1. Adobe will still support Adobe Animate, their re-branded version of Flash. You can still use it to make animation but you will share it in video format vs SWF. Most animators are already doing this. Just about every animation you watch on NG is now an MP4 loading in an HTML5 video player.

2. No, people don’t need animation software that exports animation in HTML5 format. We just need animation to be in video format. We created Swivel for this many years ago and it’s super popular.

3. Newgrounds supports games in HTML5 format, which is becoming increasingly dominant. There is a big question of whether we will be able to preserve the 80,000+ games that were made in Flash. At the least, you could download and play them in an external player but we are hoping to have a solid web-based option by the time 2020 rolls along. Options include javascript that can interpret and run an SWF file, software that can convert existing swf files to javascript or something using WebAssembly, which is still maturing. A lot has been happening in this space but nothing is perfect at the moment.

4. The Audio Portal will be fine, with an HTML5 audio player.

5. The Art Portal has always been Flash-free.

A lot of people still don’t realize that NG has been transitioning away from Flash for many years now and 2020 won’t be as bumpy as some may think. The end of Flash won’t be the end of NG.


1. Flash was never the reason for bad advertising on the web, bad ad companies were. Most ads are now using HTML5 and the irony is they are larger files and often consume more resources than Flash did. We also have new problems, for example Flash-based ads were never able to steal focus from your browser and force the page to scroll back to the ad. HTML5 ads that do that have been cropping up on NG this past year and we have to chase them down. We’re also seeing more ads that do forced page redirects. This is why it’s a great idea to become a supporter, so you can browse NG ad-free and ultimately help us run less ads for everyone else.

2. Flash as a security threat was kind of a meme. Yes, Flash had vulnerabilities that needed to be patched and it was a bummer that it was a closed system. However your OS and your web browser also have vulnerabilities that get patched, as does all software. It became a popular thing to complain about but the reality is most people were getting their viruses and malware somewhere other than through an SWF file.

3. It really bothers me when people cheer the death of Flash. I totally get why it's time to move on but you shouldn't cheer the death of something that empowered so many people and brought so much joy to the web for 20+ years. I think it's a bandwagon that a lot of joyless people have jumped on, sorry if you're one of them.

What a shame. That's sad to hear, movies arent big of a problem since all of those are now going into an AVI/MP4 format nowadays unlike before, and most of em are getting converted, except the ones with dead users. Games are the main issue, Project Nexus, Stick RPG, and more. Very, very sad to hear. Especially for MP games, cause I can't play them anymore. Flash has started to die for a while, sadly, and isn't like before, not because the people who are making the games are shitty, it's just, not many people doing it anymore. Really a shame, I hope something happens or there's a solution to this issue. I hope HTML5 has big, and amazing games flash had if they're REALLY gonna be gone after 2020. Still though, I'm gonna still cling on to that last bit of hope that something happens to make sure flash can stay, and we still have our games and other SWF files.

At 7/31/17 10:16 AM, whendricso wrote:

At 7/31/17 01:30 AM, PaulMuadDib wrote:

At 7/29/17 05:13 PM, hvanderwegen wrote: It's not the same. Browsers no longer will allow ANY plugin to run - only addons. Plugins are on their way out across the board.

That's only if you have it set to update. Also someone could make a fork of Firefox that still uses the other security features but still supports the plugin framework. Also, Safari, Microsoft's IE and Edge, Firefox and Chrome are not the only browsers in existence. Vivaldi, Opera, a bunch of Firefox forks and others I probably don't know about work and support Flash.

Perhaps, but expecting customers to have a particular, obscure and non-mainstream browser to play means that virtually no one will play, certainly not enough to make any money or if you're not trying to make money it will still severely limit your audience.

a few year ago we watched all the flash on the portal in its own popup window, we may be going back to this.
we may even be able to emulate the embedding into web page function.

Instead of doing a whole browser just make the component for plugins.

Part 1 an add on that either sends the SWF to a separate program or produces a text file with all the HTML used to embed the flash and its url.

Part 2 a program that loads the flash uses the input from the addon/reads the textfile,
thus this program could be added to most browsers but they may all need a bespoke add on.

