Flash farewell in 2020

Witnessed the end of an era.

2020 is coming to an end. With Adobe's announcement, December 31st this year (that is, tomorrow) isthe EOL date of Flash Player , and Flash has also been officially written into history and has come to an end. The so-called EOL means end-of-life . After this day, Adobe will stop all Flash Player security updates and support, and starting from January 12 next year (2021) , Adobe Flash Player will even block all Flash players. content, so that Flash can no longer play. Adobe strongly recommends that Flash Player be removed before the EOL date to avoid affecting computer operation.

Adobe explained that Flash was eliminated because the software and web page writing in the past ten years has gradually matured, and Flash is almost no longer needed now. In 2014, about 80% of Chrome users browse websites that use Flash every day, and by 2017, the number of people browsing Flash websites with Chrome has dropped to less than 20%, and it is still falling, so Flash is completely eliminated. It's just a matter of time.

In fact, Adobe released this news in 2017 , but when the day came, I was still a little reluctant to part. Flash has always accompanied me for many years, from the early 00s from the student days to the time when I came out of the society and became a social animal working in an office. It is full of memories for me, including many excellent online Flash productions. Games and animations can only become cannon shadows after the end of this year. For example , the "Little Series" animation produced in China was the poster child. Although the animation characters are all simple stick figures, the outstanding action scenes are It attracted me to watch it one by one. Someone recorded this animation and put it on YouTube, and saved it in another form. Now I can go back and enjoy it. The following video contains the first to Episode 9 and commercials . I remember paying for a short basic course in Flash animation at the time, but I forgot about it.

Another collective memory of a post-80s Hong Konger like me must be the "hkflash.com message board" . This is a message board made with Flash. The operation is basically similar to the built-in little painter in Windows. It mainly uses small tools such as points, lines, and surfaces (color blocks) to draw pictures. It also provides a semi-transparent color, which will become lighter when superimposed on the general color. Gradient effect. Then a bunch of god-users appeared on the board. It was an eye-opener for me to be able to use such simple gadgets to draw a photo-realistic picture piece by piece with color blocks.

In 2002, when my classmates and I were in the computer class, we would draw and leave messages on each other's message board. After graduation, when I came out to work in the society, I still played on this message board. It was filled with friends and I. But after tomorrow, the painstaking efforts and memories left by these predecessors can no longer be revisited, so I have tried my best to cap and screen my previous works for preservation in the past two days. Here are some of my better paintings .

With the advancement of science and technology, many traces on the Internet have been slowly erased, and they can only exist in people's minds in the future. It seems that this is an irreversible trend. While the development of science and technology has brought a more convenient and richer life to human beings, it has neglected to strike a balance between humanity and humanity. Is the world really progressing? Or will humans eventually turn themselves into cold machines?