[HN Gopher] Internet Archive expands Flash support
       ___________________________________________________________________
        
       Internet Archive expands Flash support
        
       Author : sogen
       Score  : 197 points
       Date   : 2023-07-14 19:25 UTC (3 hours ago)
        
 (HTM) web link (mastodon.archive.org)
 (TXT) w3m dump (mastodon.archive.org)
        
       | Apocryphon wrote:
       | Does this mean that previously archived sites that use Flash will
       | now be viewable?
        
         | lucgommans wrote:
         | That would be nice. I was recently trying to play
         | https://archive.nytimes.com/www.nytimes.com/interactive/scie...
         | via archive.org, but it doesn't work. Also the swf file itself
         | does not load in an old virtual machine. I don't know where to
         | view error output besides the JavaScript console; it simply
         | does nothing.
         | 
         | (Previous discussion:
         | https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2290936)
         | 
         | I still occasionally think back to this engine when the topic
         | of human randomness comes up (I do computer security for a
         | living, so that's not infrequent)
        
           | kmeisthax wrote:
           | Ruffle ships a browser extension that loads Ruffle into every
           | tab you open, so Flash sites work as they were originally
           | intended to. It's available for Chrome and Firefox. Safari
           | works if you enable developer extensions and download our
           | macOS app - we have to get into Mac App Store for it to work
           | normally because apparently notarization isn't enough[0].
           | 
           | https://ruffle.rs/#downloads
           | 
           | [0] It was enough for the old extensions API :/
        
             | lucgommans wrote:
             | Did that work on the NYT site for you? Because for me it
             | doesn't see mto
        
         | Bakingpotato wrote:
         | I think so. They had it before, but it worked kinda funky it
         | should be better now.
        
         | codetrotter wrote:
         | Hope this means that I can play Attak by Johnny Two Shoes
         | again.
         | 
         | https://web.archive.org/web/20161126122429/http://www.johnny...
         | 
         | There was a time when I used to play that game every day.
        
       | a1o wrote:
       | Does anyone how to do this? I could tie existing wasm runtimes to
       | some binaries that supports it (mostly old abandon ware games
       | there that aren't flash), but when I asked around in forums no
       | one answered there - or I didn't understood how their communities
       | worked.
        
       | justsomehnguy wrote:
       | At some point Flash emulation would solve all the biggest
       | troubles of the original Flash and.. became a new standard for a
       | web-based inter/animation? Of course, having a VM with XP with
       | Macrmedia director would be a problem for Apple M1/2/3 owners,
       | but nothing a modern emulation couldn't solve...
        
         | Bakingpotato wrote:
         | would it solve the problems? absolutely. would browser vendors
         | pick it up for a standard? almost definitely not.
         | 
         | though, nothing is stopping anyone from creating new flash
         | games, videos, etc. the software is out there, and NG already
         | does flash game jams.
        
           | justsomehnguy wrote:
           | Well, the modern CSS + animations + SVG solves like 90% of
           | things Flash could do, with HTML5 and canvas it solves the
           | remaining 9%. but the biggest problem is the authoring tools
           | and I if there were anything worthwile enough the web would
           | had exploded already.
        
             | bamfly wrote:
             | Flash is to web dev as Excel is to desktop applications: it
             | "sucks" but is also arguably the single best tool the
             | entire field has produced. The technologies that might
             | replace Flash are "better" but also so much worse that they
             | aren't even close to actually replacing it, years on--and,
             | yeah, that's mostly about the authoring tools, which were
             | not just excellent, but also _de facto_ free for hobbyists
             | (thanks, piracy) when Flash was in its prime.
        
               | Bakingpotato wrote:
               | not only that, the shovelware scene proved that it was
               | piss easy to use, and powerful (especially in the later
               | years) see as many html5 gaming webpages lately? yeah,
               | no. the 'death' of flash killed the browser game and
               | rapid prototyping that flash offered, and there is
               | nothing on that level in this age.
               | 
               | the problems that html5, css and javascript could in
               | theory 'solve' are a moot point when the switch to those
               | technologies killed any enthusiasm for it.
        
