ConvertingFlash devs to HTML5, Need Feedback

[eddieone]

I wrote an article titled You already know Flash, so JavaScript is easy. One important thing I missed was how easy it is to animate things in Flash compared to JS. So might have to share what I learned there later. I'm wondering what else did I miss. I need feedback, what would you say to convert Flash developers to HTML5?

[b10b]

Flash was / is a multimedia authoring tool.  I don't think it compares well with Javascript.  Yes there are many skills that overlap between making games with Flash and making Javascript games (including using the former to make the latter), but it's not easy to go from being an expert at one to being an expert at the other.  Perhaps it may be worth revealing what skills are specifically transferable, which must be learnt afresh, and how Javascript games of today compare with Flash games of yesterday.  How are such games played, by whom, and why do players choose them instead of native alternatives?  Or it may be easier to recommend a GDK for Javascript game development that includes an authoring environment similar to Flash.

[dimumurray]

It would have been more accurate to say "You already know Actionscript 3, so Javascript is easy". AS3 was based on ECMAScript4 a proposed standard for Javascript. Unfortunately, ECMAScript 4 was not adopted by the W3C standards body, but many of its features made it into ES6 (even more in the proposed ES7). So from a language syntax standpoint that statement does hold some weight. Actionscript also had several APIs designed to manage visual assets and many of today's HTML5/Javascript based tools borrowed from it. CanvasJS, OpenFL, even Phaser and PixiJS; each has elements of those AS3 APIs to varying degrees; which makes sense when you consider that the developer's behind these frameworks all have a background in Flash/Flex/Actionscript development. So, ultimately, coming from a Actionscript background does make it relatively (operative word here) easy to pick up Javascript.