Back in the day I used to do quite a lot of Macromedia Flash work. It’s uncannily similar but a modern take.
I’ve often wondered why no one has come up with a new product in this space. I think the long term demise of Flash has put off anyone even trying.
There are so many great uses for animations on the web, even if we don’t need full blown user interfaces of them and intro screens like we did back in 2002.
Great job!
One quick comment: I was threatened and on the brink of being sued by one of Facebook's bigger law firms, because my domain was called "***gram.com" — I went through a couple of calls with them, and they confirmed that the only issue was the use of the word "gram". I tried to stick to my guns, knowing they had nothing (legally) on me, but eventually had to give in once they told me to research the ongoing cases they have with all the other domain owners (which you can all find online). Some of which have been going through lawyer-warfare for over three years (at the time). They basically said, if I have the power to sustain this, they would sue and we'll clear this in court, if I don't want to go through this, I should back off and use a different domain.
So, while I hate saying this, be warned, I was warned and ignored it, and eventually, no matter how tall you feel, that call may come quicker than you think. Keep a second domain around ready to go, make sure you can rebrand. Just my word of (super sad) advice.
Looks great though!
Not that I don't believe what you're saying, but how is this a thing they could possibly expect to hold up as a trademark infringement? They literally own a single recently invented neologism of which neither the prefix nor the root is original. It seems to me that Instacart or Insta360 would be much more open to claims... honestly if it were me, I wouldn't hire a lawyer, just let them know to send me a letter what courthouse I should show up at with a dictionary.
This exactly... I would represent myself, it would be fun.... and let Meta spend hundreds of thousands on lawyers. If I lost I would drag it out as long as possible and then if by some strange twist of fate I lost, I would declare bankruptcy and write a book about the whole thing.
I know your comment is just internet puffery, but please know that the old adage is true: "A man who represents himself has a fool for a client."
There is a reason that judges will ask defendents multiple times if they're really, really, truely sure they want to represent themselves before allowing it.
As much as you wish it, a dictionary or common sense does little to nothing in a court of law. Mostly, you'll just annoy the judge who cares not about your dictionary, but the subtle details of copyright law, trademarks, uS code, registration timelines, dates of priority, common use, historical use, due diligence, and 50 other minute technical details I have never even thought about.
I don't remember what podcast I heard it from, but another opinion about representing yourself: it's more taxing on the judge. It consumes more court resources to represent yourself; which already is scarce. Which is why they often make sure you really want to do this.
In most cases, yeah. Most people have little to no idea how the courts run, so judges often have to give large amounts of leeway to non lawyer pro se defendants.
I have no formal training, and am under no illusions that I'm smart enough to do it. But I am curious if I personally could do it. Argue before a judge, and antagonize court staff to figure out what needs to be filed, and how. All depending on the scale and stakes of the case.
I have represented myself in court before... and won. I wouldn't recomend it for everyone, but in a relatively low stakes case, it is better in my opinion, for me, to represent myself than to not have my side heard at all because I can't afford a lawyer. Some folks don't enjoy legal stuff like I do, and it would not be worth yheir time.
I should also clarify that the OP probably made the right choice for them to settle, as they probably had more assets to lose than I do.
Or even shoot a documentary as you go. Netflix could end up paying for your time.
Being right doesn't matter if you aren't rich enough to fight.
Not that I don't believe what you're saying, but how is this a thing they could possibly expect to hold up as a trademark infringement?
The worst part is that it doesn't even matter if they have a case or not. The mere threat of "Look at how much it'll cost you even if you're right" can be enough for people to pull back.
Recent relevant case is the Sony vs Bleem!, where Bleem! "won" but because of costs, Bleem! had to shut down anyway. So even if Sony lost the court case, they won because they shut down the group.
Any reference to it? I couldn't find anything about Facebook taking action on a domain ending with gram. Was your domain similar to instagram?
Because telegram is still out there.
This is one of them that I remember from 2016:
https://www.theguardian.com/media-network/2016/dec/02/battle...
I don’t see how even Facebook could have an issue with “telegram” being used commercially, but I wouldn’t be totally surprised if they did.
