RIP Adobe Flash, you changed the internet forever but you will not be missed

[Master Disaster]

Yesterday was December 31st 2020, it was the end of a terrible year and also the end of what became a terrible piece of software. It was Adobes official end of life date for Flash Player.

 

As of yesterday Adobe recommends that anyone with Adobe Flash installed on their devices should remove it, most browsers already block flash content and Microsoft will be removing it from Windows PCs (likely on the next patch Tuesday). From January 12th 2021 Flash Player will stop playing Flash animations entirely and the final remnants of the first iteration of a multimedia internet will die forever.

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Adobe scheduled the end of support for its famous Flash software on December 31st, 2020, and today is the day. While Adobe won’t start blocking Flash content until January 12th, major browsers will shut it all down tomorrow and Microsoft will block it in most versions of Windows. It’s over.

Flash's death started in 2015 when Adobe recommended all web developers start using HTML5. Its taken 5 years but now its officially dead.

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Flash enjoyed huge cultural relevance and looms large in web history, which might be why its funeral procession has lasted for years. Browsers started showing Flash the door early in the last decade, and in 2015 Adobe asked developers to move on to HTML5. Things became official in 2017, when Adobe announced it would end support.

Of course there's now a huge push to archive as much flash content as possible before it dies permanently.

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While Adobe is finally (mercifully) letting Flash go, it will live on in many historical artefacts. The Internet Archive is preserving Flash games and animations, including well-known hits like “Peanut Butter Jelly Time.”

https://www.theverge.com/2020/12/31/22208190/adobe-flash-is-dead

 

Flash really did change the face of the internet. I remember the early days of the modern internet, we got our first family PC in the early 90s with dial up and 3 months free Compuserve. I remember surfing for hours, endless walls of green comic sans text on black backgrounds, larger images had to be physically downloaded to be viewed, every page had a visitor counter on it.

 

I was actually the perfect age for Flash, by the time I hit my late teens/twenties it was everywhere. Ebaums world was my favourite place, my mates and I would spend hours watching satire and nonsense.

[Ashley MLP Fangirl]

why does everyone hate Flash so much? i never had a security issue with it before... 

[RejZoR]

Everyone raving how they won't miss Adobe Flash at all and dismissing it was a method that for years delivered video content to the masses and provided endless hours of enjoyment through games and animations it helped create. It was also a method of creating insanely rich and visually appealing webpages that were just not possible through HTML at the time.

 

Just because it didn't age well in its final stage of lifecycle, that doesn't mean Adobe Flash didn't push online content to new heights. HTML5 literally replaced it because it copied its functionality without being dependent on 3rd party plugin and it's now an integral part of browser engines. So, people who diss and dismiss Adobe Flash just to look cool are annoying fools. Without Adobe Flash, I don't think we'd evolve HTML the way it has.

[kaixax555]

Flash was insecure but I think people give it more flak than it actually deserved.

It was designed at a time when internet security was a significant problem, but the rapid evolution of the internet made it difficult for Flash to keep up. However, the introduction of Flash introduced a new level of user interactivity and applications that were never seen before, and strongly influences the internet that we know of as of today.

[atxcyclist]

11 minutes ago, RejZoR said:

Everyone raving how they won't miss Adobe Flash at all and dismissing it was a method that for years delivered video content to the masses and provided endless hours of enjoyment through games and animations it helped create. It was also a method of creating insanely rich and visually appealing webpages that were just not possible through HTML at the time.

 

Just because it didn't age well in its final stage of lifecycle, that doesn't mean Adobe Flash didn't push online content to new heights. HTML5 literally replaced it because it copied its functionality without being dependent on 3rd party plugin and it's now an integral part of browser engines. So, people who diss and dismiss Adobe Flash just to look cool are annoying fools. Without Adobe Flash, I don't think we'd evolve HTML the way it has.

