people just gave up on that stuff as everything became reddit, twitter, youtube and facebook. The HTML5 stack has always surpassed Flash there is no excuse for the dickheads in this thread acting otherwise. WebGL2 WebASM? I recently made a tool that uses the Web Bluetooth API thingy. Javascript frameworks compare to Flash. You cannot compare the modern web tech you don’t bother with to Flash but you could compare it to Phaser.js.
Flash the tech sucked.
Flash content editors and communities sharing info about how to use it is where it was at. That was what was driving the creativity.
Removed by mod
Even today CSS/HTML is replacing Javascript in their area simply because people realize it has gotten that good.
As an example, this is made entirely with HTML + CSS; no JavaScript involved.
My nostalgic sigh is about animations that became rasterized videos, thus losing any chance at being interactive or hiding easter eggs.
I am glad we no longer have sites made in pure flash, but now we have different stupid shit that also blocks back/forward navigation, fucks up scroll bars, hogs the CPU and crashes the browser for no good reason.
You aren’t appealing much inter-intra-frame compressions are famous with conspiracy theories doubt you can keep up with that shit if you are harping on 3mb in 2025
Those last things you listed were all true of Flash too:
- Back forward buttons, working in a flash site?
- Scroll bars? Same thing.
- CPU usage? Same thing. (See: phone performance.)
- Crashes? It was the number one cause of crashes as reported by Apple when looking at their Safari crash logs. This was true of many plugins of that style from back in the day (being unstable).
I know, which is why I mentioned them. We got rid of flash, but people were so fucking nostalgic for the worst parts that they put it all back into their JS frameworks
You are wrong. You probably never used it. There is no such tools to develop apps like was possible with flash.
The argument that you can do with x technology today the same thing makes no sense. Today you have to be a skilled programer to do the same stuff and it might still work worse today as it did back then.
HTML5 is nowhere near as capable. Webgl . Is there a graphical tool to use it? JavaScript tool? Dumbass Lottie files tools that cost 20$ per month and suck.
And if you were a good programer in flash/flex, you could build apps just as stable as you can today.
It’s stupid that tech like this doesn’t exist. Except for dumbass Rive - again 45$ per month and it sucks
I specifically stated ‘modern web tech you don’t bother with’ for a reason. These ecosystems are bigger than random assholes with random asshole opinions.
Yes, a lot of assholes around trying to find any possible, no matter how absurd way to insult people about the most pointless stuff.
Push shove friction creates fire and fire it what gets it fucking done. A local aspect of my: Aussie
Yes, it’s not you, it’s the situation. It’s all good, right? It’s not you.
Bye.
HTML5 is nowhere near as capable. Webgl . Is there a graphical tool to use it? JavaScript tool?
How about p5.js…?
That’s just a web ide. Flash was a vector tool where you could for animate and also code.
It’s not an IDE; p5.js is a programming language (originally based on Processing) intended to be easy to learn, and focused on making it easy for non-programmers to create art.
You can use it to make anything you could make with Flash, and more (since it’s not limited to vector animations).
For instance, here’s itch.io’s page for games made in this language.
You can use a notepad to create anything you want in web assembly, that’s not the point.
The point is that it’s a tool (specifically a programming language) intended to allow non-programmers, and especially artists, to produce (possibly interactive) art viewable in any browser, which is essentially what flash was.
No one codes directly in web assembly, on the other hand; you use programming languages that compile to web assembly. So I have no idea what point you’re trying to make by mentioning it.
I thought your point was that without flash we lacked a way for non-programmers to produce interactive art on the browser. I gave you a pretty solid option, which you discarded by calling it something it isn’t and ignoring it’s similar purpose to flash; other people gave you other solid options like modern HTML + CSS, which can currently pretty much do anything flash could without even using JavaScript (for instance, this game is made entirely in HTML + CSS, without any js), and you also discarded their answers without any rational argument.
Now I’m not sure you have a point, unless it’s simply to complain and dismiss any replies that attempt to be even remotely constructive.
You clearly miss the point, intentionally or not intentionally, I don’t know. I thought it’s clear what the point is.
On one hand you have a tool like flash an integrated tool similar to other design tools, timeline, coding interface (that works with the timeline and elements on the board, thousand of libraries intended for people using flash, vast community resources. On the other hand you have pure coding. Not sure what your issue is. I don’t have time to go the full circle with you. That css game was made by a 10x programer. The same game would be made by a designer in flash.
Web 2.0 and the stiffling of the indie web is the issue to me.
Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, TikTok, etc aren’t built to cool web pages in front of people as those could leave people off of the site.
There are some crazy cool html5 stuff out there.
What about Lottie and Rive?
There is, SVG with
<animate>. It’s just not that common.There’s a lot more tooling for creating rasterized videos than SVG. Flash had a whole development environment around it. SVG is comparatively rubbing sticks together to make fire.
People could use SVG animations + JS to accomplish the same thing. It just never took off for some reason
My guess is because there’s no “easy to use” program that allows them to make the whole thing then export for easy web visualization, most of the people who’d make animations won’t want to write down keyframe positions and code for the animation proper
They actually did, Flash is still around (now called Animate), and can export to a HTML+JS bundle you can include on your own website.
Problem is nobody uses their own websites these days, and you can’t upload stuff like that to Twitter/Facebook/YouTube.
There were lots of programs for making Flash content though, and there was a lot of knowledge about how to make stuff in it. There isn’t the same culture of remixing stuff now. More interactive web games are also more server dependent even for elements where they don’t need to be, unlike tons of old standalone flash games
This is a great idea for a project honestly.
I guess the “easiest” way to approach it is to take a working JS game engine, like pixijs or melonjs or p5js, creating the animation editor with keyframes and whatnot, then allowing it to export as “web animation”, which would be the javascript file + compacted resources
This sounds very cool. I’m a programmer by profession but used to love drawing animations as a kid. I should try to make something like this.
Watching Homestar Runner on YouTube doesn’t hit the same
This reminds me that I need to bug my wife to touch up my Trogdor tattoo (she was a professional artist before the economy went tits up)
Gotta get that tat freshly burninated!
The best part is I now have a gnarly scar right under him that looks like a path of burnination. Unrelated, burnination is a real word.
I vaguely remember one of the animations had Homestar pouring soda in the ending screen. After a while (30s?) he’d comment on how it had a lot more soda than it looked. The closest equivalent is a post-credit gags, but it’s not the same thing
🎶The never ending sooooooddaaaaaa…🎵
Appwy liberawy!