Deep in Meta HQ: "How dare the metric system infringe on our IP"
Telegram has probably sufficient money, so that threatening them into doing what FB/Meta wants does not work. They only go after small enough fish, preying on the weaker.
and other things like storygram, thefoodygram, picturegram, etc.
A big company moneygram.com use it with no problem.
Big companies can afford to - the point is not that Meta would win a case, it's that most people are too small to survive a case long enough to see it through to a win against Meta.
Well, then the first question I would ask the court: Why does Meta not sue big comapny XYZ hosting xyzgram.com?
Not that I don't believe OC, but I don't find any example for this story.
But yet they leave https://telegram.org/ alone for some reason.
Weird that an American company would claim the word "gram". Thought they hate the metric system. /s
Only goes to show once more how despicable FB/Meta as an entity is and acts.
One possible course of action is starting a drama on social media (on not FB) and contacting EFF and such, to get support. Still there will be impact on ones social life and FB/Meta should be punished for making people's life shittier. They think they are too big to fail. I hope one day they will be split up or sued into compliance with some ethics, putting on some tight screws and supervision. This freak show must be stopped.
I think in the EU things might look a bit different, because there was some law against such obvious bullshit lawsuits. Something about "slap" or so in the name of that law? I don't recall exactly.
We built a system where the big players don't care if they are in the right. The massive investments necessary to uphold the rights in front of court are what makes it possible for Meta to get through with this BS. I am not sure if this is a problem that mainly manifests in the USA. I haven't heard of private parties or small companies shying back of a court case when they believe they are in the right in Europe.
Just opened the editor, switched to line mode, and drew a line.
It seems to have automatically switched to selection mode, rather than keeping in the mode I deliberately switched to (line mode).
That's unexpected, and probably not what most users would expect. Any chance of getting that changed, so the mode only changes when the user does it?
---
Also, is it Open Source? :)
"Also, is it Open Source?"
No, also:
"We reserve the right to modify this Agreement or its terms related to the Services at any time at our discretion."
So it is currently free of charge, but may one day contain tracking without warning, or paid membership? The buisness plan (how to make money) is not clear to me. And this would be a major blocker for me to use if for anything serious, when one day I might loose access to my data, unless I pay an unspecified amount. You also cannot export your work to a common vector format, so will be bound by this website forever.
If you are looking for something Open Source, there is the wick editor:
(but developement is on hold)
Yeah. Not being FOSS is a blocker from my point of view as well.
Already been through that exercise with Adobe and the Flash ecosystem.
No interest at all in a repeat.
Here is a free software animator: https://www.synfig.org/
Development is kinda slow, but this also means that it still works just as well as when I made a little short movie 15 years ago.
Thanks, I never heard of this one, will try it out.
One very interesting new one is rive.app Closed app, free for 3 files, but open source renderer and GPU accelerated.
Yeah, me too. Why, just why didn't Adobe open source (and vastly improve in terms of security) the flash player and rather let it die. It was such an awesome ecosystem.
Like Macromedia Director? I remember creating tcp ip network flow animations with that one.
I came here to say the exact same thing, it remind me to Macromedia Flash animations.
It still exists. Macromedia Flash became Adobe Flash became Adobe Animate: https://www.adobe.com/ca/products/animate.html
Nice to see some free alternatives popping up.
Yes, very much reminds me of that -- this looks great!
I'm not familiar with Macromedia Director. So I did a quick search and find that both tools can do a basic positions, scale, rotation and color animation just by creating shapes and keyframes within few clicks and draggings.
Trangram, however, is more than that, it supports (1) morphing between two shapes (actually any shapes you can create or imagine) without extra efforts (2) motion path, which means you can define an arbitrary route and let your object move along that path easily (3) parent link, which means linked object can move, rotate and scale together
There're many more exciting features I don't mention here, you can check them from Trangram about page below.
https://www.trangram.com/about
Thanks so much for your comment and letting me know about Macromedia Director.
Well, the power of Macromedia Director was not those animations — but, a scripting language called Lingo[1]. In 1999, I did a trial Kiosk for the State Bank of India[2] to be installed at a popular landmark in Bombay, called the Wockhardt Hospitals[3].
I used Macromedia Director to let users navigate for information, akin to an ATM but for info. A partnership led to including quite a few animations of Cardiology and similar info-animation.