             | rhn_mk1 wrote:
             | I'm not sure if it's included in your 90%, but an advantage
             | of Flash is that it was _not_ JS or HTML. Meaning that you
             | could block it easily, when it offended your senses
             | (animated ads, autoplaying videos), without affecting the
             | functionality of most web sites.
             | 
             | CSS + animations + JS + HTML5 cannot be blocked without
             | destroying the web site as well.
        
               | Bakingpotato wrote:
               | yeah I remember that people demonized flash so much for
               | that and turned a blind eye once html and javascript was
               | given that power.
               | 
               | jokes on them now, I guess
               | 
               | not to mention flash content could run on a potato, while
               | javascript is soon to see your processor as fried as a
               | potato chip instead
        
               | justsomehnguy wrote:
               | > CSS + animations + JS + HTML5 cannot be blocked without
               | destroying the web site as well.
               | 
               | That's a lame excuse. There were enough 'not malicious'
               | sites, there are enough sites _now_ what treat you like a
               | 3rd rate netizen even if you are on a 4k desktop in a
               | landscape orientation.
               | 
               | If anything, Web is destro^W profiling itself for a
               | narrow subset of mobile users for quite some years
               | already, so I can't accept your 'blovk Flash' stance as
               | anything having a substinence.
        
       | j4ah4n wrote:
       | They certainly were fun days back with Macromedia at the helm.
       | Full suite of tools that worked extremely well together.
       | 
       | I remember when Tim Burton put out various cartoons via Director
       | (the same used for countless DVDs) that opened up more dramatic
       | storytelling than the business "intros" offered at the time (I
       | built these too mind you).
       | 
       | I was even Flash AS3 certified at one point, something I was very
       | proud of in my early career.
       | 
       | Good times.
        
       | BenFranklin100 wrote:
       | This is encouraging news. These sorts of efforts help save
       | information from being buried in the trash heap of history.
       | 
       | Is anyone aware of coordinated efforts beyond the internet
       | archive to save data in old formats and media? I actually have
       | information on 5.25 floppies I never copied over (my bad) that
       | are almost certainly lost at this point. Also, I have docs in PFS
       | Write format that will be PITA to recover at this point too. I'd
       | have to dig out that old 486 that has been gathering dust in my
       | basement the last 25 years to know for sure :) .
        
         | Bakingpotato wrote:
         | I don't know of too many, but there are some out there like
         | https://hiddenpalace.org/ (though that is more related to video
         | games).
        
       | Bakingpotato wrote:
       | huh, so the Ruffle technology is actually something to consider.
       | Much better than the last 5+ years of flash 'alternatives' tried
       | some games out, most look identical to FP somehow.
        
       | anticensor wrote:
       | I misread as "Internet Explorer expands Flash support" for a
       | moment.
        
       | Alifatisk wrote:
       | Part of me feel sad that the big players deprecated flash before
       | any good alternatives popped up, HTML5 wasn't exactly an
       | alternative yet. Flash was waaay more powerful, I think we lost a
       | bit of good technology there.
       | 
       | Hopefully we'll get it back soon.
        
         | Bakingpotato wrote:
         | yeah. the closest to getting flash back is Ruffle, which works
         | pretty well, and Newgrounds does flash game jams still, so it
         | ain't all dead
        
         | em3rgent0rdr wrote:
         | Particularly for vector-based animated movies, can achieve much
         | higher quality-per-bandwidth than compressed raster graphics,
         | and are future-proofed to automatically handle higher video
         | resolutions.
        
           | Bakingpotato wrote:
           | yeah, a lot of flash content that was SVG exclusive can go up
           | past 4k and look stunning, and flash was the only one around
           | then (and debatably, now) with an editor to let someone
           | leverage that
        
       | vsnf wrote:
       | I couldn't find any easily available official notice, but they
       | seem to be using Ruffle[0]
       | 
       | [0] https://ruffle.rs/
        
         | jazzyjackson wrote:
         | Well when you load an emulator on the archive there is a ruffle
         | splash page before the animation starts, so a good bet!
        