Text file with a security feature to check the correct exe is being launched may be the safest way

At 7/31/17 12:07 AM, NeonSpider wrote:

At 7/30/17 10:51 PM, joshescue18 wrote: @TomFulp After the flash plugin is gone in 2020, what will you do with the swf formatted games and movies from the portal?

He should just keep them there. It harms nothing to keep them there, and it's on the user to be able to make use of the files. If someone wants to play old Flash content, they can go out of their way to download an old version of a browser and a Flash plugin for it (provided the newest version of their browser won't allow it) and then view the page, etc...

Literally nothing prevents you from doing this.

Already there is content not accessible to all users (Unity) though thankfully most Unity-developed games have been exported to HTML5 format, as they should. But if you want to play those old Unity games that require the Unity plugin, it's up to you to somehow get that working.

Most plugins are used for self contained things with little to no interaction with the browser
so having a separate app for using plugins would be a solution

link relevant
https://forum.unity3d.com/threads/unity-activex-control-in-windows-forms.28448/

you could use the firefox plugin but that would require you fork plugin-container.exe and its relevant code in other files that could take time so the ActiveX has ready made code that ships with ReactOs,windows and WINE it would be better for prototyping and you could swap versions round too if that helps play content better.

if the plugin container is universal and multi platform before 2020 it may have a shot
planning to start work on this in a month or so

Why did Adobe want to stop supporting flash player.

At 7/31/17 04:28 PM, Supermario10 wrote: Why did Adobe want to stop supporting flash player.

Because they only bought Macromedia to eliminate them as competitors, flash was just a bonus.

never got the impression they cared about the flash plugin much, flash as an animation tool maybe but as a technology no
also iPhone's have limited options for flash because Steve jobs didn't like flash.
android did have flash but they stopped updating it
Fuck apple

At 7/31/17 04:41 PM, straberrykiler6789 wrote: also iPhone's have limited options for flash because Steve jobs didn't like flash.

Jobs also had a particular grudge against Adobe, as referenced in his biography and in this article here:

http://www.businessinsider.com/the-real-reason-steve-jobs-wants-to-kill-adobe-2010-4

At 7/31/17 05:08 PM, TomFulp wrote:

At 7/31/17 04:41 PM, straberrykiler6789 wrote: also iPhone's have limited options for flash because Steve jobs didn't like flash.

Jobs also had a particular grudge against Adobe, as referenced in his biography and in this article here:

http://www.businessinsider.com/the-real-reason-steve-jobs-wants-to-kill-adobe-2010-4

Cant blame Adobe for focusing on windows considering apple only allowed macs to have only one manufacturer(obscure exceptions) and cost more than an average pc because of this.

i can see why the anti-freemarket people like apple so damn much

also the limited library of games on mac compared with windows.

Doom outsold windows which is why Microsoft took a personal interest in making damn sure it worked well on Windows 95 (doing the port themselves) and having "DOS mode" for old games.

insert angry comment about "mobile games" here

What will happen to the medals?Medal hunting on Newgrounds was my all-time favorite hobby on internet,and i got over 30,000 points in one year.Was all that pointless then?Either way,this is really,really sad,even through I created my account in 2013,I used to visit Newgrounds since around 2007.But it's all right,newgrounds isn't anymore what it was supposed to be,in the past we had random and bizzare games like celebémon,or games with a serious and well made schemes,like the lethal rpg and sonic rpg series.Nowadays big part of the games we have are just auto-generated s**t by 7-12 year olds saying stuff like"please don't blam it cause it's just a demo of the alpha version"and stuff,but we all know they never release another version.Sorry,I had to say all that at one point...thanks Newgrounds,for being part of my life.
(I'll miss the hand-drawn games)

