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    Ask HN: Abandoned/dead projects you think died before their time and why?

    358 points ofalkaed | 13 comments | 11 Oct 25 22:16 UTC | HN request time: 0.613s | source | bottom

    Just curious and who knows, maybe someone will adopt it or develop something new based on its ideas.
    1. cr125rider ◴[11 Oct 25 23:04 UTC] No.45553469[source]▶
    Macromedia Flash. Its scope and security profile was too big. It gave way to HTML’s canvas. But man, the tooling is still no where near as good. Movieclips, my beloved. I loved it all.
    replies(8): >>45553498 #>>45553584 #>>45554460 #>>45554712 #>>45554987 #>>45555070 #>>45555451 #>>45574155 #
    2. dpcan ◴[11 Oct 25 23:06 UTC] No.45553498[source]▶
    Adobe Animate is still just Flash from a tool-standoint.

    Are you referring to the SWF file format?

    replies(1): >>45553562 #
    3. billrobertson42 ◴[11 Oct 25 23:14 UTC] No.45553562[source]▶
    I took it as sarcasm.
    4. netsharc ◴[11 Oct 25 23:16 UTC] No.45553584[source]▶
    The iPhone killed Flash, probably because it would've been a way to create apps for it, more probably because it would've been laggy in the 2007 hardware, and people would've considered the iPhone "a piece of junk".

    Interesting how Flash became the almost universal way to play videos in the browser, in the latter half of the 2000's (damn I'm old...).

    5. Froedlich ◴[12 Oct 25 01:55 UTC] No.45554460[source]▶
    As a Linux user, I hated Flash with a passion. It mostly didn't work despite several Linux implementations. About the time they sorted all the bugs out, it went away. Good riddance.
    6. iambateman ◴[12 Oct 25 02:42 UTC] No.45554712[source]▶
    I agree that the tooling was unbelievable…better for interactive web than anything that exists today AFAIK.

    I wonder why one one has managed to build something comparable that does work on a phone.

    7. socalgal2 ◴[12 Oct 25 03:35 UTC] No.45554987[source]▶
    I agree the tooling was great, .... for making apps/games for desktops with a mouse and keyboard and a landscape screen of at least a certain size.

    Maybe they could have fixed all that for touch screens, small portrait screens, and more but they never did make it responsive AFAIK.

    8. glitchc ◴[12 Oct 25 03:54 UTC] No.45555070[source]▶
    I for one am so glad Flash died. At one point I dreaded navigating to a new website because of it.
    9. bapak ◴[12 Oct 25 05:16 UTC] No.45555451[source]▶
    It's incredible to me that they killed the whole tool instead of making a JS/Canvas port. Even without "full flash websites", there's still need for vectorial animations on the web.
    replies(2): >>45555683 #>>45555800 #
    10. bitwize ◴[12 Oct 25 06:07 UTC] No.45555683[source]▶
    Adobe Animate (new name for Macromedia/Adobe Flash) can output to JS/Canvas now.
    replies(1): >>45556383 #
    11. bdcravens ◴[12 Oct 25 06:33 UTC] No.45555800[source]▶
    There was the discontinued Adobe Edge suite, which was what you described.

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adobe_Edge

    12. JoeyJoJoJr ◴[12 Oct 25 08:19 UTC] No.45556383{3}[source]▶
    Can it really do interactive things though, like games? The main draw card of Flash was its excellent integration of code and animation.
    13. joquarky ◴[13 Oct 25 22:48 UTC] No.45574155[source]▶
    Did they ever work out how to implement accessibility before it died?