         | lucgommans wrote:
         | Announcement: https://blog.archive.org/2020/11/19/flash-
         | animations-live-fo...
         | 
         | > _Utilizing an in-development Flash emulator called Ruffle, we
         | have added Flash support to the Internet Archive's Emularity
         | system, letting a subset of Flash items play in the browser as
         | if you had a Flash plugin installed_
         | 
         | I had trouble when adding e.g.
         | https://archive.org/details/gravityrunner-nolimit because
         | there's literally zero documentation on this system that I
         | could find, but the way that it works is that you edit metadata
         | tags (key-value list) and there is some magic/special tags that
         | have an effect on how the item is displayed on the site, like
         | whether to show you the emulator. What you need to set is:
         | emulator = ruffle-swf         emulator_ext = swf
         | 
         | You can find out what others have set by clicking on 'show all'
         | at the download options and choosing the <itemname>_meta.xml
         | file.
        
           | db48x wrote:
           | If you prefer JSON you can also visit
           | <https://archive.org/metadata/gravityrunner-nolimit>.
        
       | cempaka wrote:
       | Went looking for a good old article about fanimutation, this is
       | quite the walk down bored-college-dorm-session memory lane:
       | https://www.austinchronicle.com/screens/2002-01-25/84480/
        
       | haunter wrote:
       | Highly recommend "Winnie the Pooh's Home Run Derby". It's the
       | Dark Souls of flash games
       | 
       | https://archive.org/details/homerunderby_en
       | 
       | The japanese version is here (no difference)
       | https://archive.org/details/homerun_20201126
       | 
       | They might crash in full screen though (some kind of bug)
        
         | mynameishere wrote:
         | Well now I've got that crappy music stuck in my head.
         | 
         | That brings up a real mystery from 15 years ago that I never
         | did solve. Back in the day you could go on kongregate or
         | whatever and play these awful flash games that clearly took 30
         | minutes or less to make. Just junky, copy-paste stuff. (Much
         | worse than the "home run derby" game above.)
         | 
         | And yet...
         | 
         | And yet they all seemed to have original sound tracks of more-
         | or-less passable game music. Where were they getting this from?
         | Did adobe give everybody a huge catalog of tunes to pick from?
        
           | ilayn wrote:
           | It was mostly from https://www.newgrounds.com/
           | 
           | Click the audio tab
        
           | kmeisthax wrote:
           | Newgrounds had the Audio Portal, a repository of free-to-use
           | music specifically intended for use by people creating movies
           | and games for their Flash Portal.
           | 
           | That being said, this sort of licensed tie-in webgame
           | probably would have just bought a royalty-free stock music
           | track from Audiojungle[0] or whatever.
           | 
           | There was also a huge market for licensing custom-branded
           | versions of whole Flash games, too. That's why every
           | mid-2000s official site for any sort of media property had
           | Flash games on it.
           | 
           | [0] Audiojungle.
        
           | Bakingpotato wrote:
           | a lot of people tended to get CC0 music, free, and didn't
           | need to make their own though most of the actually good flash
           | games had an artist make music specifically for the game
        
         | samketchup wrote:
         | I just struck out 5 times in a row, finally made solid contact
         | and the game crashed.
         | 
         | Thank you, lol
        
           | haunter wrote:
           | Try not to play fullscreen. Started crashing some months ago.
           | Or download the sfw file and play with the standalone
           | Ruffle.rs client
        
             | Bakingpotato wrote:
             | did you report that to the bug tracker?
        
         | jdjdjdhhd wrote:
         | Indeed, it crashed Firefox mobile for me in full screen
         | 
         | But either way, I played twice and that's enough for me
        
         | gjsman-1000 wrote:
         | What a mystery for how that ever got approved...
         | 
         | (For context, there is a video of a YouTuber trying to beat
         | it... and he did, 7 1/2 hours later. He was mostly stuck on the
         | "Christopher Robin" level which basically requires perfect to-
         | the-frame timing.)
        
