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What caused Flash and Actionscript to become irrelevant? [closed]

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At first glance this question may seem like I'm looking for opinions or a discussion, but hear me out. While I'm sure everyone has their own opinion of which tools are best to use, there have got to be some factual reasons why Flash's popularity faded away. I'm sure there were certain events and inventions that caused people to prefer other tools, and I'm dying to know what those events are. So I am looking for answers that are based on facts and events. All I can gather from the research I've done and the projects I've seen is that Flash used to be really popular for creating interactive media or cartoon-like movies, but now it's not.
The background story to this question is that over the past few months I've been creating a project with Adobe Animate and Actionscript for a college class. It's been fun and I find that Animate is extremely useful. I would like to think that the skills I've learned will be useful in the future, but I've heard from several different people that Flash is pretty much irrelevant now and I can't figure out why.
I know that front end developers are using Javascript and HTML/CSS for most things, and I do understand some of the advantages. Javascript programs seem to have more open-source availability, and of course no one wants to pay a subscription for Adobe products forever. But what I don't get is what replaced the visual aspect of the "stage". Something as simple as drawing a circle could become hard really quick, or tedious at the least, if you're just using code alone. And if you draw two or more objects, you have to worry about their relative positions. Flash makes that super simple by allowing you to just drag them to where they need to be. But once again I imagine it would be really boring to have to use trial and error to position things solely with code.
So are the Javascript coders using something similar to Flash for their animations that I'm just not aware of, or are they really just using code alone? If they are just using code, WHY would they give up the stage aspect of design?

Politics, sadly. Flash was/is superior to HTML5 in almost every way (explained below), but there were a number of non-technological factors that ushered in its demise. Below are a few that come to mind:
1) Ads. This was the way most people grew to recognize Flash content; if it was flashy and annoying, it was probably Flash. This was unfortunate as it was not the technology itself that was the problem, but the use of it. (the fact that Flash was used so much for this type of content says something about how effective Flash was at creating this type of content).
2) Full Flash websites/games. Again, this was not so much a problem with Flash, but those who used it to create the content. Often devs will produce content on machines that are significantly faster than the average user's, and do most, if not all, testing locally.
3) The 1st iPhone was quite slow compared to those that exist today, and it was slow compared to a majority of computers as well. It is no surprise then that a technology that specializes in multimedia, running in a virtual machine, may have problems running on such a device; however, to say this would be to say something negative about the device, and rather than do that a 100% of the blame was put on the technology. The average consumer's experience with my previous points made this tactic easy to pull off.
4) Adobe gave up after losing the PR battle. There were many things they could have done to save Flash, such as: not dropping Android support, not dropping Flex support, not dropping Flash Builder support, and not ignoring the dwindling Flash engineer community. There is no reason why the iPhone could not run Flash today (and run it well), and there is no reason why Adobe couldn't create a transcompiler to convert content; I already did this (flash api, full as3 language support, e4x, etc.), but it's not open source as of yet. If one engineer could do this, they certainly could have!
5) Overblown publicity of Flash vulnerabilities. Critical vulnerabilities are found in programs all the time, browsers, operating systems (yes, even OS X), etc. But due to the growing discontent for Flash in the general public, issues found in Flash were covered as if Flash was the only program that was exposing people to vulnerabilities.
Technology: Is/was Flash tech superior? Absolutely, HTML5 was actually a huge step back, and here is why:
1) Flash was stable. If you got your app to work, it would almost be guaranteed not only to function exactly the same in all browsers and operating systems, but also to look identical as well. Want to develop an HTML5 app? Either use a javascript library to fix all/most browser inconsistencies, or welcome yourself to a debugging nightmare. So, of course, you add that abstraction layer, but now what happens when you still have an issue? Well, now you have to dig through that layer..
2) Flash/AS3 does it better. Want to have pixel perfect text across all devices? Flash, yes. HTML5, nope. Want REAL classes, typing, Vectors, weak references, interfaces, objects as keys, namespaces, private variables, asset embedding, etc. ? Flash, yes. HTML5.. while it's possible to create a compile-to-JavaScript language to pull most of this off, now you have to deal with that output when you're debugging. How about complex, nested, animations? How easy/fast is that to do in Flash... Sure, editors can be made to output the equivalent in HTML5, but most will not stream like Flash did, and will have severe limitations compared to what Flash can do.
3) The Flash API. The Flash API was well documented, powerful, and pretty simple to use. Compare this to the joy of searching online looking at compatibility lists and vendor prefixes for HTML5.
4) todo... there is quite a bit more.
HTML5 is better only in the fact that it is 100% open (and it's not a plugin, which people tend to dislike). The SWF specification is open, and there was an open-source Flash player (the Tamarin project); so, it is not as if Flash was completely closed like some would suggest; personally, I would trade the openness of HTML5 for stability and consistency any day.
However, if openness is one's primary concern, then one would probably view the step backwards in capability and efficiency as worth it.
BTW: I actually write all my HTML5 and NodeJS code in Flash/AS3 and compile to HTML5/JS. I can still use Flash for debugging (and as my gold standard if you will), which is fantastic..