At 7/31/17 05:35 PM, ultrasonic2 wrote: What will happen to the medals?Medal hunting on Newgrounds was my all-time favorite hobby on internet,and i got over 30,000 points in one year.Was all that pointless then?Either way,this is really,really sad,even through I created my account in 2013,I used to visit Newgrounds since around 2007.But it's all right,newgrounds isn't anymore what it was supposed to be,in the past we had random and bizzare games like celebémon,or games with a serious and well made schemes,like the lethal rpg and sonic rpg series.Nowadays big part of the games we have are just auto-generated s**t by 7-12 year olds saying stuff like"please don't blam it cause it's just a demo of the alpha version"and stuff,but we all know they never release another version.Sorry,I had to say all that at one point...thanks Newgrounds,for being part of my life.
(I'll miss the hand-drawn games)

Macromedia made spinoff versions of flash that were intended for places where the flash plugin was impracticable or impossible flash lite and flash java edition
Plugin-free browsers seem like such a place

we could fork Gnash or similar into a program that functions like and program something that plays Swf's without the need to install software,
the only catch with this is it will take longer to load and may not work as well as the real thing but overtime that will be less of an issue.

this is the point of open sourcing flash so we can know what code was used in the real thing.

or just use something that lets you launch the SWF outside the browser we can even Taylor something that works better
than the flash projector. like a plugin add-on(see my other posts on this thread)

The news about flash disturbs me, but as a programmer and a big fan of open source, I think we should start an open source flash conversion tool that will take source flash and action scripts, and convert to HTML5 with a set of support functions.

Keep the code, but generate different objects. What do you think?

At 7/31/17 06:56 PM, byteslinger wrote: The news about flash disturbs me, but as a programmer and a big fan of open source, I think we should start an open source flash conversion tool that will take source flash and action scripts, and convert to HTML5 with a set of support functions.

Keep the code, but generate different objects. What do you think?

we already have tools like this but they usually break something in the flash during conversion so it becomes buggy/incomplete.

translating compiled computer code is difficult especially when people lock them to prevent hacking/modification.
i think the HTML based SWF player is the way to go and there is more and more feature creep coming to the HTML standard so this will become more and more feasible.

while we are waiting for that we just need to make an add-on that facilitates a link between the browser and the separate program we will soon use for plugins

At 7/27/17 06:42 AM, MithyxSounds wrote: Is it just me, or does "Flash 2020 and the Future" sound like an epic movie?

It is the year 2020... Support for flash has ended.. Newgrounds has gone to war...

Yeah, not really gonna miss it. Part of the issue, as far as I've seen, is that there weren't any good converters from other files into .swf ones back in the 2000s, so users seemed to be stuck with having to use Flash rather than whatever other program they preferred. There are far better alternatives to Flash that have cropped up over the years, with Unity being an especially big one for game development. Hell, it was hard to even make fucking Madness mods with it.

That being said, there were a few benefits to Flash that modern programs, and this shift to video, do not have.

1. As stated, small file size. I can already picture Newgrounds becoming much slower as time moves on due to larger videos replacing smaller .swf movies, regardless of increases in computational power. This issue needs to be mitigated, as we already have enough comp-chugging, HTML 5-based, CMYK clickbait horseshit clogging up the Internet. This also doesn't address the issue of visual clarity and quality, which segues into:

2. The image quality was always crisp as fuck. The only time blurry images seemed to rear their ugly head in Flashes was when they were intentionally saved as .jpgs with as low of a quality as possible and stretched out as much as possible in the name of trolling NG with shitty, but funny, spam Flashes. The move to .mp4s doesn't seem to address this, because even though NG is capable of 1080p quality, there are many that aren't even in 720p. There has to be an alternative file format that addresses this shit, nobody needs Newgrounds to turn into a second YouTube.

3. Preservation of history. This isn't directly related to Flash's benefits, but it is a large problem related to this phase shift that I can guarantee is going to be substantially swept under the rug. I say this because many classic NG Flashes have been deleted for one reason or another, and like it or not, they are a part of NG history, Tom, and deserve to be preserved as such, regardless if they're something like The Final Task, ROBOTECH, and Crazy Shuttle, or Megaman Smokes Weed, Counter-Stick, and Britney Spears Truck Jump. Seriously, stop cowering to weak copyright crusades from impotent executives, especially when you can very likely Grandfather Clause them back to PornHub's cuck section.

