Adobe Flash has finally reached the end of its lifetime. A pioneer in the late 90's, bringing video, animation and interactivity to a web that at the time, was very static. It was time, without doubt. But Flash gave me, and so many others, such joy and pleasure to work with and truly made an impact in enriching website content and interactivity when in its prime.

Flash was released in 1996 and for all the geeks out there all I need to say is things like XiaoXiao (the stickman ninja) and 2Advanced (truly pushing the boundaries at the time) and there's no need to say any more. For the non-geeks, I'll just say FarmVille. Anyway, I spent endless nights working till 3am teaching myself how to do different kinds of animation trying to mimic some of the truly awe inspiring creative animations and websites that were built in Flash at the time. It was a learning curve but the results were amazing and I certainly won't forget working with such a great piece of software.

Flash had become increasingly popular and brought a new era to the way we interact with websites, however it wasn't to last. In the late 2000's technology had advanced and mobile internet browsing was becoming ever increasingly popular. Unfortunately Adobe were slow to react to this change. Videos and animations were now starting to be delivered with HTML5 and other open technologies which left Flash in the dust, and in July 2017 Adobe announced that it would be retiring Flash in 2020.

It's sad, but was necessary. Unfortunately the security flaws in the Flash Player are almost as bad as those in Internet Explorer. It's advisable that you removed the player from your computer, so if you would like to see instructions on how to remove Flash Player from your computer, Adobe has provided these for both Windows and Mac.

Thank you Flash for your contribution to the internet. And to my experiences developing with your technology. RIP.