Best way to port c++ game to web [closed]

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I realize the above question is rather broad so I will narrow it down. I have a simple opengl c++ game engine that lives in a static library (could be converted to a dynamic lib).
I have been thinking of ways of getting it to run in web. From what I can see I could use ActiveX or Google NaCl to run the c++ code in browser. But these technologies do not seem easily cross platform? Or maybe I have misunderstood.
Another option I have seen is converting the engine to javascript and WebGL and running in an HTML5 canvas. Would this be slower than c++? It would be very cross platform though.
What do you think is the best option, or better yet is there any other option I have missed?
EDIT: what about a custom plugin similar to the unity webplayer?

There is a library created by #kripken which is still under development. It takes LLVM bitcode and convert into Javascript.
You can see the project page here, with working examples.
https://github.com/kripken/emscripten/

I would strongly suggest porting to NaCl.
Advantages:
Performance: You can use the full power of the CPU to render your game. If your game uses good 3d graphics or physics, you can make it look smooth even on old system configs. The performance of NaCl is comparable to Native OS applications, it only looses nearly 5 to 10% of FPS when I compared the same game to Win32 version.
There are a lot of already ported examples, games for NaCl that can help you do it easily.
It is already cross-platform. Chrome runs on Windows, Linux, Mac OSX.
Disadvantages:
Might take you around a week to port. You have to port to OpenGL ES 2.0 (However, it should be the same with any browser based methods, especially HTML5)
Runs only on Chrome.

If you want something portable in a browser, then it has to rely on Javascript (and likely WebGL, although IE does not support that).
ActiveX and NaCL are just not portable in any way, shape or form.
I can't say which is easier, but you have an option of rewriting your game in Javascript, or using a tool like Emscripten to compile your C++ to JavaScript.
Note that if you use the latter, it's still not a silver bullet. You'll likely have to make lots of changes to your code (for example because the libraries and APIs used in your C++ game won't be available on the browser)

Flash vs HTML5 game development for web & mobile [closed]