           | haunter wrote:
           | Yeah that's Ludwig. One of the better streams ever. The final
           | boss is crazy because every pitch is random so you have to
           | guess instantly + perfect hit it too
           | 
           | There is some lore behind the game. It was a Yahoo Japan
           | title https://www.siliconera.com/winnie-the-poohs-home-run-
           | derby-s...
        
       | jonplackett wrote:
       | The thing I still miss about Flash is the authoring tool.
       | 
       | It is one of the few bits of software that bridged a gap between
       | artists and creators and coding in a way that totally
       | democratised creating interactive websites.
       | 
       | I see some similarities with Instagram filters and TikTok
       | effects. The visual-layout-you-can-add-code-to approach, but
       | Flash was so mainstream and capable in a way filters aren't.
       | 
       | I wish Adobe had done a better job with flash and just converted
       | the Flash Player into html5. Surely that could have been done?
       | 
       | Website creation is far too complicated now compared to then and
       | I think the level of experimentation - especially by lone artists
       | - has plummeted since flash died.
        
         | LadyMartel wrote:
         | I fondly remember when I first discovered how to attach a goto
         | action to a button and I went nuts with it making choose your
         | own adventure type animations. Drawing was also really easy to
         | make thing look decent even with a mouse. I haven't found (or
         | admittedly looked for) a similar vector drawing tool like that
         | ever since.
        
           | ftmch wrote:
           | Yes, the generated brush strokes were really good. I was at
           | one point just making static comics in Flash, using just a
           | mouse because the brush strokes looked like they were drawn
           | by someone way more skilled than myself.
        
         | [deleted]
        
         | johannes1234321 wrote:
         | Yes, I still haven't found a good alternative to easily build
         | simple interactive animations for the web. Flash was fun, even
         | with my limited artistic skills.
        
       | codethief wrote:
       | So does that mean I get to play Winterbells and Yeti Sports
       | again? :)
        
       | willhackett wrote:
       | This is pure nostalgia
        
       | NelsonMinar wrote:
       | Compare with ooooooooo.ooo, recently discussed on Metafilter in
       | great detail: https://www.metafilter.com/199981/Friday-Flash-Fun-
       | Forever
        
       | CSMastermind wrote:
       | I was just watching a YouTube video about Home Star Runner
       | yesterday: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wbh9-mNmviE
       | 
       | I never watched the series myself but I do remember hearing about
       | it.
       | 
       | In the video essay he talks about how flash videos like Home Star
       | Runner were a unique medium. Not quite passive like a video but
       | not quite interactive like a video game. The videos could be
       | watched passively but also could incorporate interactive elements
       | like minigames, easter eggs, and choose your own adventure
       | stories.
       | 
       | He points out that even when Netflix dipped into the choose your
       | own adventure format they couldn't achieve the same flexibility
       | as a flash animation because if for example they wanted to make a
       | story change that would dye a character's hair blue they couldn't
       | possibly film all the permutations scenes required to propagate
       | that visual difference throughout the story.
       | 
       | But in flash animation you can. You can easily let the audience
       | choose a character's hair color and have that effect the
       | animation for the rest of the story.
       | 
       | The author of that YouTube video made me wish I could experience
       | those cartoons and it makes me happy that places like the IA are
       | making that possible.
        
         | goosedragons wrote:
         | You can already experience them on homestarrunner.com thanks to
         | ruffles. It emulates the flash player and the old toons seem to
         | work fine. The site even has it built in so no need for an
         | extension.
        
         | TillE wrote:
         | Those were fun gimmicks and all, but Homestar Runner worked
         | because of the cute character designs, funny writing, and
         | Matt's genuinely outstanding voice acting. It holds up just
         | fine on YouTube.
         | 
         | It was more about Flash being a really powerful tool for
         | amateur animators, and coming at a time when you didn't have
         | much else in the way of video on the internet.
        