The ability of Macromedia Director and then Flash to see what you are doing immediately was what draw me into the world of scripted visuals.
1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lingo_(programming_language)
This is awesome. Great job! I love the simplicity of the whole thing. I was able to figure out the tool in a minute. Compare that to professional software, which can have a scary complexity. I think it'd be a great educational tool. Kids would love to experiment with it.
Your words mean a lot to me.
In designing and implementing Trangram, ease-of-use ranks high on my list of priorities, alongside functionality and safety.
Just as you mentioned, one of my primary motivations was to facilitate the creation of educational materials, which I was particularly inspired by experiences while watching The Power Of A Mathematical Picture
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6vnMT70HOxc&list=PLOxODW9vlV...
I've designed Trangram as more than just an editor; it's a platform intended to democratize content sharing. Every individual should have the opportunity to disseminate valuable content to others, whether through a simple link or embedded HTML code (allowing for easy integration on personal blogs or websites).
My aspiration is for Trangram to evolve into a secure and enriching environment for all, including children, fostering a space where learning flourishes.
Love it. Tutorial would be lovely, and grid, and lock object...
How do you make a new frame
Good luck on your mission! As a kid/teenager who grew up creating animations and games on Flash (from v2 to v5) I've always felt that since then only the people really into animation have been able to play with it, the tools are not approachable, you need to learn a lot before you can do the basics which were quite straightforward with Flash.
I really hope Trangram gets some traction so you have the time and resources to further develop it, it's a tool that has potential to make the world a nicer place :)
Same experience. Very easy to use and plenty of functionality.
What is safety?
Looks very nice. Is this on webgl?
Speaking as a non-professional JS programmer, where can I read about how to architect a program like this where you select a tool, then that tool lets you draw (or do something) on canvas. Another tool, has a different behavior to mouse click/movement while initial placement and later editing of the nodes. Architect it in such a way that its not a long list of if statements for state management.
The recently shared Eloquent Javascript[0] had chapter 19 making a pixel editor. That seems to be a good approach, but then I wouldn't know any better. Any recommended reading or small size sourcecode that one could read and learn?
To be honest, depending on how many tools/features you want to add, that would be a very big project for a solo developer.
You'd need to build all of that functionality yourself. You detect where the user is pointing/clicking, then draw the element they are creating as visual feedback, then once done, persist the element somewhere.
If a user clicks on the element again, somehow display that it is selected and display the tools for editing.
You could build it in vanilla JS, or use a framework like React.
I am not necessarily looking to build something production. Just want to learn. Any pointers?
For any non-trivial editor you will need an object model that abstracts away the low level drawing functions and manages state.
I think fabric.js is worth checking as its source code is well organized and documented. It's not a small project though and the latest version was rewritten in TypeScript: https://github.com/fabricjs/fabric.js/tree/master
tldraw could be a good example to look at. It’s an open source infinite canvas drawing app: https://github.com/tldraw/tldraw
The live version is at https://tldraw.com
A good SVG animation tool is dearly missing. I wish Inkscape could do it or there was an Inkscape-like animation tool, that does not hide but rather embraces the underlying SVG code.
Can you tell how you approach to this is? Can you just export SVG animations or even import and edit without destroying the original structure?
I wish Inkscape could do it or there was an Inkscape-like animation tool, that does not hide but rather embraces the underlying SVG code.
This is basically what I'm trying to achieve with Boxy SVG project: a vector graphics editor with UI similar to Inkscape, but focused primarily on SVG editing. It also allows you to easily switch between the code ("Elements") and timeline ("Animations") views: https://boxy-svg.com/blog/21
Doesn't work on Firefox unfortunately.
Recently I was trying to create lightweight SVG images for an embedded project and was looking for exactly this type of thing. I ended up drawing them in Inkscape and then opening in a text editor to strip out everything that wasn't necessary, and round every coordinate to the nearest integer. I was using Ristretto next to the text editor to see the changes and was kind of wishing it could go the other way as well, maybe as a plugin for Geany or something.
I’ve not looked at the tool, but are animations driven by CSS, and if so do you embed the CSS into the SVG? Where I work we’re looking at SVG animation tools for some graphics and the majority appear to be lottie-like tools dependent on JavaScript and other plugins which we can’t use.
