Adobe Flash Legacy

Discussions revolve around Adobe Flash's historical role in web development, its strengths in interactive content and tools, drawbacks like security and performance issues, and its replacement by HTML5 and JavaScript.

📉 Falling 0.4x Web Development
4,789
Comments
20
Years Active
5
Top Authors
#234
Topic ID

Activity Over Time

2007
12
2008
77
2009
105
2010
463
2011
345
2012
226
2013
167
2014
107
2015
229
2016
145
2017
340
2018
197
2019
314
2020
535
2021
263
2022
421
2023
358
2024
194
2025
277
2026
14

Keywords

JS O3D JavaScri ActionScript E4X BBC GIF IMO HN CAD flash html5 web adobe javascript css html video js webgl

Sample Comments

bouk Oct 28, 2014 View on HN

Making Flash obsolete is pretty important

watty Sep 9, 2011 View on HN

Flash existed long before HTML5, there was no platform for the tools. They revolutionized the web and HTML5 is catching up

icemelt8 Dec 6, 2021 View on HN

Why did you hate flash as a user?

atjoslin Mar 29, 2012 View on HN

Flash is getting less and less useful for web-browser development. Javascript + HTML5 is so much better.

fineline Jun 8, 2017 View on HN

I did a lot of Flash/Flex work - it was the bees knees of front-end dev in the days before JQuery, Firebug, Chrome etc. and was the most consistent across platforms, as the same plugin was used on each, as opposed to trying to make your web-standards-based app work on several incompatible implementations. HTML/JS/CSS didn't come close at that time, but there was hope that it would develop to make Flash obsolete - which it now has.People always complained about how Flash &q

em-bee Dec 10, 2019 View on HN

it was only a matter of time for something like this to appear. there was a reason flash was popular.the problem with flash was not what it did, but how it was implemented, as proprietary browser extension.doing the same with standard, browser supported javascript solves that problem.getting rid of flash was a long, hard battle. it potentially would have been easier if alternatives like this appeared earlier.

fruchtose Oct 10, 2012 View on HN

What's killing Flash is 10 years of buggy, awful software. No other multi-platform VM has had so many performance issues, so many security holes, and so many bugs that significantly degraded the user experience. JavaScript interpreters have never been as terrible as Flash. Java has never been as terrible as Flash. Flash's only claim to fame is its ubiquity. It will not be missed.

hansworst Mar 7, 2022 View on HN

At the time, (most?) websites didn't adjust for responsive web either. There's nothing inherent about Flash that made it impossible to support responsive layouts with it. In fact, if anything, developing with Flash gave you more control over positioning than html/css did at the time.Sure, there were downsides to Flash. It's true that many Flash-based apps/websites used more battery power than html/css stuff. But I'd argue that this is an indicator that there

anthk Jan 19, 2024 View on HN

Flash was a buggy crap which made lots of older computers spawn cycles like crazy and had zero accesibility for the blind. It deserverd to die.

mopsi Feb 18, 2020 View on HN

Cheer up. Flash was once as ubiquitous as JS is now. :)