           | derefr wrote:
           | Yeah, but there was a _reason_ that we  "didn't have much
           | else in the way of video on the internet" at the time --
           | bitmapped videos were far too bandwidth-intensive for most
           | people to download _in realtime_. (You could still download
           | them, and people sometimes did; but a 3-minute, 240p MPEG1
           | /RealPlayer clip was something you'd need to dedicate a half-
           | hour to fetching, either using a download manager or
           | Limewire. It was _not_ a  "click to play" experience.)
           | 
           | This was also the reason that YouTube didn't get started
           | until 2005 -- that was about when at least some people were
           | starting to be "ready" to receive streaming bitmapped video
           | over their Internet connections, without needing to make a
           | big production of it.
           | 
           | Flash _as a distribution format for video_ was distinctive
           | and successful because it was essentially a standardized
           | abstract machine for demoscene demos -- a Flash animation
           | wasn 't a video, it was an ActionScript program that
           | _rendered_ a video when executed. So a Flash animation could
           | be arbitrarily lightweight on the wire -- as long as the
           | author was clever about composing things out of vector bits
           | and small reusable textures.
           | 
           | Flash _as a distribution format for video_ was obsolete
           | basically as soon as people 's Internet connections improved
           | enough that they could just stream the pre-rendered output of
           | someone else rendering out the Flash animation program
           | instead. (Which was around... 2010, I'd say?) Which also
           | meant that, at that same moment, the "Flash aesthetic" of
           | vectors and reusable resources basically instantaneously
           | ceased to exist, because it had all been in the name of
           | conserving bandwidth, and there was no longer a reason to do
           | that if you were rendering the result out to MPEG anyway.
           | 
           | Flash as a distribution format _for games_ stuck around a few
           | more years, because HTML5 wasn 't fully there to replace it
           | yet. And the authoring tool (now Adobe Animate) is around to
           | this day, because it's still an excellent tool for creating
           | vector-based cartoons... that you render out to bitmapped
           | video.
        
             | bsimpson wrote:
             | Hanna Barbera is another famous aethetic driven from
             | logistical considerations.
             | 
             | Every HB character wears a tie or a necklace because it
             | provides a seam to separate the head from the body. You can
             | have a bunch of Wilma or Yogi heads that reuse a single
             | body. Lets you animate dialog without having to redraw
             | literally everything.
        
             | Bakingpotato wrote:
             | I think you nailed it on the head with the demoscene
             | mention. not only was this one of the only ways to get this
             | kind of content in those days, but any ol hobbyist could
             | and did pick it up. netflix is the farthest you can get
             | from ever seeing anything like homestar runner's
             | characters, plot, etc
        
           | echelon wrote:
           | Flash made it easy for any kid or creative to do amazing
           | things.
           | 
           | Homestar, Weebl, Salad Fingers, Charlie the Unicorn, Ultimate
           | Showdown, Xiao Xiao, Albino Black Sheep, Newgrounds, YTMND...
           | 
           | It was businesses with splash intros (the kind that Zombo.com
           | parodied) made Flash suck.
        
         | irrational wrote:
         | Flash really was something special. We created all kinds of
         | training content in it (all of which was completely replaced
         | with static text and images after all of our customers adopted
         | iPads for doing associate training - Which where it still is
         | today, extremely boring). We all these animated characters,
         | with their own backstories and personalities, that each had
         | their own professional voice talent. Associates in Asia
         | especially loved them. Another project was for people who
         | repaired printers. All the printers this company produced were
         | 3d models inside of flash that could be rotated on any access
         | and disassembled to the smallest screw. A tech could choose
         | something to repair and it would show them step by step how to
         | do the repair. They could rotate/zoom the printer however they
         | wanted to see the current step playing out. Neither video nor
         | static text/images are a good replacement.
         | 
         | The best thing was, everything was vector graphics, so the file
         | sizes were minuscule.
        
         | derefr wrote:
         | > He points out that even when Netflix dipped into the choose
         | your own adventure format they couldn't achieve the same
         | flexibility as a flash animation because if for example they
         | wanted to make a story change that would dye a character's hair
         | blue they couldn't possibly film all the permutations scenes
         | required to propagate that visual difference throughout the
         | story.
         | 
         | I mean, that's not a distinction of Flash as a format; that's a
         | distinction between animation and film. Netflix could certainly
         | do a CYOA for a cartoon series.
        
