Partly. Mobile also made flash obsolete. Flash mobile support was super sketchy at best. Add on a huge amount of new internet users started on mobile, and Android Chrome not supporting Flash since 2012 or so, and maturity and adoption of H.264 as streaming codec, and mobile apps replacing flash videos and games, it's quite funny that it took this long. Consumers have left Flash long time ago. The remainders are probably legacy enterprise specific sites from the 90s.
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Adobe Officially Ends Flash Support, Recommends Uninstalling Immediately
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I've got a few investments that were originally taken out with small financial institutions in the 2010s that later got absorbed by larger banks, at which point they were shut down to new customers but their legacy Flash-based websites were left live for existing customers to continue to access/service their investments. These are long-term investments, so moving them to another institution wouldn't be financially viable. Losing online access to them means I'll now be reliant on call centres which is a PITA as they're generally unaware of these legacy accounts and how to access them.
I fully get why Flash had to go, but its retirement does leave issues.
The fact that this is even possible is the real reason Flash should never have been allowed on the web. The issue is not its efficiency or battery power consumption - Steve Jobs' letter about it was mentioning this as the reason customers don't like Flash, but the real reason is that it's proprietary and the web should be open.
Back when Flash was arriving on the scene, I was using BeOS and there simply was no Flash player for it (nor for Linux, at the time). And more and more web sites were becoming unavailable for people not on Windows or Mac. The web should be about content and not about presentation - however, everywhere the marketeers were storming into their web developers' offices screaming "Look! This site has cool wobbly animated menus and we need that too!!"
That's a good point, I definitely want a USB-C port on the iPhone. I'm not ready (for apple) to go completely portless just yet.
The lightning port was necessary to make the devices thinner when moving from the 30 pin dock connector. There was no other port at the time that was suitable for apple devices use for data and audio transfer.
Thanks for the memory Flash! A true love hate relationship and an important player in the history of the Internet!
I mean in terms of content creation?
I remember years ago using Macromedia flash to create animations, interactive experiences etc. What do people use now?
One specific thing flash was great at was embedded overlaid interactive video. You could have multiple layers of transparent / opaque video and have it controlled by an overlaid UI. Jump to times etc.
This is not something that can be achieved easily in HTML5.
This is not something that can be achieved easily in HTML5.
Unfortunately, some websites that require it can't simply be ignored; for example a friend's employer uses Flash on their benefits site.
I hope that will drive replacing Flash expeditiously; however I suspect companies will autoupdate their corporate machnes' browsers and then find out critical sites no longer work.
My guess is companies have not prepared for this and will run around trying to figure out what to do. The total number of sites that depend on Flash is probably small, so at least the damage will be minor unless it impacts you.
Years ago I created an online course and Flash was used to make interactive portions. The course will probably join the many that will still be listed as available but won't work.
"Since Flash Player will no longer receive updates, Adobe recommends that all users immediately remove the software "to help protect their systems."
...that one being a standing recommendation since the 2k's.
...that one being a standing recommendation since the 2k's.
Once again, a deeply insightful post, thanks!
While Flash is now dead, and good riddance, Adobe is not, ever hear of Photoshop? Lightroom? Illustrator? Acrobat?
Instead of just trying to farm likes with generic, nonsensical posts why not try for a little content in 2021?
Oh man... I watched a YouTube video the other day that was ~10 minutes with ~8 minutes being BS about how I should hit like/subscribe.
How about a big fat 'no!!!'
Did you actually experience that rather than “wow, you have an iPhone!”?
I uninstalled it last week on my Windows 10 desktop-have never known a programme to uninstall so quickly! 😂.
yep also bashing like „you cant even send photos or mp3 via Bluetooth!“ and „why would u use your finger! That’s so stupid! A stylus is way better“. Why can’t you copy and paste hahaha!
Or even worse constant Patreon plugs. Or those videos with no dialog just terrible music in the background. They all need to go away they ruin YouTube.Oh man... I watched a YouTube video the other day that was ~10 minutes with ~8 minutes being BS about how I should hit like/subscribe.
How about a big fat 'no!!!'
Go portless and have a smart dock. It could/should have the 3 contact points like the iPad Pro has on the side. Have a cradle that it could sit into and have all of the needed connections...just like what is done for some laptops. That SHOULD make the iPhone almost waterproof.
I cannot remember the site name, but I had used to be part of flash community. It was like Codepen, but for hosting .fla sources and swf output instead. I wonder what happens with that site, but I totally forget the url.
Wow. Guess that silliness died rather quickly at some point. Thanks for sharing!
Good thing.
But most people here just seem to misunderstand the problem...
Flash in itself wasn't bad... its implementation was. Terribly.
Adobe, as often, doesn't know how to efficiently code. (Even their prime app Acrobat DC is a joke in that matter... Start an OCR job (which has a dead slow engine that isn't even using GPU acceleration... because that GTX1080 would have finished the job in probably 5% of the time) and you can't open another file in another window. It's worse than a single-thread app.)
Flash is no different... additionally to lack of efficiency it was plagued by security issues one worse than another. Again, not a sign of good code quality. However, the true reason flash failed, was, as Jobs wrote, its closed approach.
If Adobe would have open-sourced it at least partly (client app except DRM module for example), it might have been a great thing. But that would have been necessary pre 2010.
But most people here just seem to misunderstand the problem...
Flash in itself wasn't bad... its implementation was. Terribly.
Adobe, as often, doesn't know how to efficiently code. (Even their prime app Acrobat DC is a joke in that matter... Start an OCR job (which has a dead slow engine that isn't even using GPU acceleration... because that GTX1080 would have finished the job in probably 5% of the time) and you can't open another file in another window. It's worse than a single-thread app.)
Flash is no different... additionally to lack of efficiency it was plagued by security issues one worse than another. Again, not a sign of good code quality. However, the true reason flash failed, was, as Jobs wrote, its closed approach.
If Adobe would have open-sourced it at least partly (client app except DRM module for example), it might have been a great thing. But that would have been necessary pre 2010.
All those ones you mentioned after Flash just THREW ME BACK. Lord. I forgot how many s— ”standards” there were attempting to handle media on the Internet.
The HTML5 spec was being finalized just as I got into web design, around ten years ago. I couldn’t believe how ridiculous it was that people were clinging onto old standards like they were LIFEBOATS when the W3C was making it so beyond easy to implement rich media with video tags, audio tags, et cetera. Don’t even get me STARTED on CSS3—to this day, people use ridiculous methods via JavaScript to load custom fonts (can someone please remind me of the name of the super-popular JS method that I’m forgetting?) when font-face exists, use jQuery for animations when it is absolutely unnecessary (read: I know it is still useful in certain contexts), and use images to depict things as simple as rounded corners instead of just using border-radius. All in a time when computer resolutions and pixel densities vary WILDLY, and HTML/CSS standards account for all of it seamlessly. I just don’t get it.
One funny thing. I was pretty young when I got into this, and I had no idea what semantic tags were useful for beyond, just…being able to read over the plaintext of HTML and get an idea of how things should be sorted on the page? Then Reader View came around. I was like, oh, this is what it’s useful for. Use it for half the websites on this absolutely ad-riddled Internet. (Not for MR though! Want yall to be online as long as can be!)
Wow, where have you been hanging out on the Internet? I haven’t seen a site that insisted on Flash in at least five years.