At 8/1/17 02:00 AM, Zero2562130 wrote: 3. Preservation of history.

this is the mission of archive.org

I say this because many classic NG Flashes have been deleted for one reason or another, and like it or not, they are a part of NG history, Tom, and deserve to be preserved as such, regardless if they're something like The Final Task, ROBOTECH, and Crazy Shuttle, or Megaman Smokes Weed, Counter-Stick, and Britney Spears Truck Jump. Seriously, stop cowering to weak copyright crusades from impotent executives

the swf files could be backed up by archive.org who sometimes hide copyrighted stuff for when the copyright expires while keeping backups and records for future use
and the fact it would be legitimate fair use for archival purposes

2 ways, running a bot to feed archive.org all the SWF url's to fill in any potential gaps
and offering it up as about a thousand torrents on the part of archive.org that isn't the wayback machine.

because there are so many files it may be better to send hard disk's to Archive.org HQ

How about converting SWF files to HTML5 format through the HTML5 SVG tag using Adobe Animate or some free tool and it can be then used for movies as well instead of MP4 to keep the vector graphics?

That's so obnoxious. I don't understand why they have to stop supporting it on the web. If they don't wanna update it anymore that's fine but why ruin all the content that's already out there.

Fuck Adobe!! On another note, they said they'd fix the camera tool glitch on my Animate program within 48 hours and it's been almost a week now.

At 8/1/17 02:30 AM, straberrykiler6789 wrote:

At 8/1/17 02:00 AM, Zero2562130 wrote: 3. Preservation of history.

this is the mission of archive.org

It does not do a good job. I went there a few hours ago to pick up any SWF files I could from Mondo's old site design and got nothing for my trouble. All of their old shows are completely gone, save for the handful of episodes they released in 480p back in 2008.

the swf files could be backed up by archive.org who sometimes hide copyrighted stuff for when the copyright expires while keeping backups and records for future use

Here's to hoping against the odds.

At 7/26/17 01:19 PM, TomFulp wrote: Yesterday Adobe announced they will end support for the Flash player in 2020. This means they will no longer make updates or patches for playing Flash content in a web browser and the individual browsers are onboard with removing Flash completely by the end of 2020. This means you will have no way to view an SWF file in a modern browser going into 2021.

A lot of people get confused by what this means, so I wanted to clarify a few things:

1. Adobe will still support Adobe Animate, their re-branded version of Flash. You can still use it to make animation but you will share it in video format vs SWF. Most animators are already doing this. Just about every animation you watch on NG is now an MP4 loading in an HTML5 video player.

2. No, people don’t need animation software that exports animation in HTML5 format. We just need animation to be in video format. We created Swivel for this many years ago and it’s super popular.

3. Newgrounds supports games in HTML5 format, which is becoming increasingly dominant. There is a big question of whether we will be able to preserve the 80,000+ games that were made in Flash. At the least, you could download and play them in an external player but we are hoping to have a solid web-based option by the time 2020 rolls along. Options include javascript that can interpret and run an SWF file, software that can convert existing swf files to javascript or something using WebAssembly, which is still maturing. A lot has been happening in this space but nothing is perfect at the moment.

4. The Audio Portal will be fine, with an HTML5 audio player.

5. The Art Portal has always been Flash-free.

I know I can say that for linux users, at least, flash will always be available. Back in the day NG was what steam is to people now for me, and I bet that theres some people on here that use it that way. I'm not saying go to linux to use NG in the future, but I'm just saying that flash won't go away for us over here.

Now, that being said, there are open flash compat layers and old versions of browsers available. At that, browsers like Pale Moon or Vivaldi will probably always have flash because a lot of ads run on flash. Even if Adobe kills it (thank fuck) there will still be options by then.

At 8/1/17 07:29 PM, Psychopath wrote:

At 8/1/17 02:30 AM, straberrykiler6789 wrote:

At 8/1/17 02:00 AM, Zero2562130 wrote: 3. Preservation of history.

this is the mission of archive.org

It does not do a good job. I went there a few hours ago to pick up any SWF files I could from Mondo's old site design and got nothing for my trouble. All of their old shows are completely gone, save for the handful of episodes they released in 480p back in 2008.

the swf files could be backed up by archive.org who sometimes hide copyrighted stuff for when the copyright expires while keeping backups and records for future use

Here's to hoping against the odds.

