I agree, I think the two things that killed Flash were "Steve Jobs" (aka - a lack of foresight around the explosion of the mobile market and no competitive offering in the space), and the continued treatment of security as a technical debt item rather than a differentiating purchase distinguisher that buyers were actually concerned about. That is, I don't think Adobe correctly recognized that corporate buyers would start buying Intranet applications that were not built on Flash/Flex specifically due to security concerns.
Re:Internet Explorer is evil (1996)
by kitsunesoba on Tuesday March 09, 2021 @12:31PM
(#26401154)
Slack and other ill-optimized Electron apps are not great, but Flash was far worse, at least in my experience. With Flash a single banner ad in some tab you forgot you had open could consume half or more of your G4/G5/C2D, whipping your fans into a frenzy and roasting your lap (if using a laptop). Slack, etc are a detriment in terms of heat and battery life too, but not to such an extreme extent and at least you're getting a reasonably functional app in exchange.
Computers are easily a thousand times more powerful than they were in the year 2000, and Electron apps still cook my thighs. They use more RAM than my computer had hard disk space.
Re:Internet Explorer is evil (1996)
by Wowfunhappy on Tuesday March 09, 2021 @01:55PM
(#26402297)
> With Flash a single banner ad in some tab you forgot you had open could consume half or more of your G4/G5/C2D, whipping your fans into a frenzy and roasting your lap (if using a laptop).
And not coincidentally, html5 banner ads will do the same thing on a G4/G5 today in TenFourFox, if you disable the built-in adblocker.
Which is to day, I actually think modern websites are much heavier. What changed is the hardware.
People say Flash was bloated but try running Slack on 2008-era hardware and let me know how it goes. And there’s no reason Flash couldn’t have been adapted to use responsive breakpoints and such for mobile friendliness.