[Closi]

Agree - the success of flash was that it was designer-first rather than developer-first (and I miss that!).

Things like theatre.js look great, but very quickly their documentation make it clear that you are expected to use javascript.

Flash expected you to just draw stuff, animate stuff, and if you like there is an optional scripting environment. The first few iterations of flash didn't really even have much of a scripting environment at all (AS1 was incredibly limited!).

I think that is part of the nostalgia of that period - things were so easy to make that you got some really creative and crazy stuff.