Archive.org is notorious for having gaps but considering the sheer volume of files it has to downloads its no surprise.

this is why newrounds could take steps to ensure a more complete snapshot of the portal is there by feeding it the urls or making a torrent, as for site locked swfs skipping a few frames works for some files.
http://www.newgrounds.com/bbs/topic/1424896/5

3. It really bothers me when people cheer the death of Flash. I totally get why it's time to move on but you shouldn't cheer the death of something that empowered so many people and brought so much joy to the web for 20+ years. I think it's a bandwagon that a lot of joyless people have jumped on, sorry if you're one of them.

This one really bothers me. The other day I was talking to a few kids, maybe about 10 years younger than me, about how it was my dream for the past few years to become a web animator (still working on that part). They start to laugh and ask if O mean FLASH animating. I told them yeah, flash animations.

They just all laughed at me.

It actually seems that anyone i talk to just laughs at the concept of flash being a platform to animate on nowadays. It bugs me so much since throughout the 2000s and early 2010s, the internet was nothing but flash. So much of what we grew up on was thanks to flash. Games and videos everywhere. It made up a hugh part of my teenage years and to me was a large part of internet culture. As well, independant flash animation, and newgrounds, helped to spark a lot of peoples interest in animation in general.

Does anyone know of any way to convert flash swf to html5. I've look and found nothing, and I don't think alot of people are going to go out of their way to make flash stuff if they have to flatout learn a new program just to post on newgrounds, and I don't mean for making videos, I mean like small games or videos that use buttons.

At 8/2/17 03:16 AM, Griffinflash wrote: This one really bothers me. The other day I was talking to a few kids, maybe about 10 years younger than me, about how it was my dream for the past few years to become a web animator (still working on that part). They start to laugh and ask if O mean FLASH animating. I told them yeah, flash animations.

A web animator is an animator and so is a Flash animator - plenty of professional animation is still being done with Flash. People are just super ill-informed about what Flash is and what it can do.

Can't we do something like a petition to see if they can at least do something for stuff don't be so bad for us?You know what they say,it doesn't hurt to try,but trying is the best we can do by now,and we better don't waste the time we still have,maybe if they get a huge feedback they can think of that(sorry if my english is bad).
@TomFulp,can you tell me what will happen to the medals?I just hope it all goes all right...

At 8/2/17 07:28 PM, ultrasonic2 wrote: Can't we do something like a petition to see if they can at least do something for stuff don't be so bad for us?You know what they say,it doesn't hurt to try,but trying is the best we can do by now,and we better don't waste the time we still have,maybe if they get a huge feedback they can think of that(sorry if my english is bad).
@TomFulp,can you tell me what will happen to the medals?I just hope it all goes all right...

I kind of always felt like flash wouldn't really vanish. Or a similar tool would quickly be built to replace it, though I'm starting to get a little worried now haha. I've tried ALL of the new game and animation tools, and nothing feels quite like flash. You can do anything in flash, the other tools all feel too specialized.

At 8/2/17 09:09 AM, TomFulp wrote: A web animator is an animator and so is a Flash animator - plenty of professional animation is still being done with Flash. People are just super ill-informed about what Flash is and what it can do.

"I don't know why these things are always framed as a big dumb cage match: Hand-drawn versus computers, film versus digital. We have over 100 years now of amazing film technology to play with, I don't understand why any artists would want to throw any of their tools out of the box. "
- Don Hertzfeldt

At 8/3/17 04:05 AM, Hyptosis wrote: I kind of always felt like flash wouldn't really vanish. Or a similar tool would quickly be built to replace it, though I'm starting to get a little worried now haha. I've tried ALL of the new game and animation tools, and nothing feels quite like flash. You can do anything in flash, the other tools all feel too specialized.

we have plenty of S/NES and game boy emulators made in java and more recently flash embedded directly into web pages and they seem to use the original ROMs unmodified.

