- Installed Debian Bookworm
- Installed Chromium and Firefox, both with GPU acceleration via a custom command eg: `Exec=env MESA_LOADER_DRIVER_OVERRIDE=zink /usr/bin/chromium %U` in a .desktop file
- Compiled yazi (Rust terminal file manager) with rustup and `cargo install`ed another couple of apps
- Been working on a Hugo site, after installing go and dart-sass
- Compiled dwm with standard gcc stuff (dwm is my preferred environment but XFCE etc are around too)
- Worked on some PSDs in Photopea (Krita, Gimp, Inkscape also all work perfectly)
- Installed my preferred vim setup with nvim-coc, so all the LSPs etc
- search for book
- tap a result
- see a list of links to download mirrors (under 'slow downloads'), tap a link
- get a countdown timer
- timer expires, download links appear
- click a link, book downloads just like any other download
Part of the beauty of working with Flash, at least as a newcomer or someone who leaned more towards graphics/animation than code, came down to a couple of main points:
- Code was *inside* MovieClips (in Flash [almost] everything was a MovieClip, basically a timeline of frames). Code was attached to frames. When the playhead entered the frame, the script would run. Some of us who started as designers later leaned heavily into the code, but even those who were more comfortable sticking to the visual side of things would end up with a little grab bag full of scripts/snippets that they could just copy/paste into a frame and tweak without getting too bogged down with code. Even at a very simple level (if somethingsomething jump to frame 20, else loop back to frame one) this added a dimension of control and interactivity. Crucially, it was implemented well and very simple to understand.
- Everything was nested. MovieClips within MovieClips. Timelines within timelines. Simple behaviours could be stacked up and lead to natural-feeling complexity just due to this nesting.
Of course these things can be implemented today too, and other tools have and do implement versions of them. But there are often just 1 or 2 levels of abstraction too much, enough to put off some kinds of minds, or people at certain levels of experience. The thing about the Flash experience was that it all felt so fluid and intuitive. Direct. Learning it was fun.
Animate (as far as I remember) did keep those paradigms I mentioned. The timelines were still there, the drawing/animation tools too. But something somehow goes wrong in the translation to modern web tech. If it didn't, people would have just carried on using Flash, outputting JS/HTML instead of SWFs and nobody would have noticed.
A lot of the above is testament to Macromedia and linked to their other software, Director (similar to Flash but aimed more at desktop and 'interactive CDs'). They made software that was a joy to use. To give them their dues, Adobe pushed it further. Also their market dominance meant if you wanted to get into this web stuff and make cool things, Flash was *the* (only, really) way to do it. Which makes me think it may have been a time and place thing, which we won't get back. The modern web and range of options maybe makes it too diffuse, harder for something new to catch on. I hope I'm wrong.
As others have said here though, maybe stuff like MineCraft and Roblox are filling a similar conceptual gap for different generations and I'm just old and nostalgic.