[acdha]

Adobe has always been like this, too. They squandered an enormous marketshare with Flash because the alternative would've been spending a couple million on QA and they managed to unite all of the browser manufacturers in agreement that the web was better off without such an unreliable partner.

I shipped a couple of things on Flash back in the day but it was staggeringly bad software — random crashes, various heisenbugs where changes in one area would affect unrelated functionality in other modules, etc. — and while it cost something like $800, it was completely unsupported: I filed a number of trivially reproducible bugs with reduced test cases but never heard anything back until the next release came out and they sent automated suggestions that the bug might be fixed so I should buy a full-price license and find out.

[fnord77]

> heisenbugs

gold

[dredmorbius]

A well-established term of art dating to 1983:

<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heisenbug>.

[2cynykyl]

I also learned this term pretty recently, loved it. Another fav tech term is automagically :-)

[JadeNB]

Gold, but not new gold: http://www.catb.org/~esr/jargon/html/H/heisenbug.html

[echelon]

Flash is still unsurpassed as the easiest publishing medium.

JavaScript build system layer cake and "web standards" are a million times harder than just drawing some stuff, maybe writing a simple function, then building a static file that can be embedded anywhere and even downloaded. You have to spend so much time setting up any flash alternative, and the "standards" are worse.

I hate Steve Jobs for killing Flash and Adobe for being such awful stewards of one of the most amazing web technologies.

Kids growing up today have no idea how magical Flash was. It was like Roblox or Minecraft for web.

Websites are still inferior to Flash of the early 2000s. It's taken decades and they can only mimic a fraction of its power. And none of its ease.

[turpentine]

Magical? Those are some rose tinted glasses. Having to install a binary blob from a free-software hostile vendor that wanted a monopoly to load a website was always ridiculous ask. Flash was a constant embarassment of RCEs vulns and virtually non-existent Linux support.

[echelon]

> Having to install a binary blob

It was already installed for you.

> free-software hostile vendor that wanted a monopoly to load a website was always ridiculous ask. Flash was a constant embarassment of RCEs vulns and virtually non-existent Linux support.

You're not the user here. Average joes are. You're in the 0.001%. Your asks are arcane and orthogonal to most users of software, who just want their PC to do something neat and useful.

These issues you bring up are also entirely technically solvable. If we threw Flash out because of these misgivings (read: it was that Jobs didn't want to allow runtimes on his platform), then we truly destroyed some of the most valuable tech on the planet to satisfy "standards" boffins. What a waste.

[dghlsakjg]

I was an average-joe high school student back then.

People hated flash. Even non techies.

[marcus_holmes]

> You're in the 0.001%. Your asks are arcane and orthogonal to most users of software, who just want their PC to do something neat and useful.

Right up until enshittification kicks in and suddenly everyone cares and there are shouts of destroying the evil techbros who are poisoning the minds of our youth to buy a new yacht.

Can you imagine the situation if Jobs hadn't killed Flash? Most of the commercial websites required a Flash blob to deliver full functionality even back then in the early 2000's. Adobe never even vaguely pretended to be the good guys, they would have enshittified as soon as they possibly could, as hard as they possibly could (as they have done with the rest of their software). The entire web would be held to ransom at this point.

[likeclockwork]

Sure, but Adobe was never going to solve them.

[mvdtnz]

The overwhelming majority of computer users simply DO NOT CARE about things like "install a binary blob" or "free-software hostile vendor" or "non-existent Linux support". They installed the plugin and got a way better experience.

> Flash was a constant embarassment of RCEs vulns

I wonder if anyone has done an analysis of Flash versus Javascript (or other browser technology) vulns over their respective lifespans.

[m104]

Yeah but the execution still mattered. I'm a Flash / Shockwave fan as well but there's no point pretending that package was sufficient for the job it was pitched to do. Macromedia seemed to be on a really good track with Shockwave and Flash, but either didn't set up the technology for internet success, or really just sold out the goods with the Adobe acquisition.

In any case, take heart though. If we did it once, we can do it again.

[intrasight]

But we won't because this isn't something that can be done by consensus or by an ad company.

[drtz]

> Websites are still inferior to Flash of the early 2000s. It's taken decades and they can only mimic a fraction of its power.

Is this a troll? What could an application do with Flash in 2005 that we can't do with a modern web application today (excluding the obvious answer of runtime vulnerabilities that allowed apps to escape the sandbox)?

[fdgfikgfv]

Flash had its problems but as a user, it looked sharper and smoother than even current websites. And its editor gave non-tech users ability to create amazing animations, interfaces, and even games.

[dredmorbius]

Image-wise, SVGA + JS probably gets you the clarity. Standard gif / image animations not so much, if that's what you're referencing.

This isn't my baliwick, so I've absolutely nothing to say about the ease with which these options can be created.

[ricardonunez]

what’s he is referring is the editor and the easy way of drawing things, still agree we can do things today but a easy to draw editor like that is missing. I was a fan of flash and fireworks.

[Kaliboy]

There was more unique content/UI in the Flash era.

[preg_match]

This went away not only because flash died, but also as the internet commercialized.

I mean, consider this: McDonald’s used to be fun and colorful. Now every McDonald’s is boring and gray. And, wait, every store is boring and gray! And flash had nothing to do with that.

[LeFantome]

You know you can use Ruffle if you really want Flash right?

https://ruffle.rs

But the only standard you need is WASM. All browsers support it. Use whatever you want to make it. In fact, Ruffle is just a WASM app.

[ameliaquining]

The problem is that, while there's no theoretical barrier to an authoring tool with a Director-like user experience that exports to Wasm, no one has actually written one, and it's not a small amount of work.

(I agree that we're better off without Flash, but this particular problem is real and unsolved.)

[superkuh]

Ruffle is not complete or comprehensive. In my test of a dozen swf ruffle could successfully display about half. Compare to the actual flash plugin Shockwave Flash 11.2 r202 (11.2.202.643) in my retro machine browser which displayed them all perfectly.