The Resurrection of Flash Animation
Steve Luiting
Digital designer specializing in website design and print work. I do AI Art with MidJourney, ChatGPT. I am currently doing video with Runway AI.
Back from the dead
Steve Jobs in 2010, wrote an open letter titled "Thoughts on Flash," in which he criticized Flash for being insecure, power-hungry, and not suitable for mobile devices. Jobs argued that HTML5, CSS, and JavaScript were better alternatives to Flash for building rich web content and that Apple's mobile devices would not support Flash. This was significant because Apple was a major player in the mobile market and had a significant influence on the direction of technology. As a result, many other companies followed Apple's lead, and support for Flash declined. This was a major factor in the decline of Flash as a technology. Link to Letter PDF.
Ruffle, a new Flash Player emulator, allows Flash content to be played in the browser using WebAssembly technology. This means that Ruffle does not rely on the Flash Player plugin that was previously required to play Flash content. With Ruffle, Flash content can be played directly in the browser without the need for a separate plugin, which makes it more secure and compatible with modern web standards. Also, and more importantly, as an animator you should want your programming and animation to be all contained within the file itself and not linked to code scattered all over the web. Adobe Animator does still export the .swf file format.
Additionally, over the years since Steve Job's letter, most websites and services have migrated away from Flash and adopted other technologies like CSS, HTML5 and JavaScript. However, there are still many legacy Flash animations, games, and other content that have not been updated to these newer technologies. Ruffle provides a way for these older Flash files to continue to be used and played as well as NEW animations for your website without requiring users to install a potentially vulnerable Flash Player plugin.
The future after 2024
No more struggling with HTML5, CSS and JavaScript to create animations for the web. With Ruffle, animators can easily create beautiful, interactive, and engaging vector animations with ease and simplicity like we did in the 1990s. No need to learn a whole new coding language or interface, just create your animation in Flash and let Ruffle do the rest. And, if you do need or want Flash animation feel free to contact me.
Here is a link to examples of Flash embedded as well as the code required. https://www.darkmodearts.com/post/the-resurrection-of-flash