It doesn't sound like CSS. The fans on my laptop came on after opening a simple animation (the Pythagorean proof). Firefox was at 100%.
For pure SVG-based animations you should take a look at Boxy SVG: https://boxy-svg.com/blog/21
SVGator[1] offers CSS or JS for animation export (no SMIL or hybrid it seems). I haven't used it but it came up in a prior HN discussion. Due to the traditional dearth of authoring tools I'm used to creating self-contained SVG animations manually via a text editor, by translating raster mockups, but glad there's at least one GUI authoring tool that considers such use cases.
[1] https://www.svgator.com/help/getting-started/js-animations-v...
Slightly off topic: What are the tools for making animations in the webpage, in html/canvas format not embedded videos? Sometimes I see some sites with nifty animations that animate while scrolling too and I wonder how it’s done.
Do you mean scrolljacking?
I googled that right and partially yes, but not necessarily, sometimes I see good animation without the scrolling part, some were built with three.js but others were not, would be interesting to know the tools.
Opened it, made an animation in 10 seconds. On mobile. With zero experience with animation software.
Well done
Any chance of Lottie export? I think I would use this if there was.
Yes! That's what I was thinking.
For lottie export there's: https://www.lottielab.com
It passed my first test: "Type hello world and make it bounce for 5 seconds."
The second test is: "save it as a gif" I could not do that because I need to create an account. I am weary of sites that lock in my work. Perhaps it would be a good hook-and-reel method to allow one grace save to ensure that what people create in an anonymous trial can be used somewhere else.
All my kids and I know how to use Paint Tool Sai because I trusted the software with our work. It was affordable and ran locally. Great site. I'll pass the word around.
You can save to file ('export', to use Trangram's nomenclature) without creating an account. This includes Trangram's native .tg format, as well as animated GIF.
Ah, yes! Thank you!. The export works like a charm. It let me select multiple formats.
Looks good, although I'm a little bit sad about this web application trend.
I mean I get the ease of deployment -- just open the webpage and use it.
But this application is just temporary; it won't exist after 15 years; it will change into something else, or it will cease to exist. It will be impossible to use older version of it. It won't be possible to preserve it, emulate it. If the server is off, the application dies. In contrast, it's still possible to install the original Lotus 1-2-3, an application from 1983.
The amount of applications that I've seen which aren't available anymore (even to be seen) is staggering. I see it as a waste of resources. Webapps have their advantages, but I see their core trait as ephemeral -- that might be sometimes a good thing, but I see it as a disadvantage.
I agree, this is also going to get much worse. I recently dipped back into some of the younger SaaS communities (Twitter is particularly crazy) and it's just madness. They make something, (ab)use anything they can find to push this in front of people and promote it, and if it doesn't throw cash within the minute, it will be left for dead. I'd even argue that some of these tools have a lifetime of a month or less. With AI, this is typically the moment when they run out of their first OpenAI top up and start to abandon.
This is super cool and was very easy to get going. Missing keyboard shortcuts is pretty annoying and would make this even simpler. I hopped in hoping it was like a Google Drawing, which it's pretty close, but the lack of keyboard shortcuts for copying/pasting, selecting all, etc -- makes it hard to move fast.
This is a ridiculously complex application dude. I’m sure they’ll get to keyboard shortcuts when they get to it
This is cool, and "Adobe Illustrator for animation" is perhaps Adobe After Effects.
No, it’s adobe flash or whatever the hell they call it nowadays.
Really impressive work!! Ever since the demise of Flash I've felt a strong lack of such animation tools.
Very nicely done!
Thank you for the kind words. I hope you guys will find it useful.
very nice!
unless i'm missing something, you don't support export to any vector and/or animated formats besides your own?
Certainly a bit disappointing that Lottie or SVG format export doesn't exist. Hopefully a work in progress?
Looks great and works well.
Some small suggestions:
- Please add some keyboard shortcuts for common actions, i.e., cmd/ctrl + z to undo (+ shift to redo), delete/backspace to delete, cmd/ctrl + d to duplicate, cmd/ctrl + a to select all.
- Increase rotate cursor affordance - it's currently relatively tiny.
Is audio possible, and if not, plans for it?
