[rendall]

I would say no, that modern browsers have the potential to do everything that Flash did, but it's not nearly as easy.

While it is possible in modern browsers to make a) cross-platform, front-end web applications with b) smooth vector and c) bitmap animation incorporating d) multimedia sound and e) video driven by f) a backend API (called dynamic data back then), it is not nearly as prevalent as it was. Animations and multi-media objects were first-class citizens in Flash in a way they are not in browsers.

I do think that's not entirely the browser makers fault. Web aesthetics have changed. Users liked swooping and diving logos with dramatic drop-shadows then, and not so much now.

[rob74]

I agree with the "not nearly as easy" part as long as you are limited to the usual HTML/CSS/JS stack. I think WebAssembly has a lot of promise here, as you can theoretically do anything you want in any language of your choice and have it run in the browser. Of course, this is also a threat to the "open web" where you are free to use your browser's DevTools to dissect the internals of any site.

[graderjs]

I got some Flash applications[0] working in the Pro version of my remote, isolated iframe-embeddable multiplayer web browser[1] using Ruffle[2].

I use CRDP (chrome remote debugging protocol)[3] to run Ruffle on pages that need it (sort of like a Chrome extension content script). Ruffle itself uses wasm and is quite fast.

It's cool seeing the audio and video work and playing those old games.

-

[0]: https://github.com/ruffle-rs/ruffle/wiki/Test-SWFs

[1]: https://github.com/crisdosyago/BrowserBox#bb-pro-vs-regular-...

[2]: https://github.com/ruffle-rs/ruffle

[3]: https://chromedevtools.github.io/devtools-protocol/tot/

[tsukikage]

The tooling is the main issue here, and that's even worse for webassembly than the usual HTML/CSS/JS stack.

[rendall]

This is the thing. ActionScript had a phenomenal API for each media asset.