Macromedia/Adobe Flash dies this year, what are your memories?

[Leeroy ST]

Back when websites that had video formats that would make you download one of 15 different players to view them, Flash was a major step toward standardization back in the day. Macromedia flash had been a major component of many websites, flash videos, and flash games. Old Newgrounds actually used to be relevant as well as many other sites. Other video players included REAL and Quicktime among many others. 

 

Flash was later acquired by Adobe many years later who have done nothing to fix many of its growing issues and really just sat on it for years. Compatibility issues required frequent updates and several were unstable causing users problems. But now that Adobe is killing flash in December of this year what where your memories of flash or any of its short-lived competitors?

 

I'm sure some independent users will carry flash on but the fact multiple productivity sites, video sites, office sites, old websites still online, archive sites, and various programs still use flash with only a small percent being able to "upgrade" to the new HTML5 standard, we are going to lose a large portion of the internet. It's likely you'll need to use customized modern browsers or download older browsers to use flash content. An end to an era.

[+OLD CS1]

Frog Bender 2000.  Good ol' Joe Cartoon.

[JamesD]

Adobe fix something??? Ha ha ha ha ha...

 

[jhd]

I thought that Flash had ceased to be relevant years ago. I did not know that it still received "support" of any kind.

 

I remember downloading something called Shock Machine. This functioned very broadly similar to an emulator and ROM files; indeed the reason I got it was because it included some classic arcade games -- I seem to recall Missile Command -- as well as some original content. The interface provided a carousel of the available titles.

 

  

[+OLD CS1]

There are still a large number of websites reliant upon Flash.  In fact, most of NOAA's websites are using Flash for animated satellite and RADAR.  A lot of on-line video applications are using Flash rather than HTML5.  The other day I uploaded an h.264/aac MP4 to AtariAge and it played back to me in Flash.  Otherwise, I come across websites which have not been refreshed for several years which still have Flash even if used just for animations (annoying animations) or damnedable advertisements.

 

While Flash has massive issues with stability and security, it does make sense to use Flash players on the web for video as HTML5 is limited in its supported CODECs which pushes de-facto winner and losers in media formats for the web.  Still supporting plug-ins for alternate media players would seem to be a reasonable alternative, though players like VLC have their own issues.

[Leeroy ST]

13 hours ago, OLD CS1 said:

There are still a large number of websites reliant upon Flash.  In fact, most of NOAA's websites are using Flash for animated satellite and RADAR.  A lot of on-line video applications are using Flash rather than HTML5.  The other day I uploaded an h.264/aac MP4 to AtariAge and it played back to me in Flash.  Otherwise, I come across websites which have not been refreshed for several years which still have Flash even if used just for animations (annoying animations) or damnedable advertisements.

 

While Flash has massive issues with stability and security, it does make sense to use Flash players on the web for video as HTML5 is limited in its supported CODECs which pushes de-facto winner and losers in media formats for the web.  Still supporting plug-ins for alternate media players would seem to be a reasonable alternative, though players like VLC have their own issues.

What I don't get is why every major "browser" is going to remove flash at the time of Adobes end of support when

 

1. Independents can continue to run with the torch and support it themselves

2. It's incredibly simple to just keep the option of using Flash in the browser, just turn it on when needed and if you don't, don't use it? I know that the excuse is "stability" but it beats downloading older browsers, which would be arguably be more of a pain on phones.

 

Not to forget, but several browser functions already have warnings just warn turning on or using flash may be risky blah blah, and then click agree and the problem is resolved just like that. Seems like a simple solution instead of having many major and even some secondary browsers just wipeout flash entirely like it's poison.

 

^{Though to be fair under Adobe I guess it is kind of like poison, lol.} 

[pacman000]

Flash was/is a fairly nice animation program, & there were some good online games which used Flash. You could even have Flash create an .exe version of your stuff, if you wanted a stand-alone version. Flash was designed as a creativity tool, with scripting added to allow one to create programs; HTML5 was designed as a computer language. HTML5 may technically be able to do the same things, but I'm not sure it's as easy to use.

 

Didn't Newgrounds release their own Flash clone a few months ago? 

 

And it's still weird RealPlayer's outlasting Flash.

[Zoyous]

I'm an animator, and to me Flash was the most counter-intuitive animation platform I've ever encountered. I'd say it should have been called "The Punisher" but that name was already taken!

[desiv]

As a system admin for a while, I have a lot of memories about Flash...  Most not good. 

As a user.. um.. er..  There is Zombo.com ...    This is zombo.com....   (I can still hear that voice just thinking about it.  )

[Leeroy ST]

On 9/21/2020 at 2:10 PM, pacman000 said:

Flash was/is a fairly nice animation program, & there were some good online games which used Flash. You could even have Flash create an .exe version of your stuff, if you wanted a stand-alone version. Flash was designed as a creativity tool, with scripting added to allow one to create programs; HTML5 was designed as a computer language. HTML5 may technically be able to do the same things, but I'm not sure it's as easy to use.

 

Didn't Newgrounds release their own Flash clone a few months ago? 

 

And it's still weird RealPlayer's outlasting Flash.

I though Newgrounds was converting some of their videos to HTML5?

 

On 9/23/2020 at 1:25 PM, desiv said:

As a system admin for a while, I have a lot of memories about Flash...  Most not good. 

As a user.. um.. er..  There is Zombo.com ...    This is zombo.com....   (I can still hear that voice just thinking about it.  )

I always check that site a couple times a year to see if its still up. 

