The Rise and Fall of Flash

Shockwave/Macromedia/Adobe Flash was at one point an integral part of the web. Why then, is it a mostly forgotten and ignored software platform? Today, I'm taking a look at what caused the Rise and Fall of Flash.

[MintyRoot]

Flash animator here, I'd like to point out that Flash is still being used by a lot of animators online. The difference being nowadays that people don't release the Flash files for web browsers, but render them to video formats for YouTube.
There's also a lot of television animation studios that still use Flash as their animation software since the software has a pretty easy learning curve and it's pretty cheap to buy.
So we can't really say that Flash is truly dead, it's mostly just seen as a tool rather than a medium.

[Larry]

Flash even helped the TV animation world, not only for the cheaper looking cartoons, but shows like The SImpsons ans Family Guy use Toon Boom, which is heavily based on Flash.

"In his high school years, Jonathan Gay had-"

*Pauses videos to look at comments*

[gdwiggy]

Since Flash was dying, Adobe renamed the animation program to Animate because animation not dying.

[russianboss]

i just got to a website today that said i needed to install adobe flash in order to use it. i thought "huh, i haven't been asked this in a long time"

[robertholtz]

Not even one mention of the Shockwave engine? This history is incomplete.

[calabiyau]

Created on Apple, destroyed by Apple. Beautiful.

[BatteryMill]

What's bad is how all those annoying tech journalists jumped on a celebratory bandwagon when Adobe announced they were ending Flash. They were always like "Flash is finally dead" and other good riddance stuff, yet they did not even recognize their legacy for all the great games and online content it provided. One journalist even tried to tack down an open-source petition without realizing its benefits.

It's like they only care about the new mobile/Steam culture among us in 2017.

[marshartdegen]

Flash still alive, just from Adobe Flash to Adobe Animate, still "Flash".

[xxstarbritexx]

I'll download every game from coolmath onto a collection of flash drives before 2020, then.

[YF]

Came for the history of flash

Stayed for the LGR-Used Background Music

[sylendraws]

What about Adobe Animate?
You only talked about the web browsing part many people still use Flash or Adobe Animate for Animation.

[gpcaraudio]

Can some one send me an ICQ message, im trying to watch this on Netscape navigator but it says I have to have the latest version of flash which ive downloaded and ran 3 times and still nothing. I'll be listening to midi files awaiting someone's help.

[WHATISUTUBE]

lol Steve Jobs pitching about "closed" flash platform....YOU'RE APPLE.

[LakoIsFun]

Flash is not _totally_ dead. The player is being deprecated, the Flash _tool_ is still going to be supported, many people and companies use the Flash tool, which is now called Adobe Animate, to steer itself from the Flash player.

[JoePCool]

I made a program that adds single digit numbers together can I get bought my Microsoft now??

[JustaGuy_Gaming]

I'm not sure how much it affected every one else's view on Flash but I started to hate the program years ago. I'm not sure of the reason, it could be security or what ever but the program is updated way to often. Almost on a weekly basis you see a video or animation locked because the version of flash you have is out dated. Even if you have automatic update enabled that's downloading the updates constantly. If you don't have it enabled any time you try and view a page it might be blocked till you do update. Even if you just refresh something that worked 5 seconds ago. Very frustrating and I can't believe these updates actually do anything. Not to mention their attempts to always install bloatware during the update process.

[Danielau]

I'm kinda sad because I haven't seen any web-based games that are as good as Flash games, and maybe one day we won't be able to play the good old Flash games any more (if Flash is totally killed) :(

[MedAnimations]

Started as FutureSplash Animator, known as Animate now, Flash was never died for me. I still using Flash until today and I'm still glad with the results. Thanks so much for making this video, it was informative especially on the "FutureSplash -> Flash" part I didn't know it before xD

[iProgramInCpp]

0:23 Jonathan Gay, what an unfortunate name. Back in the '40s it would have meant Jonathan Happy, but now, it's just unfortunate.