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Comment on The demise of Flash didn't bring any big HTML5/JS equivalent for watching animations; fast internet and better video compression made those types of animations become raster videos as well

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squaresinger@lemmy.world ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

Again: HTML5 was supported way, way before flash disappeared.

caniuse.com/?search=canvas

Basic support in all major browsers since: 2012
WebGL support in all major browsers since: 2013
Full support in all major browsers since: 2013 (except Edge, which was released in 2015, IE didn’t support everything)

That’s way before flash was discontinued. Except of on iOS, but smartphones were never the main platform for flash games/animation.

Flash-style skeletal animation was a result of technical limitations, not a deliberate art choice. The thing that killed flash-style animation was (a) the availability of better things like full-motion rasterized video and (b) the internet moving away from personal websites and towards big platforms, and almost all big platforms restricted the kind of content you can post to text, images and video.

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insomniac_lemon@lemmy.cafe ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
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- squaresinger@lemmy.world ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
  A vector video format does exist: animated SVG. It has all the features you claim are missing.
  
  But nobody uses it because it is much more complicated to do than rasterized video and has no relevant advantages.
  
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  - insomniac_lemon@lemmy.cafe ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
    A video has sound, can be exported from the animation software to a single file, and it can be played in a standard video player.
    
    Animated SVG does not sound like it does that, and needing new paid* software isn’t great for adoption either. And honestly, I’ve never even heard of animated SVG (I’m well aware of SVG and that it probably could be animated with CSS or JS but that alone does not make it a thing).
    
    The fact that vector works at resolutions (even if they don’t exist yet!) without the author even needing to think about it (let alone re-export) is an advantage. It can be great for many 2D aesthetics (many cartoons even used it!), the biggest complication is Adobe (and whoever is selling a subscription to what you mentioned).
    
    Also that people are still developing things with Flash (even if it has to be ran via Ruffle) tells me again that the issue isn’t vector, it’s that replacing a format with ingredients is not an effective strategy if you actually want people to use it.
    
    * yeah I know Flash wasn’t so great in that department, but communities were already using it
    
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    squaresinger@lemmy.world ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
    
    The fact that vector works at resolutions (even if they don’t exist yet!) without the author even needing to think about it (let alone re-export) is an advantage.
    
    That’s why I was talking about meaningful advantages. Today, stuff gets exported in 4k and that’s it. No need for anything more.
    
    That nobody uses animated SVG should give you a clue about how many people value vector graphics over rasterization. It has uses (mostly when you expect stuff to get zoomed a lot) but only in quite specific use cases.
    
    There’s ton of free software that exports to HTML5, including most major game engines. And people use that a lot. In fact, you can make VR games that fully run in a browser.
    
    Browser games still exist. They run on HTML5 now, not on Flash. Web video still exists. It runs on HTML5 players, not on Flash. Little animations in websites still exist. They run on HTML5/SVG/CSS, not on Flash. Flash really was just replaced by HTML5, because it’s plain better on every front.
    
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  - PeriodicallyPedantic@lemmy.ca ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
    Spoken like someone who has never animated something in flash.
    
    Go ahead and try to make an animated music video in SVG. Tell me how easy it was. It’s it something a middle schooler could pick up easily after a couple hours?
    
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    squaresinger@lemmy.world ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
    Ok, tell me: How many people make animated music videos and publish them on Youtube, versus how many people make animated music videos and publish them as Flash videos in 2025?
    
    How many people did that in 2015 in Youtube vs Flash videos?
    
    Nobody cares about Flash because it sucks. Even back in 2012 Flash sucked. It was a really bad tech and by 2015 it was mostly used by people to dumb to learn real programming languages and frameworks.
    
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PeriodicallyPedantic@lemmy.ca ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
Idk how old you are but it feels like you’re just looking up dates without really understanding what it was like.

I did flash animation.
I am a developer (I prefer backend but we all have to do some web).
I was an adult during that time.

The textbook dates don’t tell the story. I’m telling you that flash died long before support ended. I’m telling you that replacement tools didn’t exist yet. I’m telling you that getting flash artists to try to animation using JavaScript was not feasible. It’s crazy to me that you think that the existence of a basic canvas support means that artists had an realistic path to making their art.

Smartphones weren’t the main platform for flash, and that’s why it died early.

You’ve got a skewed view of what flash was used to animate. People made absolutely beautiful flash. Just like all art, there is good and bad. Flash made it accessible enough that bad amateurs could produce reasonable animations.
Rasterized video was not better. What a crazy thing to say.
Personal websites? You think that people mostly consumed flash animation and games from personal websites??? Where did you get this from?

It feels like you’re reading this from a timeline of major events instead of having lived it.

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- squaresinger@lemmy.world ⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
  Dude, I’be been developing HTML apps from 2008 on. Early HTML5 browser support was literally my job at that time.
  
  You seem to have totally ignored the next gen tech at that time and now you can’t remember what happened back then.
  
  And now you are basing your whole argumentation on “you must be a kid”.
  
  Kiddo, I’m likely pretty much the same age as you.
  
  You were the one who brought up canvas support. By 2015 you could export full 3D games made in Unity to HTML5. And that was certainly not the first, there were literally dozens of other engines that allowed export to HTML5/WebGL at that time.
  
  If you are too young to remember, that’s not my problem, little child.
  
  Flash died because people moved to a better, more future-proof stack. And you claiming that little 2D animations in Flash were technically much, much better than full 3D rendering with GPU support is honestly wild.
  
  (If you want to get offensive because you don’t have arguments, fine, I can get offensive too, little child.)
  
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  - PeriodicallyPedantic@lemmy.ca ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
    Flash. Animators. Weren’t. Devs.
    
    I don’t know how many times I need to beat this into your skull. I’ve never said it was impossible. I said it was setting the bar unfeasibly high for the vast vast majority of content creators. It was easy. The bar for entry was low. tons of literal children were making flash videos.
    
    And you’re saying that “all they needed to do was become a software developer”. Oh they just needed to learn unity and 3d modeling! Should be no problem for a 14yo, that’s why we see so many 14yo indie devs making unity games.
    
    Be so for real.
    
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    squaresinger@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
    You were the one harping on how you were a great flash “developer”.
    
    That was your argument. Now you are claiming that you weren’t a developer. Make up your mind.
    
    Now you don’t even know that Unity totally does 2D as well and that it’s easier to use than Flash ever was. So your argument boils down to the fact that you don’t know anything about the topic at hand.
    
    People who are making videos nowadays don’t need to program either, they just animate a video and upload it to youtube. No programming needed.
    
    But it was you who claimed that “being a flash developer” is somehow superior to that.
    
    In fact, we do see a ton of kids making games e.g. using Unity or other tools. Have you ever heard of Roblox? That whole ecosystem is run by kids making games.
    
    You are just wildly out of touch and stuck in the past.
    
    Flash sucked. There’s better alternatives today. You are out of touch.
    
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