Did Flash mark the Internet's Creative Age?

When we think back about Flash we typically remember that the plug-in was a security nightmare. Once one of the more widely used browser plug-ins, Flash required a huge dose of security updates every month to keep the bad guys at bay.

But do we need to be more thankful for Flash? A new book called "Web Design: The Evolution of the Digital World 1990-Today" argues that Flash was responsible for the Creative Era of the Internet. Flash enabled a high degree of creativity, way beyond the typical static websites with gray text and blue hyperlinks, or the horribly flashy sites with low-resolution GIFs.

But all those wild ideas had to go somewhere, and many of them didn’t appear in the App Store. [Author Rob] Ford says that while the modern web has largely eschewed the creative risks of the Flash era, it can be found in physical mediums and augmented reality, places where many of the creative explosions that web tools like Flash and HTML5 initially allowed can be furthered and built upon—with many of the same creators behind the initial rise responsible for much of the modern excitement.

“The progressive interaction and visual creativity is happening outside of the web browser now,” he explained. “The rise in interactive installations, AR, and experiential in general is where the excitement of the early days is finally happening again.”

Full details at Vice.com. It's definitely an interesting perspective. The web has become a lot more mature since the early 2000s and there's indeed something to be said for the early Flash era being a period of wild experiments.