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I am an experienced AS3 programmer, and I've done Flash apps and games on the browser and on mobile (via Adobe AIR, e.g., on Android).
I am about to start developing a game (basic 2D platformer with pixelart graphics. Think about Super Mario World) targeted to both web and mobile platforms. Thus I'm searching for easy deployment to these two kinds of platforms, having basically the same source code.
I'm divided between choosing ActionScript 3.0 (Flash) or HTML5/JavaScript for developing this game.
My main question is, for those who've experienced the same situation before:
What is the safest way to go?
In other words, are there serious disadvantages with one of these frameworks that disallows me to develop multiplatform 2D games?
Or am I just dreaming and practical multiplatform (web and mobile) game development is not so possible? (does someone know how Rovio did it with Angry Birds?)
Here are some pros and cons that I already know:
Pros for AS3/Flash:
The state-of-art for web games.
I'm experienced with it.
(Almost) concealed source code.
On the web, it's browser-independent.
Can run as a "native" app on iOS and Android through Adobe AIR. It's not the best performance experience ever, but I know that you can get playable performances with it.
Cons for AS3/ Flash:
Performance on AIR for mobile is not optimal, so I might end up having to abandon a really cool but expensive feature (or even several features).
People are saying HTML5/Javascript will substitute it.
Pros for HTML5/Javascript:
It's possible to do Flash-quality games using, e.g., engines like ImpactJS or Akihabara.
Seems to be more stable and well supported on mobile in the future.
Deployment as native app is possible through PhoneGap, appMobi, etc.
Cons for HTML5/Javascript:
I have some basic knowledge of this technology.
Source code is wide open exposed.
Performance/behaviour is browser-dependent.
Lacks a solid framework or engine which is free of co$t$.

I've decided to forget about HTML5 for cross-platform game development, and specially for deployment to mobile.
The cons I've pointed out for Flash are much lighter than the cons for HTML5. Basically, for the pixelart kind of games, Flash on mobile performs really well, specially if using some nice engine like Flixel.
For example, the Flixel game Robo Run has great performance both on Android and Flash Player in a browser. I don't have an iOS example for the same game, but I believe it would perform as good as on Android.
Plus, Flash performance on mobile shouldn't be an increasing problem since the hardware on these devices just gets better and better.
After thinking about this HTML5 vs Flash issue for several months, I think there's no point adventuring in HTML5 cross-browser compatibility since Flash has proven to be a sort of Java for 2D games.

I think you have outlined the pros and cons pretty effectively. If cross platform and mobile web development is your top priority, Flash is a good choice. You will have all of the drawbacks you have identified.
If you use javascript/HTML such as the impact engine, you will have a different set of problems, and far less compatibilty on the web side.
However, if having the game be the best it can be, you will need to look elsewhere, because as of the present, there is no code once publish anywhere solution.
Unity 3D has good 3D and 2d mobile capabilities.
Appcellerator may also be your cup of tea.
http://www.appcelerator.com/
But in the final analysis, nothing will beat making different versions for different platforms. in terms of performance, and being best suited to the device. Be sure to evaluate how well your chosen solution allows you to monetize your app as well. You'll likely be building multiple versions just to accomodate differences in revenue models and ad serving capabilities.
=== Update ===
In March of 2012 Adobe updated flash for iOS and Android to include support for OpenGL graphics, 3D and 2D graphics are now possible using flash as a single code base for iOS and Android. The speed is good, and you also can deply the same game to web. Its a great tool. The one drawback is that flash relies on "extensions" to connect to native OS capabilites such as Intents on android or Game Center on iOS. If you plan on using native capabilities extensively, look out for this as an obstacle to development.

As ScanPlayGames said, html5 sound is a big issue. There are some neat WebGL ports though. Dominic at Impact has been doing some amazing stuff. He's got the best framework out there.
Rovio did a port using Google Web Toolkit for the chrome store.
I work for AppMobi. We've got a tool called DirectCanvas for iOS (Android will be coming soon) that increases the performance of games in the webview. One of our partners is developing a game that has the concept of Angry Birds (object A is propelled to destroy other objects). So Box2d support is there (the main thing holding us up from releasing). The performance is awesome, and the average joe doesn't know it's a webview game.
And trust me, you wont' be wasting your time doing development on mobile first for desktop then. We've got some stuff up our sleeves.

