[larsiusprime]

If we want to speed up the demise of flash, there are several roots that need to be whacked simultaneously:

1. Tons of existing flash content people want to access

2. Give current flash devs a reasonable alternative

The first one is a thorny problem and is somewhat solved by things like Shumway but still needs more work.

As for the second, things like Unity and HTML5 have not covered all of flash dev's use cases, so only some of them have switched over.

I think OpenFL (a Haxe-based reimplementation of the Flash API -- not the flash PLAYER) is our best hope for that:

http://www.openfl.org

http://www.haxe.org

Devs can keep their current flash workflows but export to non-flash targets, specifically native C++ (supports mac/win/linux, iOS/Android) and HTML5 (with canvas, DOM, or WebGL rendering). They can also use SWF-based vector animation assets, and even integrate with the Flash CC player. And it's all open source.

Flash has been "dying" for years, but if we really want it to bite the dust, we need to give people a better way to make their content that doesn't depend on a plugin.

EDIT: Video of OpenFL integrating with the Flash CC editor: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BhE07Y9TUJU

[divbyzer0]

>If we want to speed up the demise of flash

I prefer to keep flash because it is easily blocked.

I find most flash to obnoxious/intrusive/distracting. I disable flash be default, and only enable the items I'm interested in. Also page loads are reduced, one less attack vector.

[dajobat]

Agreed. I work for a business that provides fairly heavy RIAs, which we custom build based on customer needs on (typically) very short time frames. The applications are used by thousands of different users on massively varied combinations of OS and browser, and the flash+flex stack is the only way we can develop robust apps to the required deadlines. It's a shame but it's the way it is currently.

[jlg23]

> 1. Tons of existing flash content people want to access

I'm not sure about that. For most of the time, there was not even a flash player for my operating system of choice and I did not miss much. Now I still have to click to enable flash content and that only happens about once a week.

> 2. Give current flash devs a reasonable alternative

HTML5 + JS are actually pretty powerful if one ignores the cruft that has been built up over the years (i.e.: stick to standards only, ignore the 90% outdated advice given in places like stackoverflow).

Earlier this year I was redoing a flash-only site for friends in HTML5 and JS: I am not a frontend guy at all, I did develop on firefox only, I stuck to html/js/css standards without any 3rd party library and when, after about 30h of development time, we tested across platforms it just worked.

> Flash has been "dying" for years, but if we really want it to bite the dust, we need to give people a better way to make their content that doesn't depend on a plugin.

Do we? Maybe people should reconsider whether their content really requires flash. The technology is there, flash devs will just have to move on and learn something new.

[superskierpat]

I've successfully used haxe + openfl in a school project and I'm happy to say I got 100%. There are a few issues with the project but those are due to the project being my first video game.

https://github.com/Superpat/projetFlash

[userbinator]

I think more open-source Flash players would be the best. The problems stem from Adobe's implementation, not the SWF format itself; I think the latter is actually very well designed for its intended use cases, and if anything, attempts to replace it with HTML5/SVG/CSS/JS introduce even more inefficiency.

[marquis]

Media players: browsers don't have native support for H.264 over HLS or RTMP, and MPEG-Dash seems native to Chrome only. If the browsers could accept these natively, this would certainly speed flash's demise. Until then, what are the alternatives?

[samsonradu]

Exactly. Much of the live streaming on the web defaults to flash, the alternatives (hls, rtsp, webrtc) are all underperforming.

[stronglikedan]

> Tons of existing flash content people want to access

Plus some existing flash content people need to access, such as Flex apps developed for internal use by businesses that have no intention of shelling out the cash to replace them.

[melling]

"2. Give current flash devs a reasonable alternative"

Developers need to follow the market. The market doesn't follow us. Otherwise, you're stuck working on legacy projects.

[larsiusprime]

Perhaps I should have worded it better.

The market is the people who hire those devs (ie, bank websites, video streaming sites, etc, etc, etc) and they are currently saying: "we still need flash for some things, so we're not ready to kill flash just yet."

Give THEM a reasonable alternative, and flash will go away.

[prapam2]

Why would bank websites require flash?

[tetraodonpuffer]

in terms of use-cases, what about DRM for things like rdio / spotify / ...? what will be the alternative for that?

[larsiusprime]

In the short term, OpenFL lets you export as flash, so you can use the existing solutions for now, and in the long term, you can build whatever else you need into your native or HTML5 solution. So as soon as these features come online in HTML5 or Native, you can just switch over without having to rewrite your codebase.

TiVo is already using Haxe/OpenFL in their set top boxes and I'm sure they've worked out some video streaming solution:

https://t.co/EbUwkJRJC6