Support for Adobe Flash officially ended on December 31, 2020, effectively eliminating the platform. The now-deprecated Web plug-in will be remembered for its golden era of animated Internet memes and the endless security problems that eventually led to its demise.
Let’s take a look at Flash, what comes next and how to take advantage of old content in 2021 and beyond.
Flash goes away forever
Flash is no longer available for download since December 31, 2020, and Adobe starts blocking Flash content from running completely on January 12, 2021. The company recommends that you uninstall Flash entirely for security reasons. There will be no more updates for Flash, nor will you be able to download old versions directly from Adobe.
This also means that versions of Flash bundled with browsers like Google Chrome will be retired. The change is unlikely to affect your daily browsing habits, as the vast majority of sites have stopped using Flash in favor of modern navigation technologies.
You should avoid installing any previous version of Flash Player for security reasons. If you still want to access Flash content, there are options, but none of them are officially supported by Adobe.
The history of Adobe Flash (1996-2020)
In 1996, a company called Macromedia acquired a vector-based web animation tool called FutureSplash, originally launched by FutureWave Software in 1993. The technology was already in use by companies like Microsoft and Disney Online to display animated content on a Web browser. web.
Macromedia renamed the tool as Macromedia Flash 1.0 and launched it along with an equivalent browser plug-in called Macromedia Flash Player. In the mid-2000s, Flash took off, spurred by the popularity of browser games, animations and interactive tools that depended on it.
Flash managed to gain prominence thanks to the simplicity of installing a small plugin compatible with most browsers. Since Flash used vector-based graphics, the file sizes for the resulting animations were minuscule. This was important at a time when many people were using the dial-up Internet at low download speeds.
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Vector graphics are essentially text-based instructions. They are infinitely sized, as they have no defined size, unlike raster graphics, which have much larger file sizes and are pixelated when enlarged. Creators, marketers and anyone interested in new media to create games, animations, banner ads and interactive menus. It was even used to make entire websites that looked great for the time, were quick to load and responsive to use.
Macromedia added more bells and whistles to Flash over time. In 2000, Flash 5 was released with ActionScript, a rudimentary scripting language that mimics JavaScript. In 2005, Macromedia was acquired by Adobe Systems (the same company that declined an offer to buy FutureSplash in 1995). Adobe adopted Flash under its wing and developed many other features in the years that followed.
Flash brought some of the Internet’s beloved sites, cartoons, games and more to life. Sites like Newgrounds have emerged as a hub for all things Flash. Web comedy series like Homestar Runner, stickman animations like Xiao Xiao and rudimentary but addictive games like Pandemic have flourished on the platform.
But Flash also played an important role in the adoption of streaming video. The FLV container made it possible to display the video in almost any web browser, as long as you had the Flash player installed. At one point in time, Flash was even needed to use sites like YouTube, Vimeo, Google Video and more. The first video-on-demand services, like Hulu and BBC iPlayer, required Flash in the early 2000s.
As of December 31, Adobe Flash will no longer be supported. I had no consoles growing up, so Flash is how I learned to love games. Many of my best childhood memories are of Flash games and animations.
Thanks for all the memories. Heaven grant you a fortune. pic.twitter.com/ljoWtd8rii
– Justin (@askiisoft) December 29, 2020
But web standards are not stuck forever. Although Flash was instrumental in making the web a more vibrant place in the early days, cracks soon began to appear. It soon became clear that the Internet would soon overcome the need for Flash and browser plug-ins.
Problems with Flash
Flash boosted a large part of the web at the height of its popularity, which placed a lot of responsibility on Adobe. As the flash was a web plugin, it was maintained and updated by a single entity. As Flash grew in popularity, it became increasingly a target for hackers.
It didn’t take long for Flash to join other browser plug-ins, such as ActiveX and Java, to be labeled as a security risk. As much as it tried, Adobe failed to fix Flash, so in 2017, the company decided to stop development and completely eliminate Flash in late 2020. Adobe also took no chances: Flash content was prevented from running on final version.
Flash was able to grow because it filled a gap. The rich web content that involved animations, video, sound and interactivity was not possible using browsers that barely obeyed the first standards of the web. It was necessary for the emergence of browsers such as Mozilla Firefox to place greater emphasis on new web technologies that would eventually be able to replace Flash.
In 2007, Apple launched the iPhone and made the historic decision not to support Flash on the platform. At the time, Flash was still very popular, so this change had a disturbing effect on the web, but the writing was on the wall. Flash was no longer needed when dedicated native mobile applications and browser technologies would do the job.
Apple’s decision and the subsequent popularity of the iPhone helped trigger the decline of Flash as developers sought to make the web accessible to all devices in an increasingly mobile world.
In 2012, Flash was widely considered a security risk. This led to Google’s decision to bundle Flash with Chrome to create a sandbox. This effectively places the flash content in its own secure space, isolating it from the rest of the system.
Over time, Internet speeds and browser standards have advanced to a stage where Flash was no longer needed.
Life After Flash
By 2020, the web had already adjusted to a new normal that did not depend on proprietary browser technologies. For tech connoisseurs, this has been the case for years. Sites like How-To Geek we ask that you delete plug-ins like Flash as early as 2015. This was made possible by the emergence of browser technologies that effectively make Flash obsolete.
Sites designed entirely in Flash have been replaced by – wait for it – sites. Today’s HTML is responsive and adapts to the size of the screen and the capabilities of the device. Flash would scale in a linear sense, like any vector graphics tool, but it was nowhere near as sophisticated as what it is capable of with today’s browsers.
In 2009, the tag appeared as part of the HTML5 implementation. These sites allowed sites like YouTube to serve video to any modern browser that met the HTML5 standard. Faster internet speeds also allow for higher quality videos.
The HTML5 canvas element allows browsers to draw and animate graphics using JavaScript. These tools can be used to create games, highly interactive websites and animations. Play on WebGL and now you can design 3D shapes and models to be displayed in a browser as well.
The developers used modern web technologies to create sophisticated software that runs in a browser, from services like Netflix to emulators like DOSBox. The use of JavaScript and CSS simplified web design and made it possible to bring elaborate and responsive designs to life. Where Flash had ActionScript, the modern web has JavaScript.
Even vector graphics – one of the original reasons for the success of Flash – have a modern equivalent in SVG format (scalable vector graphics). The use of SVG files makes it possible to create websites and applications that look perfect on a smartphone or a large TV.
Accessing Flash content in 2021 and beyond
Since so much online nostalgia is stuck in a Flash container, there are some projects that will allow you to continue to enjoy Flash content even after Adobe has hung up.
The first is the Flashpoint by BlueMaxima, a web game preservation project that supports Flash, Shockwave, Java, Unity Web Player, Silverlight, ActiveX and HTML5. It is available in two flavors: a 500 MB “Infinity” player that downloads games in real time and a giant 500 GB + file that works offline.
There is also a project called Ruffle, which tries to emulate Flash. It can be run as a standalone application on most major operating systems or as a browser application using the WebAssembly programming language. It is mainly aimed at website owners who can install it on the server and make their Flash content “work” natively.
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The end of an era of flash
Adobe Flash retirement is a bittersweet time for many. Although the browser plugin was responsible for a large number of security issues in its later life, it was also used to create some of the most memorable moments on the Internet. Fortunately, thanks to projects like Flashpoint and Ruffle by BlueMaxima, a lot of content has been preserved.
Flash was a very affordable creative package for novice animators and web game developers. If you’re feeling creative, but don’t have the technical skills of a programmer, you can try creating your own 3D games on a PS4 or PS5 with Dreams.