I'm a Flash games developer too and did some research on how to migrate to HTML5. There are a lot of obstacles if you come from the Flash/ActionScript3 world. One of those things is JavaScript itself - i know many people like JavaScript, but if you are used to AS3 it is hard. Another thing is the problem with sounds (as mentioned above). The most important thing is that i don't want to start from scratch and i want to use my skills or even migrate code from the past.
To make a long story short i ended up with Googles new programming language called Dart. This language compiles to JavaScript in therefore runs on all modern browsers. The most important thing is that Dart is very similar to ActiontScript3! Then i did an open source library which provides all the Flash API you need for games (The Display List, Bitmaps, Sounds, ...) - i tried to make the library as compatible as possible with the Flash API to simplify the process of porting the source of a game. In the end it was pretty easy because you only need to change a few things.
The game i have migrated:
An ActionScript to Dart comparison:
Some other samples and the link to the source:

I think a big disadvantage of Javascript is that it cannot detect picture's transparent regions so that it can stop reacting while mice hover or click on it.
Since HTML5 was released, any new solution has been created?

I have worked with some people who did a very graphics intensive HTML5 application and the worst thing was doing the sound I remember...every browser had to be done differently. Go look for some open source html 5 game frameworks where people have already done the grunt work of testing across browsers...there are some pretty good ones I think. You dont want to have to be the one QA-ing across environments.

Can I use JavaScript to do the same what Adobe Flash does?

Is JavaScript capable of doing the same what Flash does? And if it is the case, can it be a good idea to switch from Adobe Flash to JavaScript?

No, JavaScript cannot do what Flash does.
Maybe HTML5 w/ canvas,JavaScript w/ JQuery,CSS3, some Webkits and some SVG/JPG to handle pictures and animations can make an attempt at what Flash was 5-10 years ago.
Video
JavaScript - There is only one implementation I know that slice the video into JPEGs then dram it onto the canvas. No clue what happens if one wanted to stream a file.
<video> tag - Best thing to come along. I would not lie. But this is not JavaScript.
Audio
JavaScript - I remember once it could be used for MIDI files but then it needed compatibility checks based on the browser
<audio> tag - Same reasoning as <video> tag, it is not JavaScript
Animation
These are three places I know making the cream of the crop that can be made with JavaScript.
Mr.Doob's Playground
Spiderman Animation
SmokeScreen Flash to JavaScript
Note well.
Do not talk about Apple Demos ... that is a joke and all marketing. They have only optimized for their browser (Safari)
Also do not talk about what Steve did or did not say. He is a pro at marketing. The other steve (Steve Wozniak) is the engineer.
(1) I highly respect because Mr.Doob really pushed that <canvas> and JS . (2) Was great animation that could be accomplished by a teenager in Flash IDE 5 years ago ... way too much effort to make something so simple. (3) Is really good yet you start with the Flash File ^.^
Lines Of Code
In many cases ActionScript, better yet the Flash IDE make animation a breeze with half the lines of codes (or maybe even simple drag and drop on timelines) than JavaScript. Libraries such as JQuery were brought in to try to shorten the amount of code. Even then in most cases less code/implementation was needed in ActionScript.
Accessibility and Performance
This is in the hands of the developer and has nothing to do with the language. Flash is capable of providing deep linking with SWFAddress (Ajax), page resizing (Stage Scale) and so forth. People constantly talk about performance with Flash, yes this is true but this is poor design on the developer for memory management.
Updates
JavaScript will be limited by the <canvas> and other elements to achieve what Flash can do.How ? If issues started to occur in HTML5, what would you do ? Send in a bug request ? No ... you will wait a next 3-5 years for HTML6 specification.
Suggestion
I suggest looking through Mr.Doob's work, Webby Awards and google the best of Flash Websites. Look at them carefully see if you can bring up case studies. Like this one : Creating marketing platforms with Adobe Flex Website under study : http://www.bombaysapphire.com/
And a word to a wise , one of your favorite websites - YouTube, would not have survived if it was not for Flash :D

Hell you can use javascript to "do" flash!! Check this out! Smokescreen
On a serious note, flash has its own advantages. Like e.g. games and some very specialized apps like audio video editing etc. Maybe javascript and HTML5 is not there yet, but its getting close!

