Genuine question.

I know they were the scrappy startup doing different cool things. But, what are the most major innovative things that they introduced, improved or just implemented that either revolutionized, improved or spurred change?

I am aware of the possibility of both fanboys and haters just duking it out below. But there’s always that one guy who has a fkn well-formatted paragraph of gold. I await that guy.

  • gdog05@lemmy.worldEnglish
    173·
    11 months ago

    Full browser might be an overstatement. It was still a web full of Flash at that time. And it caused a pretty major limitation on the browser. If there wasn’t an app available, you were often SOL. I do think it sped up the demise of Flash on the web considerably.

        • ISometimesAdmin@the.coolest.zone
          3·
          11 months ago

          No, it absolutely wasn’t, as can testify anyone who actually had to work with it: https://www.cnet.com/tech/services-and-software/the-death-of-adobes-flash-is-lingering-not-sudden/

          There are lots of good reasons to get rid of Flash. Browser makers say it’s a top sore spot for security, performance and shorter battery life.

          https://tedium.co/2021/01/01/adobe-flash-demise-history/

          Usability means a few things in this context—simplicity, ease of use, convention, and accessibility. Flash was none of those things. It took the blank-canvas approach to creativity—which was great for the artists and illustrators that originally made up its target audience, but morphed into numerous other forms that it wasn’t necessarily designed for. It fell into overuse and quickly became abused by others.

        • Exec@pawb.socialEnglish
          1·
          11 months ago

          Not really. To have fresh dynamic content having to install a third party plugin is a bad take. Web development was stagnating due to IE’s market dominance.

          • rottingleaf@lemmy.zipEnglish
            1·
            11 months ago

            To have fresh dynamic content having to install a third party plugin is a bad take.

            It was the public opinion in the 00s, yes. And I think I even thought the same back then (being a kid, so my opinion doesn’t matter much ; but I did have that “afraid to catch a virus” feeling which was amplified by a page containing something in Flash).

            But I disagree now, looking at all that transpired. It was a good thing that HTML (as in hypertext markup language) and JS weren’t responsible for such things. And it’s fine to serve applications for various interpreters over HTTP as part of webpages.

            I also think that Java applets were a good idea, not just Flash, for the same reason.

            Also the browser developer and the Flash developer were not the same party. Which means that Flash was more or less egalitarian between browsers.

    • PeachMan@lemmy.worldEnglish
      1·
      11 months ago

      Sure, a browser minus Flash, but it was still a real browser. Most of the web functioned without Flash. And none of the competition even had anything close. It was such a revolutionary product that the iPhone didn’t even HAVE competition until Android got its shit together, which took a couple years.

    • zurohki@aussie.zoneEnglish
      1·
      11 months ago

      This. Being able to actually open all those sites that used Flash was a big advantage of Android back then.

      • PeachMan@lemmy.worldEnglish
        1·
        11 months ago

        Yeah, Android had that advantage LATER, when they got their shit together. But when the iPhone initially released, it changed the game.