Just wanted to give a feature suggestion of adding a way to start the animator from existing designs. Kind of "fork" or "remix" for existing ones, opening the editor with the existing design pre-loaded. I think that would be incredible network power and cool to learn the tool.
Please consider adding `overscroll-behavior: contain;` to the <body> or whatever wrapper causes my browser to scroll/drag outside of the viewport when zooming in or out the preview.
https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/CSS/overscroll-...
Great job!
It took me 5 min to redo a animated logo that took me a few hours 3 years ago with Adobe. I will use it.
Disappointed that this is a web application. But great work. The user interface is very intuitive and easy to use.
Feature request: Add 'Export to JPEG-XL' option (JPEGXL - https://jpegxl.info/why-jxl.html . See also - FFmpeg Adds Support for Animated JPEG-XL - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36243889 ).
Wow. Adobe did such a great job destroying Flash that people be out there creating whole "Adobe Illustrator but for animation" software when Adobe already makes Adobe Illustrator but for animation.
Honestly, that's incredible.
I love this, I drew a triangle, clicked somewhere else on the timeline moved the triangle and it worked. So intuitive, just how it should be.
Opening the website with Firefox 123.0.1 on Windows 10 x64, the webpage slowed my browser to a crawl. After a quick look into it, it seems it didn't play well with the Angular Devtools extension[1]; you might want to look into it.
Interesting tool nonetheless!
[1] https://addons.mozilla.org/fr/firefox/addon/angular-devtools
Very nice. One question: I see the submission mentions SVG animation but I don't see any way of exporting as SVG. Did I miss something, or was this just meant as a plan for the future?
This is wonderful. I love the simplicity of this tool and my kids loved it.
This is great. I have actually written about how this is a great opportunity: an "excalidraw for animations".
Try to make the people land immediately on the editor instead of the landing page. And focus on the sharing aspects so it gets viralized.
Public you're aiming to?
It would be cool to be able to use the middle mouse button to pan and zoom the canvas, like most CAD software allows.
Can the units of the artboard be set - for example to mm?
This is great! If you add lottie export, I could see this tool become popular among web and mobile app devs.
I wonder why nothing like this ever became big again after Flash.
Nice! Feature idea: let me open the demos in the editor.
I'm elated that you used Angular. Because I've been b*tching about no one uses it :D
This is amazing. I was able to open it and start creating animations! Thank you for this contribution!
Well done for shipping! I'm really impressed by the tool - it's intuitive and like a very light-weight After Effects.
I think just re-designing the landing page would make a huge difference, very quickly. I think currently it lets down what is a well-crafted design / animation tool. Get rid of the white and teal, and the default system fonts. The looom site is a lovely example (https://www.iorama.studio/looom).
Played with it for a couple of minutes, amazing work!
one bug, after pressing alt+space, it causes the alt key to be always pressed, which makes everything you move to get copied (as if the user is pressing alt)
Think Adobe Illustrator but for animation
That makes me think of Flash.
I like it but is there a pen Bezier tool? It'd be perfect with that feature.
Looks very good (instant Flash erhm flashbacks) but jesus christ how to add more key points to the timeline?
This brings tears in my eyes... thank you <3
OMG, I love this SOoooo much. Reminds me of a 90s era onion skin animation program I've been trying to find forever.
SAVED
Oh, man. I just barely glanced at the features and the editor but - and I mean this in the best possible way - it looks like you've recreated Flash.
Regardless of what anyone thinks about the proprietary file format and Actionscript and the rendering engine,the actual Flash app itself was one of the best vector animation tools of all time, and when it died we lost something cool and useful.
I'm really looking forward to playing with this in depth. Great job, man!
Very cool! It's a great balance of power and simplicity.
Do you have svg output examples?
I love this! I was hit with a wave of nostalgia. I used to spend hours and hours making flash animations. This tool is super intuitive :D I haven't touched an animation tool since I was like 11 years old, and it just works.
whoa this is seriously impressive!
This looks like a free version of https://rive.app/ (also free).
What would you say differentiates it? And why would I pick yours over rive long term?
Wish the animations were playing in 60 or even better, my native refresh rate.
They look super choppy using firefox on macos
All the examples say "post unavailable" for me in Firefox desktop.
