TL;DR:

Adobe Flash player is officially dead and Ruffle is here to preserve flash content, there is a long way to go but it's a great start!

It took a while to get here, with this year being over, but there isn’t any “20/20 hindsight [1]” that the Adobe Flash player is now left behind for good. We knew the day was coming and it is finally here.

The Bad

It’s been about over 10 years since the apple man penned “Thoughts on Flash”. Since then the flash player has been on the downfall and it’s no surprise why for those who have used it.

You’ll get different reactions depending on who you talk to on the flash player:

• For web developers [2], it’s ire, resentment and good riddance for not having to deal with the treadmill of security issues that the flash player plagued with every update.

(alongside some confusion with the flash authoring software if it’s brought up).

• For consumers, it’s another thing they had to install to access games & content, sometimes it slows the page down too (don’t forget those flash ads)
• For content creators, (animators & game devs) a mixture of the two, an easier way to bring content to the web on all browsers.

Many will have different experiences with it, but the above three is what I see all the time. In the end the first group won, causing Adobe to kill the flash player all together.

The Good

Entire communities built on Flash helped speed up its adoption. I remember times going onto MiniClip, Kongregate and especially Newgrounds (Hi guys!) for animations.

Newgrounds continues to remain independent, experimenting and showcasing content that has made the careers of many content creators throughout the years.

In an age where we keep talking about buzzwords like “The Algorithm” and “Machine Learning” on practically anything (ugh), NG’s feed continues to showcase creations by the community and not corporations. (I highly recommend supporting them)

The first group (web devs) talk about the “open web” a lot, a web not controlled by corporations and governments and is free from censorship.

Despite the community being built around a proprietary plugin, Newgrounds fits in this space of the open web and now adopts HTML5 video, audio players all powered by the web. One could even argue freeing itself from the dependency of Flash.

The Future

As far as I know, there hasn’t been any intent by Adobe to preserve what was created with Adobe Flash, even with calls to open source the flash player.

So what usually comes next is emulation. When Ruffle (A Flash player emulator) was announced by Mike Welsh, creator of Swivel, this renewed hope for Flash preservation and has a better future than the alternatives [3].

Difference is with Ruffle is that there are no extra plugins to install, only a modern browser (a better experience than Flash) and uses Rust and WebAssembly to play Flash content in a secure environment on the desktop and in the browser.

Initially funded by Newgrounds and now has many other sponsors[4], Ruffle may not be finished completely with emulating everything the flash player has to offer, but at least it’s already in use in Newgrounds to play games / animations in SWF format and more recently, the Internet Archive.

You can try it for yourself at https://ruffle.rs/demo in your browser.

The End (of Flash)

Now that the Flash Player is now discontinued at least we have something built with open technologies that replaces it securely.

Happy New Year!

Thoughts on preserving iOS apps

Thinking ahead a bit here, 

iOS is one of the biggest platforms for mobile devices with the App Store harbouring thousands of apps. Both of them are most definitely not open.

First, I’ve not seen a single emulator that runs real iOS applications (other than Apple’s own limited simulator). Second, the apple man once said that HTML5 was the future for applications on the iPhone, but instead Apple opted for the App Store approach.

If both of these were to come to an end someday, how do we preserve and run apps for iOS? Will there be an Internet Archive for apps, especially iOS apps and games of old?

It would be nice to see how some old apps/games looked and worked back then on iOS like Infinity Blade or Vine. But it’s near impossible because these apps aren’t available on the App Store and not easily downloadable. Even if they are, they only run on Apple hardware [5].

Right now, I’m looking to something like Corellium (iOS Emulation service) to see if they would do something for iOS like what Ruffle is doing for Flash.

It’s early days (even if their service is not open), but there could be some hope for iOS app preservation in the future.

also posted on:

https://wesleyhill.co.uk/p/reflections-on-flash-and-preservation/

[1] I will also leave this pun behind this year too.

[2] If you are both a web and game developer on flash, sorry.

[3] Many Flash emulators like Mozilla’s Shumway and GNU Gnash and Lightspark.

[4] NYTimes, Armor Games, CPMStar, Crazy Games, Deep Night, Cool Math Games are supporters.

[5] Luckily for some games and apps they are (hopefully) cross platform, but it’s a different story if they are iOS only.

Howya doin?, hako here!

It's been a very VERY long time since I posted a toon on NG, and I've started picking up an old animation project that I wanted to finish. I am looking for a composer to produce one music track. you'll be paid. (obviously).

