I started building websites when Flash was the web, intros you had to skip, sites that played music as soon as they opened, and banners that moved on every page. Today I build with React, Next.js and GSAP. In between I watched a plugin that seemed impossible to beat lose to a language written in 10 days. Here is what that taught me.
The 40-second version. Story and edit by me.
1. When Flash was the web
In the early 2000s, if a website moved, it was probably Flash. HTML pages were plain, and every browser showed them differently. Flash gave designers one box that looked the same everywhere, with smooth animation, sound and video. Agencies built whole sites in it, and almost every computer had Flash Player installed.
I learned Flash at Arena Multimedia, and the first thing I made with it was a website. Many more followed, for different clients, along with freelance work and a lot of intros. One of those intros really made me stand out from the crowd.
For letter animations I used a tool called SWiSH, which animated text very efficiently, and I mixed those animations into my Flash intros. I also worked on a web application about emotional intelligence, and on a separate project I used ActionScript to build charts and graphs.
2. The little language nobody took seriously
JavaScript was created in 1995, in just 10 days. For years it was used for small things, image rollovers, pop-up windows, form checks. Every browser handled it a little differently, so even simple scripts were painful to write.
Then jQuery arrived in 2006 with the promise "write less, do more". One line could do what used to take twenty, and it worked the same in every browser. Sliders, tabs and fades that used to need Flash could now be built in the page itself.
I started using jQuery for small tasks. Then I began building whole pages with it, and soon those pages had full animation effects and carefully planned user experience. On one site I divided the screen into six panels, and tapping a panel made it grow to fill the whole screen. A few years earlier, that would have been a job for Flash.
3. The phone that said no
The iPhone launched in 2007 without Flash, and it never got it. In 2010 Steve Jobs published his open letter "Thoughts on Flash", saying it drained batteries, wasn't built for touch and wasn't an open standard. The web followed the phones. HTML5 video, canvas and CSS animation took over the jobs Flash used to do.
Adobe announced the end in 2017, and Flash Player was retired on 31 December 2020. The plugin that once seemed to be everywhere was gone, and JavaScript was running everything from small sites to whole apps.
4. What it taught me
- Bet on the open web, not on one company's plugin. Flash belonged to one company. HTML, CSS and JavaScript belong to everyone, which is why they are still here.
- Skills outlive tools. Timelines, keyframes and easing were everyday tools in Flash, and they carried straight over to CSS animation and GSAP. GSAP itself started as a Flash animation library before it moved to JavaScript. In Flash I planned a movement in my head, watched the preview and tweaked the easing by hand until it felt right. In GSAP the easing is often just a keyword, but deciding whether the movement feels right is still the real job.
- If Google and screen readers can't read it, it isn't finished. A Flash site was one closed box, search engines could barely see inside it, and screen readers struggled too. That is why I care about clean, semantic HTML under the animation.
- Phones decide. Flash lost ground because it didn't work well on phones. A site has to work on a small, slow phone, not just on a big screen.
- Don't fall in love with a tool. Every few years the web changes its favourite tool. AI is the newest change, and I use it too. The tools change, but knowing what makes a good website doesn't.
5. What's next
This is the first episode of "Web history in motion", short animated stories about how the web grew up, told by someone who built through it. Next: Tables vs CSS, from spacer GIFs and nested tables to Flexbox and Grid.
Follow along on YouTube or Instagram. Which era did you start in: Flash, jQuery or React? Tell me in the comments.
Originally published at imhirakhan.com. I'm Hira Khan, a front-end developer with 20+ years on the web: GSAP animation, brand games and fast websites. Portfolio: imhirakhan.com
