Lying on the deathbed of Flash

Lying on the deathbed of Flash

The beginning of a new era

With the internet becoming more and more popular, it needed a friend. The late 90s brought Adobe Flash: letting designers and developers create a new genre of content that would work on any browser or computer. It allowed for web-based animation, video, and games to everyone. 

The beginning of the downfall

Slowly, Adobe Flash became more obsolete and rare. The first sign of its undoing was when Apple decided to not support it with the first iPhone in 2007. Three years later, Steve Jobs posted a note to the Apple website clarifying that he thought Flash was insecure and resource-intensive. Yet, Flash was still useful because it was used for some major companies like Facebook and its games and Youtube's video player.

The beginning of a tried resurrection 

In 2011, Adobe sensed the changing tide and released Edge Animate, a new way to create HTML5, to keep up with lots of websites converting to HTML5. Later in 2015, Adobe discontinued Edge Animate. Youtube converted to using HTML5 and Facebook is still using Flash a lot. 

The beginning of the end

In December of 2016, Google announced that Chrome would block Flash by default but users can opt to use it in the meanwhile. Flash is slowly deteriorating but creators of Flash content can update their works to more modern formats. All-Flash websites are trying to be preserved by the Internet Archive and the Archive team.

My thoughts

As technology becomes more advanced, some things are left behind and it seems Flash is one of those things.  I will forever have memories of playing Flash games for hours and competing against friends in computer class.