I am specifically looking for chiptune music, but it is not a hard requirement. I am open to changing my mind.

If you're interested or know someone who is interested, hit me up with a link to your (or their) portfolio, PM me or send an email to:

wesley@hakobaito.co.uk

Deadline is one week from this post. (17/06/18)

EDIT: Changed deadline to one week.

EDIT 2: Submissions are closed.

Swell, the flash animation tracker has been updated for Mac and Windows and contains lots of new features and bugfixes!

If you don't know what Swell is or have not heard of it, I recommend reading my previous post introducing Swell or on my personal blog.

Again in TL;DR fashion, Swell is an animation tracker which tracks your animation and displays stats about it.

This release includes:

• Optional autosaving - Autosaving is now optional when using Swell in Adobe Flash Professional.
• Tracking without saving - Swell does not need to save to track your project anymore.
• Project Migration - Migrates old swell activity data to newer ones to keep up to date.
• Total Time Spent - Displays "Total Time Spent" when animating in Adobe Flash Professional.

You may have noticed that Swell has a new logo, (The one on the right) which has been rolled out a couple of days ago. Credit goes entirely to Paul Ter Voorde.

If you are a beta tester, this update is available now for you to use, test and send feedback. Swell is not finished but it's functional and it works, If you're not a beta tester, you can still sign up here. 

I am thrilled to answer any feedback, constructive criticism, suggestions, feature requests and general questions regarding Swell, I want this to be as useful as Swivel.

(I planned that the code to be open source in 2015, But the source code still needs testing! In the next coming months this will happen.)

If you want to learn more about Swell head over to the website if you are interested.

(Pics of Swell are in the previous post)

So I've been working on a program for flash animators (like myself and many others) and I'm pleased to say that this program is called: 'Swell'.

Wait? What is Swell?

Swell (stylised as "Swell" or "swell" ) is a flash animation tracker. It tracks and displays statistics of your animation while you're animating in Adobe Flash.

Swell is useful for creating graphs, reports or even a timeline of your animation progress.

If you haven't noticed already, Swell's logo is Edd from the online Flash cartoon 'Eddsworld'. (But I'm prety sure you NG folks already knew that!) The name 'swell' is based on the late Edd Gould's own catchphrase: "It's pretty swell"

The credit of the logo rightfully goes to Paul Ter Voorde

Swell is currently in early beta, and it's still very early days, so expect the UI to look very basic.

I promised in my last post, that I'd post screenshots:

Swell is compatible with Adobe Flash CS3. (Unlike Windows, you have to install swell manually if you have Flash CS3 for Mac)

No support for Macromedia MX 2004 or Macromedia Flash 8 yet! A port to AS3 to AS2 is needed.

Swell has an autosave feature builtin. You can adjust the save interval by using the slider.

Swell is compatible with Flash CC 2014. But not Adobe Flash CC (2015) at the moment. Thanks to Adobe killing off Extension Manager.

Windows gets support too. Swell can track your cartoon at different intervals, this one tracks each frame every minute. By default, its every 5 minutes. Swell will be able to do more than just this in a future release.

Lastly, Swell can track multiple flash projects. You can hide the flash client and Swell will be running in the background.

As I said in my last post, Swell will become free and open-source on GitHub later this year.

Swell also has a developer interface for programmers to play with, although it's too long and detailed to cover in this post.

Oh, did I forget to mention that it includes an auto updater?

If you would like to beta test Swell, you can sign yourself up here.

Once you've signed up you can take a look at the requirements before you install Swell.

If you have any questions, suggestions, tips or anything about Swell, just comment below or send me an email.

hako.

Hey, guys, a progress update on my last post.

I'll keep it short in TL;DR fashion and I'll hint a few details:

The tool I'm building works on both Mac and Windows (have nice GUI's) and can effectively autosave on (almost) all versions of Flash Pro. Plus it will be completely free and will be released online once testing is finshed.

In the meantime, If you're an animator or if you use Flash regularly, you can help me out by doing this quick poll.

This will help me tailor my tool to support the most popular version of Flash used by most flash animators.

(Pictures will come in the next post)

hako.

I'm creating a program for Flash and I want to support as many versions of Flash as possible.

This is mainly a dead quick poll  for animators. (Or possibly anyone who uses Flash regularly) 

https://hako.typeform.com/to/fozo4v

Thanks!

Edit: Unfortunately I cannot embed the poll on Newgrounds, the HTML editor is not being kind to me. >:(