It was a huge stepping stone for what the internet became. Anyone that poo-poos Flash basically isn't old enough to remember how terrible and lifeless the internet was before it existed. I shudder when I remember the dull pages that were a sea of blue text hyperlinks before stuff like Flash existed. I hope people are successful in archiving content, I know there are some websites that host Flash in a browser so you can still mostly access that content.

[Master Disaster]

11 minutes ago, RejZoR said:

Everyone raving how they won't miss Adobe Flash at all and dismissing it was a method that for years delivered video content to the masses and provided endless hours of enjoyment through games and animations it helped create. It was also a method of creating insanely rich and visually appealing webpages that were just not possible through HTML at the time.

 

Just because it didn't age well in its final stage of lifecycle, that doesn't mean Adobe Flash didn't push online content to new heights. HTML5 literally replaced it because it copied its functionality without being dependent on 3rd party plugin and it's now an integral part of browser engines. So, people who diss and dismiss Adobe Flash just to look cool are annoying fools. Without Adobe Flash, I don't think we'd evolve HTML the way it has.

Was that aimed at me? If so then did you even read my post?

 

Also saying you won't miss something that has been superseded isn't "dissing it". I also don't miss VHS or cassette tapes, that doesn't mean it don't remember them fondly. 

[captain_to_fire]

47 minutes ago, Ashley said:

why does everyone hate Flash so much? i never had a security issue with it before... 

just because you didn’t had any doesn’t mean it doesn’t have problems https://cve.mitre.org/cgi-bin/cvekey.cgi?keyword=Adobe+Flash+ 

Not to mention that Flash is a battery hog in phones that’s why Adobe ceased support for Flash for Android in 2012 

 

[captain_to_fire]

Back in the day when Netflix requires Silverlight and YouTube requiring Flash... RIP browser plug-ins 

[Mihle]

48 minutes ago, RejZoR said:

Everyone raving how they won't miss Adobe Flash at all and dismissing it was a method that for years delivered video content to the masses and provided endless hours of enjoyment through games and animations it helped create. It was also a method of creating insanely rich and visually appealing webpages that were just not possible through HTML at the time.

 

Just because it didn't age well in its final stage of lifecycle, that doesn't mean Adobe Flash didn't push online content to new heights. HTML5 literally replaced it because it copied its functionality without being dependent on 3rd party plugin and it's now an integral part of browser engines. So, people who diss and dismiss Adobe Flash just to look cool are annoying fools. Without Adobe Flash, I don't think we'd evolve HTML the way it has.

Saying that it won't be missed do not mean you don't think it was important at its height.

It just means it haven't had any reason to exist the last few years.

[Master Disaster]

1 hour ago, Ashley said:

why does everyone hate Flash so much? i never had a security issue with it before... 

Incorrect, you might not have experienced a problem but the problems it had were still there. You wouldn't tell people its OK to leave your front door open all night because you did it once and didn't get burgled.

[pythonmegapixel]

Goodbye, Flash.

 

As others have pointed out, if Adobe hadn't pushed the boundaries of what was possible with web content at the time, we might well be a long way behind where we are currently with interactive materials on the web.

 

But it was "of it's time", and it must die. HTML5 is an open standard (unlike Flash which is proprietary as hell) - and it does everything Flash could, but more efficiently, on more platforms, with fewer security holes. It is a worthy successor.

 

I won't miss it - but I appreciate what it's done.

[whm1974]

I do have some Flash Files on my system and I would love to have a way to play them or convert them over to something for the few games I have.

 

Any reason Adobe can't Open the Specs of Flash so we can play back some games?

[pythonmegapixel]

Just now, whm1974 said:

I do have some Flash Files on my system and I would love to have a way to play them or convert them over to something for the few games I have.

 

Any reason Adobe can't Open the Specs of Flash so we can play back some games?

Because it wouldn't be in their business interest to do so. The Flash standard as a whole isn't dying IIRC - it's just the browser plugin.

[whm1974]

Just now, pythonmegapixel said:

Because it wouldn't be in their business interest to do so. The Flash standard as a whole isn't dying IIRC - it's just the browser plugin.