Is JavaScript capable of doing the same what Flash does?
No, definitely not. While both share some capabilities, like animations and interactive interfaces, JavaScript's and Flash's design philosophies differ fundamentally, and in terms of features in those fields, Flash is certainly way, way ahead.
And if it is the case, can it be a good idea to switch from Adobe Flash to JavaScript?
It might, depending on what exactly you are doing in Flash. If you outline that in more detail, you will certainly get more concrete answers.

Here's a response to Apple's recent trumpeting of HTML5 - Jump back in time with HTML5. There's still plenty of reasons to use Flash!
The Apple HTML5 demos (left parts)
only work with Safari (4.7% of all
users on all devices). Some HTML5
features work, others won't work on
other browsers. As a matter of fact,
HTML5 is not really a standard at all.
The Flash TODAY demos (right parts)
show how 97% of all websurfers can
experience Flash the way it is
supposed to be today & tomorrow: fresh
& innovative. By the way, these
Flash-examples are extremely hard or
simply impossible to build with
HTML5

Depends on what functionality you are looking for. While javascript has much evolved recently and many frameworks were introduced it cannot be compared to Flash in terms of creating rich web interfaces. I think though that progressively new concepts will be introduced like HTML5, usage of the GPU and HTML + javascript might one day fill the gap.

Javascript is vast. But it cannot replace Flash.! The biggest Advantage of using flash is hiding the source code.. Which in Javascript is nt applicable always.!
Flash is Used in Animation of Cartoons and 3D web sites etc.. Of course u cannot create a front end competing to Flash..
One good solution would be => If you want ur site to hav good programming properties den go for javascript..
If U want ur site to be good in Front end design den go for Flash!!
Although flash has its scripting language [Actionscript] its not dat much flexible as javascript!!!!

Do we still need backup code for people who have javascript disabled? [closed]

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I hear about it a bit in tutorials that I watch, that certain things won't work if javascript is disabled. Occasionally I see workarounds.
The question is, are these relevent? I can't imagine anyone not having a javascript enabled browser nowadays, except the most ancient of phones, and chances are your page won't render on them properly anyway.
Do people still bother to write backup code for javascript being disabled?
Edit: As a test, I turned javascript off. Facebook doesn't work.
Edit: I understand about visually impaired users, but do people care (harsh, yes) if their experience is buggy? Not to sound disrespectful, but not sticking to strict standards will alienate people using Internet Explorer 4 and 5 too, but we don't seem to care about them...?
Edit: Saying that people should do it seems like a very automatic response, considering how many people use JQuery and other groovy addon libraries.
Edit: I tried a bunch of fortune 500 sites, and so far about 70% of the ones I tried have broken
Dell
Walmart
Fedex
Intel
Coca Cola

Yes, we still need backup code for people who have JavaScript disabled.
JavaScript is often used to do things that break in screen readers (so many screen reader users disable it) or to cause changes to appear out of sight of a screen magnifier.
JavaScript is still one of the biggest attack vectors to exploit security holes in browsers.
Add-ons such as No-Script are increasing in popularity.
Search engines tend not to execute it (so you don't want to hide your content behind it)
I prefer to think of it as a foundation rather than backup.
I understand about visually impaired users, but do people care (harsh, yes) if their experience is buggy?
Nasty people don't.
The law (in many jurisdictions) does.
Not to sound disrespectful, but not sticking to strict standards will alienate people using Internet Explorer 4 and 5 too, but we don't seem to care about them...?
IE 4/5 have:
a smaller market share than users without JS
many security holes
no support from their own publisher

As a developer I no longer worry about 1% of users who turn off Javascript. It is too time consuming and development time is too expensive to waste on such nonsense. AJAX saves an incredible amount of bandwidth which turns directly into $$$ savings, which makes profits higher. If I lose one or two potential users of the site for every 100 users, those one or two lost users will cost a lot more in development than the potential income of they could ever bring in.
Try turning off Javascript and logging into Facebook, it becomes a very broken website after that. If it's good enough for Facebook, its good enough for me.

