Post #3267186

2026-06-08 03:24 UTC

So there was this weird situation where the Open Standard, the libre open source shit, the anyone-can-make-it-in-notepad shit, was the realm of very boring websites, and the proprietary, locked-down, $600 to get started software was where art met anarchy. The proper fun, the proper expression of humanity and experimentation with interactive web content and making not just new stories but new ways to tell them, was happening in Flash, which was being bought out by giant evil megacorp inc. The reason for this is two things, first Flash was WAY easier, and second my friend with a tarp full of CD-R's from earlier in the thread

Replies (2)

@ifixcoinops@retro.social 2026-06-08 03:33

Early smartphones were coming online around about then, and they weren't so hot with the whole flash thing. Like, it'd work, kinda, you'd miss out on all the cool rollover effects because you had to poke the screen with a little stick and it was just a resistive touchscreen, it didn't know you were hovering the stick over the screen. For example, say you'd made a website for a local club of friendly motorcycle gentlemen whose navigation menu was a series of steel plates overlaid against the backdrop of a beating heart that was also a V8 engine. As you moved your mouse over the links, each link would rust over, the heart would rev up and get excited, and then when you actually clicked on a link, the whole thing would explode. On a smartphone, the engine heart wouldn't rev up, it'd just explode for seemingly no reason. But, y'know, it worked, we could make it work, and motorcycle gentlemen don't need no fucking professional white background with a pale blue header y'know

Open ##3267187
@shovemedia@triangletoot.party 2026-06-08 03:31

@ifixcoinops@retro.social (side note: also around the time Evil Corp was buying out Flash, a bunch of free and/or open source tools were hitting the ecosystem to target the Flash player so technically you didn’t have to pay $600 if you were willing to go off script just a bit. It was a wild and glorious time to be making things for actual dollars too.)

Open ##3267227