Eric Wittman
Jul 28, 2017 · 2 min read

Craig first off thanks for writing this post. It’s great to see respect paid to not only the technology and what it did for the world but also the amazing community that was created around it. Without the community, Flash would have never made it as far as it did.

For context, I was the first full-time product manager on Flash at Macromedia after we acquired this little known technology called FutureSplash Animator (FutureWave Software) and turned it into Flash. Back then there were less than a dozen people on the team including Jonathan Gay who invented the amazing underlying technology, Robert Tatsumi who made most of the editor, Slavik Lozben the only other dev at the time able to touch the render who like I was “pilfered” from the Director team, Raven Erebus who was QA, Erica Norton (docs and support) and Ralph Mittman (marketing/evangelism). Over time other amazing folks were added like Pete Santangeli who managed engineering and Gary Grossman who was the “godfather of ActionScript” and wrote the Linux player in 2 days. I was fortunate to have ran product management up thru Flash MX which is the version when we first added video and ActionScript (before it was just Actions). That release is truly what made Flash into a multimedia platform and exponentially made the web a more beautiful and lively place. Before then it was crappy Java applets that crashed your browser or postage stamp sized video that was buried 5 clicks away from the homepage that only worked if you upgraded to the “plus” version of their product. When Flash MX was released in 2002 we made is so that for the first time hundreds of thousands of organizations like Disney, Sony, MSN, P&G could put video on their home pages or have applications in the browser that felt like desktop applications. It was really hard work but we actually gave a shit about making the dull, boring web a more beautiful and expressive place so that everyone in the world could have a better experience. Flash basically showed the web what it could be like when it grew up.

All of the original Flash team members have gone on to different things and while might be still a bit miffed that Adobe fumbled a major opportunity with Flash post acquisition of Macromedia, absolutely remember those days fondly along with the amazing community it fostered. Thanks for helping surface the great memories again, back to my rocking chair!

Who knows, after Adobe killed Fireworks, Sketch arose in it’s place. Maybe the next Flash will arise too?

    Eric Wittman

    Written by

    coo of figma . alum of macromedia / adobe / songbird / atlassian . board member and advisor . devoted family man