Adobe Flash

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Adobe Flash

What is Adobe Flash?

Adobe Flash (formerly Macromedia Flash and FutureSplash) is a multimedia software platform used for production of animations, rich web applications, desktop applications, mobile apps, mobile games, and embedded web browser video players, its also known for the many games and animations made with it. Adobe decided to discontinue Flash in January 13, 2021, since they wanted to switch to HTML5 in their software and, it was very expensive to support Flash. In Adobe's EOL (End Of Life) Notice Adobe explains that open standards such as HTML5, WebGL and, WebAssembly have matured over the years and serve as better alternatives for Flash

How to bring back Adobe Flash

The best option is using ruffle, which is a emulator written in rust that can play ActionScript 1 & 2 content right in the browser or in your computer, it can also play .swf files in a website by injecting javascript code into the website and automatically replacing any old Flash embeds in it. (ruffle's website)

Another Flash emulator is Lightspark, Lightspark is an LGPLv3 licensed Flash player and browser plugin written in C++/C that runs on Linux and Windows. It aims to support all of Adobe's Flash formats. Lightspark is currently still in alpha, and inplements around 79% of the Flash APIs. The latest version is 0.8.5 which you can download from their website. (Lightspark's website)

You can still download the Flash content debugger to open .swf files, which is still available on Adobe's website.

There are many Flash archives that host gigabytes of flash content, the two most popular being BlueMaxima's Flashpoint and archive.org.

There are still some browsers that allow Flash content:
1. Puffin Browser - Linux version
2. The PaleMoon Browser can replay Flash content if you follow the guide over at andkon's arcade
3. There is also a designated Flash browser for playing such content called Flash Browser