
Ask HN: About Creating a Flash Replacement - 100-xyz
There have been a couple of popular threads on the demise of Flash.<p>Its clear Flash had several things going for it, in particular easy to create animation content for the web.<p>I am up for creating a similar editor.  Anyone else interested in joining in?
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leowoo91
[https://www.openfl.org](https://www.openfl.org), but it would be awesome to
have an editor.

Here is a discussion I've found: [https://community.openfl.org/t/i-think-
openfl-need-a-power-u...](https://community.openfl.org/t/i-think-openfl-need-
a-power-ui-editor-to-become-more-popular/9225/4)

Also an open-source candidate:
[http://en.fairygui.com](http://en.fairygui.com)

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100-xyz
Hi, I cursorily tried out openfl.org Just to open a demo, it had to download a
lot of stuff, took a long time and I just gave up.

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davidwitt415
Former Flash/AS Designer/Front-end Dev here with a couple of thoughts;
Timeline animation is the most obvious feature of Flash to most people, and it
was also the reason why so many Devs hated Flash. This niche is for Animators,
and there are lots of timeline animation tools around, including Animate,
which is just Flash rebranded. I used to teach Flash as well, and 'easy to
create animation' is a relative term for sure!

For me, the value in Flash was the Stage, Symbols, and the Library, using the
single frame movie paradigm. This allowed designers to import graphics and
create complex UI layouts, interactive content and animations using Symbols,
which could then be controlled using Actionscript.

In that light, I think a good path would be to create a Flash-like visual IDE
that integrates with Haxe, which has a ton of target languages and platforms,
but which lacks this kind of visual front end.

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100-xyz
Can you elaborate on how Haxe would contribute to this? Currently, I am
envisioning only browsers across all platforms.

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davidwitt415
Haxe can output Javascript. The utility in Haxe is really in being able to
target multiple platforms. I work in mobile/embedded so that's where i'm
coming from.

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trollitarantula
Hype is an editor for HTML5 animations
[https://tumult.com/hype/](https://tumult.com/hype/)

Haven't used it, but I am sure it isn't the only one in this market

For cartoons, there is plenty of other software, including Adobe Animate

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poisonborz
This goes multiple ways

\- An animation editor like Flash? Ther's still Animate

\- A "multimedia" framework for standalone content? I would doubt there is a
demand nowadays

\- A browser-targeted/cross-platform animation editor? That would be nice.

For the latter, there were some tries already, even from Adobe. The problem is
cross-browser compatibility and performance.

I'd really like to see something based on
[https://greensock.com/gsap/](https://greensock.com/gsap/) They solved all the
hard problems already, and its itself based on a Flash/ActionScript framework
so terms and structures are familiar, eg. keyframe based tweens.

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pixelbash
Iirc there are some tools to export After fx animation json to html 5, not
sure how good they are though.

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dukoid
Is there any good introduction how the original editor worked? I think I tried
to use it once ages ago, but it wasn't really intuitive for me to use it for
anything...

The part I remember: You could draw something, then advance to a different
point in time, move stuff around there, and then this would form an
animation(?).

What I didn't get at all: How would one be able to make a game out of this?

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UserIsUnused
There was scripts. you could add code to any object in the screen.

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dukoid
Does this mean it boiled down to code mostly in the end? For instance, how
would one design animations for objects separately from the "master" timeline?
Was this possible in the editor somehow? Or just code?

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100-xyz
You could create SVG separately, even import it.

Then there was the logic eg. if user clicks this, then start this, or if this
action is accomplished then start this...

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BerislavLopac
I always thought that a good editor for SVGs would be a solid replacement for
Flash...

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100-xyz
An editor alone would not do. We would also have to add logic ie when user
click this, do this...

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BerislavLopac
That's just Javascript...

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100-xyz
Here's what I see for the MVP:

1) simple SVG editor 2) timeline and tweening 3) simple logic creator (when
user clicks this, do this. or this action finished then do this) 4) outputs to
some file

It would be a browser oriented and cross platform editor. The first targets
could be tutorials, slide presentation creators. Then simple animation.

Anyone interested in joining in, holler.

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buboard
A question is whether HTML5 can be as fast and lightweight as flash. I think
it's a big part of the experience and can be hit or miss in HTML, with some
things being faster but others resource hogs (like video). The good thing
about flash was its more or less consistent performance, and generally not
very cpu intensive

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100-xyz
I think one of the complaints about Flash was it was very cpu intensive! It
would not even work on the earlier iPhones - one of the reasons it died. The
recent threads about Flash go into further detail.

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venatiodecorus
i've always thought it would be great to have something similar that created
animation using CSS. CSS animation seems to be pretty neat these days. not
sure what the performance of something like that would be though.

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WilliamEdward
CSS animation is limited, but standard and less intrusive than an equivalent
JS animation. It's nothing new.

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WilliamEdward
Is HTML5 not the intended replacement for Flash?

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dukoid
I think this thread is mostly about the editor? Ideally the output format
would be SVG or HTML5 today probably...

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100-xyz
Yes. Output could be an HTML5 element or something similar.

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dave84
What’s wrong with Adobe Animate?

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drcongo
The first of those two words.

