Flash in memoriam
First published on Ka of Isis 140323
Once upon a time I was a lecturer teaching the software applications InDesign, Photoshop and Flash. With the latter, I, like so many who invested time and careers in a powerful but now redundant technology, scramble for alternatives. We all hope to find them in the HTML canvas tag, CSS, and JavaScript. But before I dive into Grant Skinner’s CreateJS collection of scripts, let me take a step back in time to honour just Skinner and the other heroes who laid the groundwork for what was once the bleeding edge in browser animation. The above simulation of fireflies was an experiment Skinner conducted on proximation. On the proper jungle backdrop it is sheer magic!
No animation? Well, Flash has fallen from grace with a knife in the chest and current Safari browsers (aka Apple) does its utmost to twist the weapon in the wound. “Safari Power Saver” they call it and you have to hover over or hit the Flash movie to play it or to resume playing. The result is a very bad user experience, especially for this kind of soothing randomness which I used to sit and watch for any length of time.
Update: It’s getting worse. Adobe, the mother ship, has been forced to create a dedicated web page for the sole purpose of showing users how to enable Flash Player in Safari depending on which version of the browser they are using.