Every now and then a piece of software comes along that everyone apart from software developers (i.e. the people that have to work with it) loves. Back in 1996 a piece of software was released by American company Adobe called "Flash" and overnight provided a mechanism to view video, graphics and other rich media via a "plug-in" to popular WEB browsers. The reason people loved it was because it allowed them to view the kind of content they wanted (like video and games) inside WEB browsers, the reason software developers hated it was because it subverted pretty much all of the rules and conventions created around delivering WEB content and opened up huge security holes everywhere that we spent the best part of 10 years trying to overcome or work-around.
By 2009 Flash was installed on 99% of all internet-connected PC's but it failed to anticipate the rise of the mobile devices (as well as being a security nightmare) Apple eventually pulled the plug on it refusing to let it run on iPhones and iPads preferring instead HTML5 which was the "official" WEB standard for rendering such content in a secure way. As is often the case, an individual company beat the broader industry to market with a product that subverted standards but delighted users and designers who could make stuff "pretty" at the expense of portability, efficiency and security (which designers tend not to care much about) Eventually, the market caught up and now Flash is officially dead! Adobe removed technical support for it at the end of last year, RIP Flash 1996-2020, and good riddance IMO!
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