Hello, everyone! Not much changed since last week. More abuse revelations, more resignations, and the web app I mentioned last time is now released. Beta-reading of the book is still ongoing.
So much for having a proper editorial. Apologies for yet another short edition. In my defense, we have a decent amount of links, and even things to say about one of them.
Right on my birthday, Ars Technica posts a long, detailed history of Flash from its humble beginnings to its relatively recent demise, complete with testimonies from key people. And you know... Steve Jobs may have been a jerk and the bane of good engineering, but in that infamous essay he only echoed the concerns of industry at large. Flash wasn't just proprietary, insecure and a resource hog. It was such a mess that even after key components were open-sourced, and the rest extensively documented, 3rd-party clones just couldn't come close to playing anything but the simplest animations properly. Successful preservation efforts leverage the official player, not open source implementations. No, Flash was terrible engineering even by IT's abysmal standards. And frankly? Its much vaunted ease of use was never apparent to me. Even as an authoring tool, Flash sucked. There, I said it.
In other news, we have a fan translation of Gunpei Yokoi telling the story of Game-and-Watch devices, an oral history of Spore that Gamasutra just resurfaced after nearly two years, and a scathing critique of the videogame industry. (If you're reading this on Tumblr, rememeber to click through for the links.)
There was another, but I'm not sure how to describe it briefly. Oh well, have fun this Sunday and see you next time, when I might try writing a thought or three about rekindling an old flame. Cheers!