[+OLD CS1]

OH!  And this guy.

 

[pacman000]

25 minutes ago, Leeroy ST said:

I though Newgrounds was converting some of their videos to HTML5?

They are, tho they did develop a Flash clone/browser too, for older games which were hard to convert. (Checked after making that first post.)

[ChildOfCv]

On 9/21/2020 at 11:52 AM, Leeroy ST said:

What I don't get is why every major "browser" is going to remove flash at the time of Adobes end of support when

 

1. Independents can continue to run with the torch and support it themselves

2. It's incredibly simple to just keep the option of using Flash in the browser, just turn it on when needed and if you don't, don't use it? I know that the excuse is "stability" but it beats downloading older browsers, which would be arguably be more of a pain on phones.

 

Not to forget, but several browser functions already have warnings just warn turning on or using flash may be risky blah blah, and then click agree and the problem is resolved just like that. Seems like a simple solution instead of having many major and even some secondary browsers just wipeout flash entirely like it's poison.

 

^{Though to be fair under Adobe I guess it is kind of like poison, lol.} 

New vulnerabilities keep being discovered in Flash.  Once Adobe ceases development, those vulnerabilities will become liabilities.  They probably also would like to remove special code that checks for Flash specifically in order to provide those warnings.

My memories include ROFLCopter, a Choplifter-type game that uses only ASCII characters, to satire emoticons and texting acronyms.  It included WTF Bombs, for instance.  Also, the Star Wars Gangsta Rap, which is likely converted to a movie format by now, but was originally built on Flash animation.

[DanBoris]

 

On 9/23/2020 at 1:25 PM, desiv said:

As a system admin for a while, I have a lot of memories about Flash...  Most not good. 

As a user.. um.. er..  There is Zombo.com ...    This is zombo.com....   (I can still hear that voice just thinking about it.  )

 

Here is an HTML5 version of Zombo.com..

 

https://html5zombo.com/

[Leeroy ST]

On 9/27/2020 at 7:21 PM, DanBoris said:

 

 

Here is an HTML5 version of Zombo.com..

 

https://html5zombo.com/

Ugh, slower and not autoplay. lol

[pacman000]

YouTube recommended this to me, & I thought it was nice.  It's a memorial for Macromedia Flash, with a bit of history on the sub-culture which built up around it in the early 2000's, & a list of cartoons which impressed the videomaker.

Edited December 5, 2020 by pacman000

[bluejay]

I've had a lot of fun playing various flash games that weren't blocked during at school in the middle of class with my friends when we weren't supposed to. We got extremely skilled at pressing alt+tab lightning fast when the teacher comes around to see what we're doing. Every once in a while one of us would get caught which was always fun.

I'm curious to see how fellow students would react when they find out that all their favorite unblocked flash game sites are now completely useless.

Edited December 8, 2020 by bluejay

[+OLD CS1]

1 hour ago, bluejay said:

I'm curious to see how fellow students would react when they find out that all their favorite unblocked flash game sites are now completely useless.

I thought there was a third-party Flash-a-like which removed all the extra crap Adobe put into Flash which introduced the major security vulnerabilities...

[bluejay]

2 hours ago, OLD CS1 said:

I thought there was a third-party Flash-a-like which removed all the extra crap Adobe put into Flash which introduced the major security vulnerabilities...

not sure if we're allowed to download whatever chrome extensions we want or if it's even possible at all...

[Bixler]

4 hours ago, bluejay said:

I've had a lot of fun playing various flash games that weren't blocked during at school in the middle of class with my friends when we weren't supposed to. We got extremely skilled at pressing alt+tab lightning fast when the teacher comes around to see what we're doing. Every once in a while one of us would get caught which was always fun.

I'm curious to see how fellow students would react when they find out that all their favorite unblocked flash game sites are now completely useless.

Man, this brings me back to MY middle school days. We would get through whatever assignment we had to do and then would browse Miniclip, AddictingGames, ArmorGames, CrazyMonkeyGames, Kongregate, Nitrome, and other websites for our favorites. Some of those were Bowman 2, Thing-Thing Arena, Fancy Pants Adventure, N-Game, Heli Attack series, Desktop Tower Defense, Crush the Castle, Stickman RPG, and of course, the life-changing RuneScape (2). Played that for YEARS. 
 

never would have stumbled on it were it not for Miniclip. 
 

the end of an era. 

Edited December 8, 2020 by Bixler

[+x=usr(1536)]

 

And, of course:

 

 

Beyond that, I recall it being a perpetual security risk and IT management / infosec mitigation nightmare that should have been taken out back and shot somewhere in the 2006 timeframe.  Not going to miss it one bit when it's officially gone, but I do hope for preservation of the content in newer, less swiss-cheesy formats.

[bluejay]

16 minutes ago, Bixler said:

Man, this brings me back to MY middle school days. We would get through whatever assignment we had to do and then would browse Miniclip, AddictingGames, ArmorGames, CrazyMonkeyGames, Kongregate, Nitrome, and other websites for our favorites. Some of those were Bowman 2, Thing-Thing Arena, Fancy Pants Adventure, N-Game, Heli Attack series, Desktop Tower Defense, Crush the Castle, Stickman RPG, and of course, the life-changing RuneScape (2). Played that for YEARS. 
 

never would have stumbled on it were it not for Miniclip. 
 

the end of an era. 

Nice to see people who aren't 40 for a change ?