(edit: ESR browser version slightly out of date, worked after updating. I wonder what new browser feature is being used?)
need a free drawing tool instead of pen/line
There is a typo in font style section: Blod italic (should be Bold).
Great work
what an awesome.
I made it in 5 seconds and published it, then it was embarrassed to be listed on the top page.
Let's publish it unlisted!
user/dai
Just tried it on my mobile, responsive and well designed. I like how neat and uncluttered the site is. The editor feels intuitive and easy to use. Like the demos on the homepage. This must have been a massive project very impressive!!
Some things I'm not seeing:
- no direct draw/deform/reshape tools --- Macromedia Flash had these of Futurewave's SmartSketch - no scripting
any possibility of those things getting added? (or could I get a hit w/ a clue stick showing me where in the UI I'm missing them)
Why compare Tangram to Adobe Illustrator when Adobe offers animation software in their suite? Adobe After Effects does motion graphics. Adobe Animate does animations for the web, or so I heard. How is Tangram closer to Illustrator than After Effects or Animate?
This looks really well done! I was able to create a simple animation easily even though I don't know anything about animation software.
By the way, your "Features" page is really well made. I would showcase those features on the homepage. I didn't find the list of features until I clicked the link in one of your comments on HN.
You can also make your project more appealing on the homepage by including a looping demo animation (to see what's possible) and a screenshot of the tool.
Best of luck with the project!
This looks awesome.
Some suggestions though:
- Would be awesome to be able to open an existing animation (eg. like any of the ones showcased). It's a built overwhelming for a noobie opening up to a blank editor page.
- Could also consider putting a tutorial video
Anyways I'll have to play around with this.
IMO, Flash died because it didn't play nice with the conventions of the web. There were workarounds, but generally it broke all of the things HTML could do, like being searchable & selectable, navigable with a keyboard, built of code you could inspect, addressable with a direct link, even working with the browser's back button.
The actual animations and (sometimes) beautiful interfaces were not the problem. People generally loved that.
Generally there's no need for a new product in this space because CSS does everything Flash once did, but adheres to web conventions.
There probably is an opportunity, though. I'm not a motion graphics person - does Adobe Animate fit the bill at all? What do you think is missing today that we once had with Flash?
Meanwhile we didn't have a replacement, and any replacement lacks of all the features you list, text selection, etc.
It got killed because Apple stopped supporting it. That's the reason.
The replacement is CSS + JS. Thank God Apple helped kill Flash.
And 10 years later I just don't see the level of amateur uptake that flash had.
For 10 years flash minted thousands of young animators and content creators. Since flashes death there are far fewer upstarts and communities despite Internet adoption being magnitudes higher
That's how it happened in my orbit anyway.
Steve Jobs published an open letter entitled "Thoughts on Flash", in which he said that iOS would never support Flash. We had a discussion at the web shop I was working for; we decided to stop making new things in Flash.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thoughts_on_Flash
Fun story: Apple demoed the iPad to Hollywood execs a couple weeks before the release. The Hollywood folks saw all their web properties rendering almost no UI and their video content not available.
I worked for a boutique consulting firm at that time and Warner Bros/Telepictures was our big client. We immediately got calls from a lot of execs and I had a week long firedrill of converting MANY Telepictures properties from Flash (mostly for the video content rendering with timecoded UI updates). They also had a video delivery company that was co-located with AOL fly out to Burbank and fly back with tons of hard drives full of episodes of Ellen, the Tyra Banks show, etc to recode from Flash video to video that could be served with the <video> content tag on iPads.
It somehow all got done by the iPad release and Apple published a top 10 "sites that work great on iPad" page on their site and we had done 4 out of 10 of them. All we had to test on was desktop Safari resized to the screen size they told us it needed to work on.
I remember that a lot of people were sure that we were going to get an even better replacement.
"HTML5 is going to be the replacement."
So much for that. Goodbye web games.
No. Generally, the missing features you mention were inconsequential to decision-makers (outside of some ideological devs) and many of them were being gradually addressed by Macromedia/Adobe anyway.
Flash died because Microsoft was agressingly nipping at Adobe on the commercial side with Silverlight, because standard bodies were finally chipping away at its feature advantages with long-needed improvements to HTML, CSS, and Javascript, and most impactfully of of all: because Steve Jobs decreed it.
