The Flash to HTML5 struggle is real.
EDIT: Here's a treat for you guys that keep urging us to convert our flash sites to HTML5.. it CAN'T BE DONE, PERIOD!
https://forums.adobe.com/thread/2650535
"While some features of HTML5 are often compared to Adobe Flash, the two technologies are very different. Both include features for playing audio and video within web pages, and for using Scalable Vector Graphics. However, HTML5 on its own cannot be used for animation or interactivity – it must be supplemented with CSS3 or JavaScript. There are many Flash capabilities that have no direct counterpart in HTML5" - Wikipedia
Well folks, the mainstream has been urging everyone to convert their flash sites to HTML5... but guess what? 99.9% of the time, it can't be done! Forget asking for help. NO ONE out there wants to help. Perhaps they actually can't?
I have an old hobby website, hugclub.net, and it's just that. A hobby. Nothing crucial. Apparently it will stop working in 2020, unless people use 3rd party browsers that will continue to use flash player. If I were a mission critical site owner, I'd be sweating bullets looking for a solution. Believe it or not, most people CAN'T build a site from the ground up. It's pretty complicated, even with Flash. I believe this is why templates exist. That's how I made my site.
Trying to learn a new language to build a site from the ground up isn't practical for most people. I think this is why many tutorials on learning a language don't really work. The examples they use are only useful IN the tutorials and not for building from scratch. Trust me, I've tried. They gave us many years to try, I'm not seeing it happen...
Short example. I knew very little of flash, but juuuuust enough... I never would have been able to build my site from the ground up. Period. I got lucky and found a template. I dissected it and learned how it worked. I skinned it, added my content and it worked. I even modified it a little. I became very comfortable using my new modified template. THAT is how most people make websites.
So I've been asking over the years on various sites and forums if anyone could help me convert or update the site to HTML5. "Your site is too interactive, HTML5 can't do what your asking". Too interactive...? Does that mean the internet actually downgraded functionality in trade for a little energy savings? (notice I didn't say security, because it's actually less secure than Flash, with its unpatchable flaws, else you'll BREAK millions of sites overnight.)
I kept trying here and there... stackoverflow ran me out with a torch mob for daring to be a new user asking such an incoherent request! Heck I provided the source files, what else do they want??? Am I not obese enough to frolick among their kind? (yes I was warned by many to AVOID stackoverflow... for this reason... but what had I to lose? I'm desperate). Forums turned me away, users would say, "No one uses flash anymore".... gahg uaghhh well DUH!!! Didn't you guys read the question?????????? I swear, idiots... everywhere. Forum post "Can anyone help me convert my flash site to HTML5?"
My last resort was to contact one of these "for hire" web developers who claim to be able to do it... I sent them my source files, they replied, "It's going to take an extensive amount of research for us to be able to recreate this site"....
I'm going to plug my website again folks... hugclub.net... does that LOOK complicated??? It's popup windows and cartoons!!!!!!!!!!!! How is this too hard for the professionals????????????????
Next time you see a mainstream article raving about flash dying in 2020, link them to this little rant. Show them how ridiculous it is to urge everyone to do the impossible. Convert flash to HTML5 they say. Even wiki claims it can't truly be done unless you learn 2 more languages (JS and CSS3). And with all the real world examples of people not willing to help or claiming it can't be done, I think it's about time these article writers get off their high horses. They're nothing but corporate mouth pieces and probably know next to nothing about web development. I'd love to say "Learn to Code" to these asshats, but then again, I'm only "semi-proficient", just enough to create what you see on my hugclub.net site. It's probably more than what they're capable of to say the least... yeah...
Now there was an attempt at making a tool to convert flash to HTML5. It was called Swiffy. Google failed to realize that 90% of flash content was Action Script 2.0... big problem there. I don't think Goog realized this. That's when the requests and complaints started pouring in... they were swamped with requests to add AS2 support in Swiffy. It just.. didn't... work. Google closed up swiffy, and very soon sites made in swiffy will cease to function at all because they are supposed to be pulling the runtimes that make these sites work. So guess what? People who converted their sites to HTML5 will have to do it AGAIN, this time from scratch.
Congrats Micro$oft and Googus, ya dun goofed! Go ahead folks, swamp M$ and Goog with complaints about them killing off flash player. Better yet, go spam the hell out of Adobe for this fiasco. They're the ones who bought Flash in the first place and did absolutely ZERO to develop it. They never cared in the first place.