           | Cerium wrote:
           | It is not a distinction between animation and film, it is
           | around when the content is generated. A CYOA series needs the
           | content generated in realtime. Each binary decision that
           | impacts basic facts about the series (hair color in this
           | example, or which character has something happen to them,
           | etc) in the entire series doubles the number of possible
           | versions.
        
             | derefr wrote:
             | My point is that animation _can_ be procedurally generated
             | "at runtime", while film [motion-photography of actors]
             | cannot.
        
         | dylan604 wrote:
         | >He points out that even when Netflix dipped into the choose
         | your own adventure format they couldn't achieve the same
         | flexibility as a flash animation because if for example they
         | wanted to make a story change that would dye a character's hair
         | blue they couldn't possibly film all the permutations scenes
         | required to propagate that visual difference throughout the
         | story.
         | 
         | Oh, how little credit you give to the magic of editing. If they
         | needed the same footage to be reusable with minor differences
         | in things like hair color, they could do it all in post. With
         | the magic of m3u8 play lists, they could see where they even
         | have the variations of videos to as minimum duplication of
         | video as possible. It becomes much more of an asset management
         | nightmare than content creation issue. As an aside, theatrical
         | releases of movies were sometimes given "fingerprints" where
         | small details in a scene would be changed like the
         | adding/removing of a prop in the background, the color scheme
         | of the books/towels/whatever in the background, etc. They
         | didn't film all of those variations. They were modified in
         | post.
        
         | Bakingpotato wrote:
         | yeah, lots of Flash games were actually innovative. plenty of
         | developers got their start on NG with flash before moving on to
         | make console or steam games. flash had plenty of shovelware,
         | but you can still make incredible stuff with it.
        
           | klenwell wrote:
           | Good example here:
           | https://archive.org/details/thequestfortherest_flash
           | 
           | It works! It had been effectively defunct for years:
           | 
           | https://amanita-design.net/thequestfortherest/
        
             | Bakingpotato wrote:
             | good pick.
        
         | themagician wrote:
         | Flash was a great technology for so many reasons. I really wish
         | Adobe had open sourced it at the end. I suspect it would have
         | paid dividends _somehow._
         | 
         | Flash died because Adobe couldn't get a version running on iOS
         | that wasn't garbage. I was working with Adobe when the iPhone
         | came out and they did have dev versions where it was running,
         | but it was awful. Visibly laggy, nearly unusable. No real
         | thought into UI mapping for touch input. Apparently they showed
         | this garbage to Steve Jobs several times and he shot it down,
         | and I can't blame him.
         | 
         | Tragic, really. Even still, today, if Adobe open sourced Flash
         | and Flash CS4 I think it be a huge hit. Homestar Runner and
         | Newgrounds. Such an interesting space for creators. I can't
         | even imagine the things people might create if it was still
         | around today.
        
           | bsimpson wrote:
           | Flash was epic for creative coding, and I haven't seen
           | another software environment come close. We lost a really
           | great onramp to UI development when Flash died.
           | 
           | I suspect there are deep licensing problems with the Flash
           | codebase. For instance, video was such a heavy investment for
           | them towards the end, and I'm sure they licensed plenty of
           | that tech. I wonder how usable it would be if they just open-
           | sourced the parts they owned free-and-clear.
        
             | themagician wrote:
             | I don't doubt the licensing and patent issue. But also,
             | it's Adobe. They have the money. Instead of spending tens
             | of millions on ads and media they could just do this.
        
           | nolok wrote:
           | > I really wish Adobe had open sourced it at the end. I
           | suspect it would have paid dividends somehow.
           | 
           | Same way pdf does, because the money was in the authoring
           | tools and they had the best ones around.
           | 
           | But adobe mostly inherited flash because they wanted the
           | death of macromedia, so they didn't really care about it.
        