wait and see however they figure out how to do that shit without plugins etc and that will give us some ideas on how a Flash emulator will work.

but right now backing everything up before its too late is something to worry about.
better figure out how to make offline versions of stuff like this before they pull the plug
http://host-d.oddcast.com/php/application_UI/doorId=137/clientId=49/
or at least how to run outside the browser since that is not possible in the projector
technical info dump

i remember some isp cds used a program called flash-jester to make cd roms apparently it had more features than the projector did also Microsoft made a program for testing plugins that allowed you pump html into it as you saw fit
Error: Error #2067: The ExternalInterface is not available in this container. ExternalInterface requires Internet Explorer ActiveX, Firefox, Mozilla 1.7.5 and greater, or other browsers that support NPRuntime.
at Error$/throwError()
at flash.external::ExternalInterface$/call()
at workshop.fbconnect::FacebookConnect/init()[ROOTDIRECTORY\oddcastWorks\workshops_v4\careerbuilder_v2\workshop\fbconnect\FacebookConnect.as:48]
at workshop::Workshop/initFacebookConnect()[ROOTDIRECTORY\oddcastWorks\workshops_v4\careerbuilder_v2\workshop\Workshop.as:748]
at workshop::Workshop/initSmallShow()[ROOTDIRECTORY\oddcastWorks\workshops_v4\careerbuilder_v2\workshop\Workshop.as:618]
at workshop::Workshop/startShow()[ROOTDIRECTORY\oddcastWorks\workshops_v4\careerbuilder_v2\workshop\Workshop.as:447]
at workshop::Workshop/uploadComponentLoaded()[ROOTDIRECTORY\oddcastWorks\workshops_v4\careerbuilder_v2\workshop\Workshop.as:438]
at workshop::Workshop/loadUploadComponent()[ROOTDIRECTORY\oddcastWorks\workshops_v4\careerbuilder_v2\workshop\Workshop.as:434]
at workshop::Workshop/gotDynamicText()[ROOTDIRECTORY\oddcastWorks\workshops_v4\careerbuilder_v2\workshop\Workshop.as:429]
at Function/http://adobe.com/AS3/2006/builtin::apply()
at com.oddcast.utils::FileLoaderInstance/onComplete()[ROOTDIRECTORY\oddcastWorks\workshops_v4\careerbuilder_v2\as3Classes\com\oddcast\utils\FileLoaderInstance.as:187]
at flash.events::EventDispatcher/dispatchEventFunction()
at flash.events::EventDispatcher/dispatchEvent()
at flash.net::URLLoader/onComplete()

I come out of the shadows after years to condemn this horrible development. You would think that future computers can handle older content (backwards compatibility) but nooooooo. Unless future OSes and browsers have an independent fan-made emulator, everything ever made in Flash is doomed.

That's something I will NOT stand for. Everything after Flash 9 has sucked ass. Like laggy ass Flash 10.

(Another reference, you cannot play Macintosh system 7.5.x games on 10 unless you have an emulator. WHY is that? you would THINK that a 1989 .exe that worked on older systems can work on newer ones.)

Thanks for always keeping us in the know with such great info Tom! I appreciate that you always explain things in such detail. The internet is a much better place because of you!

I also wanted to say I am in love with the pink haired chick from Nightmare Cops. She looks super bad ass lol
Excited to see more!

So this is it The end of flash games wow. Weve gone a long way

At 8/3/17 03:57 PM, Omaremad74 wrote: So this is it The end of flash games wow. Weve gone a long way

there's still time
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Snj69r6ZWV0
to have flash in a browser we need 3 components.
when support is dropped we can make our own

1. the module that identifies references to the plugin within html.
2. the module that links 1 & 3 together
3. the module for playing it (flash plugin or projector)

1 will be handled by an addon
either by creating a textile with all Urls and settings to be used and launching a program that reads it.
or communicating with the exe directly.

this may also work well if ported to mobile as we have more options to customize how the SWF is played

If you get to do that,can you say if we will still be able to replay the old games with medals to get them?(yes,i'm obsessed by medals) We should try spreading your idea with other programmers who care about flash.