The death knell for Flash sounded exactly when the market-revolutionizing iPhone refused to support altogether.
But all of that's just about the runtime platform. The posted app calls back to the Flash editor itself, which was extremely mature and powerul but had too much inertia to successfully pivot to targeting HTML or apps before Adobe would give up on it.
Later apps have come, but inevitably start far behind the features that Flash offered designers, animators, and developers at its peak.
I'm surprised you bothered to mention SilverLight. It was Microsoft's intent, sure, but did it ever have any uptake?
It's more of a curiosity or footnote than a relevant factor.
I think Silverlight was making deep inroads in the enterprise market for rich internet apps and that this was a growing customer retention issue for Adobe with Flash. That's part of why they invested so much in Flex and AIR as a more engineering-centric alternative to the Flash app's designer-centric timeline interface. They wanted to shore up what they were losing to Microsoft.
The consumer usage of Flash was most visible (games, cartoons, brochure sites, video streaming) and Apple's evisceration of that market was what ultimately killed Flash, but things were already looking grim on several fronts before that happened.
Thanks for this. People forget the creator experience in Flash. It was really amazing, albeit a little quirky.
Yes, people forgot that websites for big companies were often flash based trash until the iPhone and the web changed to be mobile friendly as iPhones sales continued to skyrocket.
I always thought Flash died because Apple didn't want people to be able to write and execute arbitrary code in an app on their phones. That it posed a security risk, a stability risk, and potentially a business risk (as it could allow people to circumvent the limitations they'd imposed on, say, distribution and payments). Is that wrong?
Yes, it is wrong. Mostly. Or just some minor reason.
It was largely a fallacy perpetuated by Apple. The same fallacy used to more recently justify the app store exclusivity, aimed at preserving their enclosed ecosystem under the guise of protecting users from potential malware threats.
While it's true that Flash posed security risks, not just on mobile but across platforms. Acrobat pdf readers continue to grapple with high-severity CVEs.
Another argument against Flash support on the iPhone was its purported battery drain. It's worth considering the technological landscape of that era: Arm processors were less power-efficient, and early iPhones struggled with battery longevity. Remember, even basic color screen phones could last several days on a single charge—illustrated by the enduring appeal of the Nokia 3210, which could comfortably endure a week without needing to be plugged in.
Yes flash early implementation for mobile was very inefficient.
Yes Apple had valid reasons for resisting Flash support. However, at the heart of the matter was Adobe's lion stance on royalties, a proposition deemed cocky by Jobs. Plus jobs was in the money Business. So the moot negociation red eventually led to a declaration war on Adobe.
Despite Adobe's towering market cap, and arguable more influential in the tech spheres, they underestimated Apple's strategic timing and their ability to a big push for new web standards, which ultimately led to the widespread adoption of HTML. Adobe's defeat to maintain their spotlight animation authoring tool for the web. Cousin comment touches on its disrespect for existing web standards, it never evolved to embrace the browser, it kept running as its own thing with limited to no interfacing with the browser API even.
This conflict not only signed the future death certificates of Flash but also spelled the end for other authoring tools which came from the Macromedia umbrella, and those had already begun to lose relevance post-Adobe acquisition.
Adobe's numerous acquisitions, it's easier to enumerate the surviving applications since the launch of the iPhone than to list those consigned to oblivion.
Not exhaustive, but here is the gist: Adobe applications that have ceased to exist since 2006:
Adobe mainstream products that have ceased to exist since 2006: - Flash - Fireworks - Dreamweaver (on life support) - GoLive - Muse - Encore - Contribute - SpeedGrade - Story - Edge Animate - Edge Reflow
Adobe mainstream products that remain plus those created or aquired since 2006: - Photoshop - Illustrator - InDesign - Premiere Pro - After Effects - Acrobat - XD - Audition - Figma
In addition to all of those things, it also burned your battery like crazy. Jobs was very public about his annoyance with Flash’s battery drain.
There's a correlation between the death of Flash and the rise of mobile devices browsing. Flash was pixel-based and the whole paradigm doesn't really work for responsiveness.
Flash was vector based.
Mobile apps are even worse than Flash and those reasons haven't hampered their adoption.
Flash died because both Apple and Microsoft wanted it dead. Possibly justifiably.