So does Adobe provide a way to play back some of the Flash Content I have?

[Master Disaster]

5 minutes ago, pythonmegapixel said:

Because it wouldn't be in their business interest to do so. The Flash standard as a whole isn't dying IIRC - it's just the browser plugin.

The Flash Standard is very much dying. From January 12th even having a Flash plugin installed won't allow you to watch Flash animations. Flash as a product doesn't even exist anymore (though it kind of lives on through Adobe Animate), browser already block Flash content and MS are going to block Windows from running it in any capacity.

[Master Disaster]

4 minutes ago, whm1974 said:

So does Adobe provide a way to play back some of the Flash Content I have?

I'm 99% sure someone somewhere has written an offline Flash player. I know that codecs exists to allow media players to play back animations (K Lite Codec Pack installs one) but these obviously don't work with actionscript so games or interactive animations don't work.

[whm1974]

I'm really surprised that no one has managed to Clean Room Reverse Engineer Flash. That has been around long enough for a group of talented Folks to do.

 

You know, to Perserve old content and all of that. 

[Master Disaster]

18 minutes ago, whm1974 said:

I'm really surprised that no one has managed to Clean Room Reverse Engineer Flash. That has been around long enough for a group of talented Folks to do.

 

You know, to Perserve old content and all of that. 

I did some Googling and The Internet Archive will allow you to upload any Flash animations you have and watch/play them from a built in Emulator. Plus you'd also be contributing to an ongoing preservation project.

[whm1974]

Just now, Master Disaster said:

I did some Googling and The Internet Archive will allow you to upload any Flash animations you have and watch/play them from a built in Emulator. Plus you'd also be contributing to an ongoing preservation project.

Some of what I have is really Kinky Porn. From an Artist. While his Website is still up, he appears to be inactive.

[Master Disaster]

6 minutes ago, whm1974 said:

Some of what I have is really Kinky Porn. From an Artist. While his Website is still up, he appears to be inactive.

LOL, I used to watch some weird shit on Ebaums but can't say I've ever seen Flash porn. That said its the Internet so if you can think about it it probably exists somewhere

[whm1974]

32 minutes ago, Master Disaster said:

LOL, I used to watch some weird shit on Ebaums but can't say I've ever seen Flash porn. That said its the Internet so if you can think about it it probably exists somewhere

A few of them are Games.

[bruhsfx2]

1 hour ago, whm1974 said:

I'm really surprised that no one has managed to Clean Room Reverse Engineer Flash. That has been around long enough for a group of talented Folks to do.

 

You know, to Perserve old content and all of that. 

Maybe checkout Ruffle at ruffle.rs? It's a Flash emulator written in Rust, and thanks to WebAssembly, Ruffle can run on the web as well. 

[whm1974]

8 minutes ago, bruhsfx2 said:

Maybe checkout Ruffle at ruffle.rs? It's a Flash emulator written in Rust, and thanks to WebAssembly, Ruffle can run on the web as well. 

Thanks I'm one the website now.

[Taf the Ghost]

3 hours ago, RejZoR said:

Everyone raving how they won't miss Adobe Flash at all and dismissing it was a method that for years delivered video content to the masses and provided endless hours of enjoyment through games and animations it helped create. It was also a method of creating insanely rich and visually appealing webpages that were just not possible through HTML at the time.

 

Just because it didn't age well in its final stage of lifecycle, that doesn't mean Adobe Flash didn't push online content to new heights. HTML5 literally replaced it because it copied its functionality without being dependent on 3rd party plugin and it's now an integral part of browser engines. So, people who diss and dismiss Adobe Flash just to look cool are annoying fools. Without Adobe Flash, I don't think we'd evolve HTML the way it has.

While I agree, the reason: "Flash Ads".

[Doobeedoo]

Well time moves on. I still remember how in school we installed it on every PC and how I did use it to preview animations we made, etc.