             | weard_beard wrote:
             | _cough cough_ Magento _cough cough_
        
           | Bakingpotato wrote:
           | adobe was the death of flash. Macromedia had a better handle
           | on it, and when adobe bought it, then ran it into the floor
           | and gave up early, leaving it to rot.
           | 
           | I don't think they could even open source it, with all the
           | other companies' copyright work they shoved into it, like
           | dolby
        
             | kmeisthax wrote:
             | The problem was that Flash Player needed significant
             | rewrites and Adobe didn't want to pay for them. Or at
             | least, not without finding a way to get more money out of
             | game developers for the privilege.
             | 
             | The story starts with Adobe. They proudly announce AS4,
             | along with an "FP Next" intended to run it. Then they also
             | mention new _revshare_ rules mandated on anyone cross-
             | compiling 3D game engines to Flash Player. This is
             | specifically to keep Unity off the Flash platform. This,
             | predictably, causes huge backlash from Flash developers -
             | even those who don 't care about cross-compilation. So they
             | kill the revshare... as well as any plans to fix Flash
             | Player's problems.
             | 
             | This all happened a year _after_ Steve Jobs posted
             | "Thoughts on Flash" and tried to ban Adobe AIR apps - and
             | all other third-party development tools in the process[0].
             | We'd learn way later on that preceding this, Apple had
             | begged Adobe to ship them a Flash Player build that would
             | actually work on iPhones, and their attempts were...
             | anemic[1].
             | 
             | [0] This was only stopped because the Obama administration
             | threatened an antitrust lawsuit.
             | 
             | [1] While the iOS ports of Flash Player haven't been
             | publicly released, they did ship NPAPI Flash plugins on
             | Android, which were just as bad as Jobs had claimed.
             | Actually they probably were the same codebase given that
             | jailbreakers were able to get them to work on Safari.
        
               | cubefox wrote:
               | I don't quite get why the Flash plugins were do slow on
               | mobile. On Windows desktop, Flash was much faster than
               | other NPAPI plugins. Most other plugins froze the whole
               | browser for a second or so (Java even longer), while
               | Flash didn't do that. And at the time, early native
               | "HTML5 replacements" for Flash ads/games were actually
               | _slower_ than Flash.
        
             | chongli wrote:
             | Adobe is the Autodesk of the creative side of things.
             | They've swallowed up almost everything in the space and
             | exist only to collect rent. When something requires
             | finesse, such as Flash, they fail miserably.
        
               | Bakingpotato wrote:
               | oh god, autodesk. don't remind me. exactly correct.
        
       | lucgommans wrote:
       | They link to a collection called "Software Library: Flash". How
       | do I add something there? I've uploaded gravityrunner years ago
       | and recently (45 days ago, the site tells me) figured out how to
       | activate the emulator for this swf file (not sure why not offer
       | to emulate any .swf file but ok), but it's also not showing up1
       | in things like Flash game collections. Is there any documentation
       | on this?
       | 
       | Edit: wait, I think I found it. Below the About text, there is a
       | filter for "AND primary_collection:softwarelibrary_flash".
       | Probably I need to add that tag to my item. Now I wonder how I'm
       | supposed to know of the relevant collections to put things in? Is
       | there a list of all software categories?
       | 
       | 1 https://archive.org/details/softwarelibrary_flash?query=grav...
       | whereas it is on the site-wide search:
       | https://archive.org/search?query=gravityrunner
        
         | Bakingpotato wrote:
         | not that I've seen. one thing you can try to do is add the
         | Ruffle emulator flags to your metadata, and they'll probably
         | pick it up and place it in that category whenever the next time
         | they do a sweep. I guess you can also email them, hey are
         | pretty prompt by email, usually.
        
       | dayvid wrote:
       | Xiao Xiao was a nostalgia kick:
       | https://archive.org/details/softwarelibrary_flash?query=xiao...
        
         | Bakingpotato wrote:
         | amen.
        
       | codedokode wrote:
       | In case anyone is wondering how much CPU Flash emulator uses:
       | "Isolated Web Co" - 12%, Firefox - 16%, gnome-shell - 25%.
        
       | nathants wrote:
       | working on a game right now. the second to last attempt was in
       | godot 4. it reminded me a lot of flash, especially in 2d mode.
       | 
       | to anyone missing flash go checkout godot!
        
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