It's crazy to me they didn't see the value in porting actionscript to something that compiles to JS/HTML5, though adobe couldn't be trusted to see this potential obviously. If they had something like that ready in ~2011 it could have completely replaced HTML 5 canvas adoption
I think the GP is talking more about the authoring tools for Flash. You could do everything - graphics, animation, audio, video, scripting - in a single package that was relatively easy to use.
Isn’t adobe animate just flash ?
No, since flash is no longer around.
Meaning you can still create all the animations and games, but then you will have to try to port it to js and canvas (via easeljs). And that did not work very nicely last time I tried it.
The Flash player is gone, but the authoring software called Adobe Flash was just rebranded to Adobe Animate. Back in the Flash times Flash was quite popular for Western-style 2d animation, and a lot of TV series were produced in Flash. Animate has been keeping that somewhat alive, though better alternatives have emerged.
Yeah, I was talking about Adobe Animate. It is not at all as useful as flash was, without exporting to flash. Exporting to html/canvas is a pain.
Yeah. For all the hate the Flash player got back in the day, the authoring software (which was Macromedia Flash when I last used it) was awesome. It has really nice motion interpolation (tweening) and onion-skinning tools. For Western animation this meant you didn’t need to outsource all the in-between work.
When was the last time you tried it? Because I had a similar experience, and a young animator told me that they were using this in a production envrioment now and I was shocked. Adobe Animate was hot garbage after Flash died, but I recently (like two weeks ago) sat down with it for a bit and I have to say it feels quite good. It seems like there was a time period where Adobe was focused on Animate exporting to canvas and they sort of abandoned that and just turned it into a tool that would export to video. It can do both, but really Animate now is just, "Adboe Illustrator but for animation." So it's not exactly a direct replacement, it's more like Flash without ActionScript, but with some tools to kind of point you in the right direction for canvas + js.
There is also ruffle which seems to be doing a very good job at reviving Flash animations.
The Internet Archive is using it to preserve the profound cultural heritage of early millenial flash animations.
https://www.theverge.com/2020/11/19/21578616/internet-archiv...
Totally agree! The major feature missing compared to Flash would be library and component support - i.e. the ability to create reusable animated graphics that you can drag onto the canvas (with infinite nesting).
i.e. you can animate a bird with flapping wings, then drag 3 copies onto your sky.
In flash you could also select any element and add a onclick handler. Bam, a button.
Or play a different animation of a subelement on mouseover e.g. bird.flapWings()
And quite some other things ..
This is not a flash replacement and also does not aim to be one.
To clarify, I mainly meant the major animation feature that let you do more complex animations compared to this tool.
Yes I absolutely loved that.
I wish Microsoft PowerPoint built some of that so we could use it for light weight animations and story telling.
And interesting choice of words!
Rive can do that!
I think this might be right up your alley, along with some of the children comments: https://rive.app
It’s pretty much modern Macromedia Flash. Except a JS runtime, rather than plugin.
I was going to suggest Rive too. I came across them when I was trying to figure out how Duolingo's animations were done, pretty cool tool.
For Trangram - it might help to link each of the examples in the "Explore & Get Inspired" section to the editor, allowing new users to avoid the "blank page" syndrome.
Wick Editor is another one.
https://www.wickeditor.com/#/
Wick looks fun. Looking at the Github repo, it looks like it isn't in active development anymore.
I also recall that Flash had a ton of security issues.
Airbnb's Lottie has a Web Player now I think? Make your animation in AE or Figma, export to "Lottie JSON" with players in JS, Swift, Kotlin & React Native.
Absolutely agree. The interface was what made flash so good because it let non-coders make things.
So sad that Adobe were unwilling / unable to just make it output html5 instead of swf. But Adobe so where software goes to die so…
There's actually quite a few new tools that do "animation for the web". I'm sure there's a longer list but the ones I've used are rive, jitter, fable, and lottielab. Rive is interesting but the one I find myself coming back to is lottielab, it feels the most like the "spend 4 minutes playing around, but now I have something that looks really cool" that I used to get when using flash
Adobe’s Flash editor got renamed to Adobe Animate. People mostly use it now to export video but there is more than one HTML 5 viewer it will export for, these support most of what Flash supported except for a few unusual geometric primitives.