[lekevicius]

For me it was a combination of IDE that allowed very easily to merge different assets (text, vector graphics, sounds) with basic scripting and a timeline.

Now you kind of have to think in code, and architect the site as a whole, there's less creative impulse, or simply messing around to find something cool. This interactive messing around has to be visual, ideas should be easily copy-pastable, etc.

Because it was easy to experiment with the whole interactive media, and you didn't really have to worry about differences in player (no touch, no mobile, player was independent of browser), you could create wild stuff in very short amount of time, and everyone could play with it in the same way.

I loved Flash. Sure, it wasn't accessible, wasn't SEO-friendly or searchable or linkable, and had no future in mobile, but it was a magical creative canvas quite unlike anything available now.

[whywhywhywhy]

Think there’s positives and negatives. Some of the stuff possible with canvas is amazing and wouldn’t have even been possible at all in flash really and it does integrate as a first class citizen on the page, doesn’t feel janky like flash did sometimes.

But on the other hand a 12 year old can’t figure it out in a week and ship an animation they made from scratch to the web.