- Adobe’s Flash, hated the world over for slowing down computers, containing more holes in security than swiss cheese and stubbornly being the video carrier of choice until recently, is dying.
Flash was cool for certain things. Having a cartoon with randomized elements is pretty neat, as is the ability to hide clickable easter-eggs in scenes, or to use clocks that actually work. It was less great as a web development tool. It's too bad the one couldn't be extricated from the other.
I'm half-okay half-sad of this. On the one hand, Unity and HTML5 have proven their worth for web games - there are several good ones for that. And HTML5 is a BEAST for video. And either option, mostly, is a lot more secure than Flash - and security is always a good thing. On the other hand, I am sad for two main reasons: Flash is internet history at this point. Newgrounds, AlbinoBlackSheep, the defunct Shockwave.com website - all of these would not be part of our collective memory if it wasn't for Flash. And many websites will suffer of it - because let's face it, videos have left Flash - but the vast people who make games that are destined to be free on the Internet and played in a browser only know Flash because of how easy it is to use yet how complex it can be made. And the death of Flash means the possible death of 4chan's /f/ and of SWFChan (and as an extension, all of the websites dedicated to storing old flashes for nostalgia) - and that is a huge loss because of the sheer amount of content held there. No more Demented Cartoon Movie in full quality. No more Pico's School. No more nothing. I wish Flash went open-source so that it could be fixed.
>(and as an extension, all of the websites dedicated to storing old flashes for nostalgia) - and that is a huge loss because of the sheer amount of content held there. we can still use old software to view these old SWFs. >I wish Flash went open-source so that it could be fixed. the free GNU gnash plays them all.
First, for the "old software" - it will work up to a point, as time goes we may need to build new tools to emulate Flash and such simply because of how old it will have grown. But it sounds like Gnash may be a solution to this - I didn't know about that piece of software.
Heck, the last two times I've installed Mint on my computers the very first thing I've done is open up the software manager an uninstall Flash. It's not need it for Youtube, Vimeo, Soundcloud, Bandcamp, or any media site that I can think of off the top of my head. It might be all in my head, but I think without flash, Firefox crashes a lot less often on me too.