[herrherrmann]

I do like the idea of having a common and open format for animations. That being said, I see quite a few web devs reaching for Lottie (which will add quite a few hundred kilobytes for the library/wrapper, and some extra ones for each animation), instead of learning more about CSS- and SVG-based animations (which would be a multitude smaller and more easily adjustable). In that sense, I also don’t like how they continuously boast about Lottie’s small size on the main website, while only comparing it to gif and png files (and not mentioning SVG/CSS animations).

I’m sure it is a good fit for usage on native mobile apps, though.

[echelon]

> instead of learning more about CSS- and SVG-based animations

Contrarian opinion: Flash was one of the best things about Web 1.0.

The forced move to CSS and the constellation of other "standards" still hasn't caught up to what Flash once offered us.

Flash was all at once a video format, animation format, programming environment, video player, interactive UI system, game programming engine, multiplayer MMO game dev engine, infographics system -- actually, it was literally everything you wanted it to be. And it was so simple that even kids could use it.

If Adobe had opened everything - the format, the player, etc. - it could have become something tremendous that is still with us.

I think there's space for this to be rethought and redone. We shouldn't be so dogmatic that CSS and SVG and HTML and Javascript are the only way. They've had nearly 40 years to shine and we're still struggling with the same issues.

We should be trying to reinvent the wheel.

[WorldPeas]

And not just that, it was downloadable. This was huge for me then and even PWAs haven’t caught up (though admittedly are more mutable). It was so nice to be able to download 90% of a webapp for offline use and have it be portable across all my systems as a file. Only JAR files come close nowadays but there’s not really an ecosystem behind that

[hbarka]

Here for Team Flash. That was an incredible era during its peak. Apple brought on its demise not because it wasn’t competition and Steve Jobs penned the famous criticism which marked the downfall. Flash was ahead of its time.

[Benanov]

Flash was one of those things that tried to do too much, and some of its things started being at cross-purposes with each other. The video conflicted with its roots as a vector/animation studio, and that's why Apple famously didn't use it - it ended up being a battery hog.

A lot of interests in web-based video wanted DRM, which meant it was never going to be usable by Free Software.

It was trying to do too much and then the usual corporate mismanagement led to its demise.

[rchaud]

> We should be trying to reinvent the wheel

Especially now as web browser vendors are openly trying to get you off the web and into their walled gardens. Apple and Google have no interest in pushing web capabilities forward because they don't see any money from doing that. Mozilla has long since given up, they don't even support "save to homescreen"/"save as web app" functionality.

[atemerev]

Well, that's a part of the problem — it was controlled by a corporation which didn't have any interest in opening it. Therefore it has been excised from the Web.

Same goes for Java applets.

It's always politics.

[cwillu]

Ruffle exists: https://ruffle.rs/downloads#website-package

[bsimpson]

Unfortunately doing that many things means the codebase must have been rather big. Big enough that auditing and removing licensed code (for instance, the video codecs) seems to be more than they had the stomach for.

It really was a wonderful tool that is still unmatched for creative coding.

[dylan604]

How is the modern JS control of DOM elements styled with CSS not the same as ActionScript and Flash sprites. I'd argue that Flash was not a video format. It could play videos encoded in specific codecs, but that's not the same as being a video format. At the end you could wrap MP4 encoded video as an FLV, but that was just a wrapper not a format.

At this point, the only think I see being Flash was the app with its timeline to make the animations visually instead of just with code. I've seen plenty of Show HNs of various apps attempting he animation UI similar to Flash, so I know they are out there. I just have no need for that type of work, so I don't spend too much time with them.

[satvikpendem]

You might be interested in this document submitted to HN, by the creator of the HTML 5 spec: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34612696

[Aurornis]

> The forced move to CSS and the constellation of other "standards" still hasn't caught up to what Flash once offered us.

Hard disagree. Modern web apps can be amazing within the browser alone. Look at Figma or OnShape as class leading examples.

I think you’re also misunderstanding Lottie: For web use it is compiled down to those browser primitives you were talking about. It works well, too, so I don’t understand why you’re claiming we’re “still struggling”.

[nine_k]

The point of Lottie is not simple animations like CSS transitions, but complex arbitrary animations, more like a cartoon than a minor piece of motion.

A good example is the Telegram messenger that uses Lottie as the format of animated stickers, e.g. https://tlgrm.eu/stickers/Princess (click to animate).

[herrherrmann]

Yes, and I think Lottie is very fitting for that use case! I was referring to reaching for Lottie even for simple small animations, because it seems easier to just drop the designer’s Lottie file into the project, rather than building the animation in a more native way. At least I’ve witnessed recommendations like this on Reddit.

[hbn]

Amazing how many of those are using it to animate unrealistic, exaggerated boob physics

[throwanem]

Where it really excels IME is as a target format for design authoring tools, most notably After Effects, which is discussed above the fold in the linked article as the original motivation for the library and the file format. No one is writing stuff like that by hand to begin with.

I've worked with Lottie animations as a mobile app dev, but never authored one.

[pavlov]

It’s not trivial to produce a Lottie file in After Effects. 95% of the app’s features are off limits, so it’s practically impossible to take an existing AE project and convert it.

Instead you have to ask an artist to author a project from scratch within Lottie’s limitations, but of course there’s no feedback within AE itself if you’re overstepping the boundaries, so they have to be particularly careful.

I wouldn’t recommend it based on my personal experience. But I guess there are teams who have the diligence to make it work.

[legulere]

Shouldn't it be possible to compile Lottie-animations down to SVG+JS? Is that maybe just something that's still missing?

[JusticeJuice]

That’s exactly what the library does for its web renderer. There’s a svg renderer and a web renderer.

[codedokode]

SVG/CSS needs a browser (SVG doesn't allow embedding fonts, can contains CSS/JS) and it is a flaw. SVG is designed only for embedding into websites. How do I display it in a native application.

[interludead]

Yep, for web, unless you really need After Effects-level complexity, native web animation tools are still way more elegant and efficient

[afavour]

Not to mention CSS animations (and the newer Web Animations API) allow hardware acceleration while libraries like this do not.

[panstromek]

Lottie has canvas and svg renderer (that uses CSS transitions where possible, I believe), so technically it's also hardware accelerated (in most cases at least).