Support for JavaScript-disabled web sites a nice thought, but not of much help, and of questionable value, IMHO
It is almost impossible to design a robust website without java script, and those that disable JS, for whatever reason, probably don't expect much of a user experience. So if you are coding for that 1% of the population, you have no choice. But for the majority of us, it is a given that JS is there. Accessibility is a different issue, with its own challenges. When I was doing web sites for Hewlett-Packard, they had to meet strict accessibility standards, and it was tough to create anything more than very basic web pages. I wouldn't wish that on anybody.

I have a different opinion to many here. I don't think you necessarily should care in some scenarios, especially if your website is targeting a particular group of people or that it is going to mean a lot of work.
if you refer to:
http://visualrevenue.com/blog/2007/08/eu-and-us-javascript-disabled-index.html
(source: visualrevenue.com)
You can see that year on year more browsers than ever have Javascript enabled, contrary to the other answers' claims. It was at 96.9% in 2007.
So you lose 3% of potential viewers, so what, your advertising campaign will do a lot more damage than that!

Yes. Especially when it comes to 508 and WCAG compliance. While the technologies to create accessible JavaScript are coming out of their infancy (see ARIA), developer's should still be coding sites in a way the does not require JavaScript.
http://www.w3.org/WAI/aria/faq
http://www.w3.org/TR/WCAG10/

All the other questions got most of the points covered, but I'll chime in with this: it's not a big deal to have your page(s) degrade gracefully in the absence of javascript. If you've got some super-whizzy ajax-infested real-time comet style app that really isn't going to work without javascript, you should at least render a nice message to the effect that javascript is required.

It depends on your audience and type of website.
For instance, a graphic artist portfolio will not be visited by blind people or people using text browsers. So in that case it's not so important to build nice degradable JS, expecially because it will most probably be used for graphic effects.
If, on the other hand you're developing a news website and you decide (for whatever reason) to dynamically load your news with JS then you should definitely make it degradable. Also, remember that the spiders of indexing engines may have difficulties in indexing content loaded with JS in your page.
At the end of the day, in most cases it's not so difficult to program the site so that it works without JS. If you're retrieving content dynamically you already have the server-side code to load the content, you just need to accomodate how the page is called.
Same thing for forms, you can send the content via AJAX or via a normal POST, the backend will be pretty much the same, so it's again easy to implement.
Of course, the problem is not even posed for JS code that is purely graphical.

My recent experience:
My former supervisor claimed, in earnest, that because Google Analytics told us that "87% of our users have Java enabled and less than 3% are using IE6," that we didn't have to worry about supporting older browsers or users with JavaScript disabled.
Problem 1: Java is not JavaScript.
Problem 2: In order for Google Analytics to track a hit, the browser must have JavaScript enabled because the GA interface is a JS include. GA is not, and can not, be aware of users with JS disabled, which can potentially severely skew its reports.
Problem 3: one of our biggest customers requires that all engineers use IE6 with JS disabled.
Problem 4: The boss (at the time) didn't know how to read analytics reports.
If you want to know how important this support is to your business, a good place to start is the IIS logs. Just about everything related to the browser caps is stored by IIS. I regularly import the logs into SQL Server and run some basic reports from my admin site, which come in handy every time someone starts suggesting that we go crazy with the jQuery BS.
If you decide to start building complicated, script-dependent interfaces, be sure that your interface degrades gracefully and doesn't remove required functionality if JS is disabled.

It is not merely a question of whether a browser is capable of executing javascript, but if a user has disabled it for some reason.
For example, you need to be aware of vison-impaired users. Such users might disable javascript, because the effects are confusing their screen reader software.