
Getting Rid of Flash - p4bl0
http://ncannasse.fr/blog/getting_rid_of_flash
======
chipsy
NME(The premier Haxe cross-platform gaming/media library) also just updated,
adding some support for native OpenGL calls:
[http://www.haxenme.org/blog/2012/12/22/merry-christmas-
nme-3...](http://www.haxenme.org/blog/2012/12/22/merry-christmas-nme-3-5-0-is-
here/)

2013 is shaping up to be a strong year for Haxe's gaming abilities.

------
emp_
Something like a game never really sounded like the problem, it actually is a
good idea before all standards get dragged into something usable, flash being
used to power content and annoying ads was the reason the platform got to this
point, I think.

This is exactly what flash was for, power things not possible in the browser
until the standards catch up (animation, video), then moving to the next
missing thing (i.e.: gaming, 3d worlds)

~~~
Wintamute
> This is exactly what flash was for

I contest your use of the past tense here. I think it'd be fairer to say "this
is exactly what Flash _is_ for". Historically (mid 2000s) Flash was doing for
simple content animation what it's doing now for 3D libraries like the one
linked to by OP. In other words in the days before jQuery and <canvas> etc.
simple high fidelity animation of basic 2D content just wasn't technically
practical in the native browser, so Flash filled the gap. Browsers moved on,
and now its 3D (and arguably secure/hardware accelerated video) where a plugin
like Flash can be useful.

Flash had its time driving content, and at that time (as thousands of
agencies, businesses and developers can attest) it was the best tool for the
job.

------
mahmud
Cannasse is the last person I expected to see leave Flash. Dude built a career
around the platform and released more tools for it than any single individual.

~~~
swah
The title doesn't properly summarize the article.

He is just saying that because Haxe can target WebGL, he could now dump Flash
when performance of WebGL is good enough.

------
winter_blue
Uh, I know everyone going to yell at me, but...

I think it would have been _much_ _much_ better, had Adobe open-sourced Flash
and turned into a standard (like ECMA or something).

This could saved everyone in the industry a _huge_ amount of effort porting,
rewriting, etc. stuff to work on a platform where every browser does things in
its own (horribly) inconsistent way.

~~~
jdonaldson
There's many reasons this didn't happen. Some of them Adobe's fault, some not.

The main thing to realize is that Adobe based AS3 on many leading proposals
for Ecmascript 4. Ecmascript 4 would lay the groundwork for future versions of
javascript, etc. Flash would still be closed source, but the language would be
useful elsewhere in the browser. Several people have described the political
issues surrounding this ES4 situation in far more detail, and how we arguably
ended up the worse for it:

Resig: <http://ejohn.org/blog/ecmascript-harmony/> Canasse:
<http://ncannasse.free.fr/?p=82> Mike Chambers:
[http://www.mikechambers.com/blog/2008/08/14/actionscript-3-a...](http://www.mikechambers.com/blog/2008/08/14/actionscript-3-and-
ecmascript-4/)

So, why didn't Adobe just open source the flash plugin? One main reason not to
was Microsoft:
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microsoft_Java_Virtual_Machine#...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microsoft_Java_Virtual_Machine#Sun_vs._Microsoft)
Another reason was, naturally, control. Both for Adobe and for user
development. The Flash player was quirky, but incredibly consistent with
decent performance. There really was no other option... js, java applets,
activeX, they all had significant weaknesses due to differing availability and
performance.

If you wait around long enough in web development, you will have seen this
type of situation many times. Haxe is a "free agent" that can break this cycle
imho. It is not tied to a company like Typescript or Dart, nor is it tied to
corporate controlled committees like ES4. It has an incredibly gifted language
author, and a great team of developers. It's also very mature at this point (>
5 years old).

I've used Haxe professionally for just under 5 years now.

------
olaf
The original blog post of Nicolas Cannasse has a question mark at the end
(very strange and confusing vibes, if the originator does not know ...), which
is missing here, which makes me want to ask how serious Nicaolas Cannassee
really is, what can he really offer right now? How serious is he really, I
don't trust him. Does anyone use haxe successfully in a professional context
and earns money through it, is this platform worth an investment (time,
learning) or are there hidden maintenance-nightmares-producing or other
shortcomings, which prevent professional reliable large scale use comparable
to flash? I would like to read opinions of people who do successful business
with haxe (edit: first hand info).

~~~
p4bl0
I know a few people who use haXe professionally.

One of them that I know personally is a professional Flash developer who used
haXe exclusively for some times, because it had a better standard library than
Flash (AS2 at this time) and generated lighter and faster SWF files. I
remember him telling me that he made a somewhat huge (several hundred euros)
donation to the project and that it still cost him less than buying the
Macromedia Flash software. Since AS3 he's back to Flash thought.

Some others I know through their work: Motion Twin [1] for instance, who are
the creators of a lot of very successful Flash games.

[1] <http://motion-twin.com/>

~~~
gizmogwai
Motion-twin is Nicolas Cannasse's company. So they obviously use HaXe
extensively.

~~~
olaf
Thanks for claryfying that, now p4bl0's post appears to me like more or less
self promotion.

~~~
p4bl0
Huh what? I've never worked for Motion-Twin, and I actually never wrote any
haXe or Flash myself. I'm just a programming language enthusiast (and student
to an extent, since my PhD subject is in part about PL design) so I like to
follow Nicolas Cannasse's work. I also happen to enjoy one of MT games (Alpha
Bounce [1]) very much and to have web developers friends among whom one made
me discover haXe years ago, talking very highly about the technology (that's
how I discovered Cannasse's work too).

[1] <http://www.alphabounce.com/>

~~~
olaf
Sorry, self promotion in the sense, that a fan praises haxe but does not do
business himself, which was not, what I was asking for.

