Free Flash alternative is here

Poor old Flash was a lot of fun in its youth, but then it became old, slow and susceptible to infections. It was doomed from the moment that Apple decided not to support it on the iPhone, and yet we all kind of miss it a bit, right?

Well now there's a new open-source editor called Wick that looks like the Flash alternative we've all been waiting for. Created by Zach Rispoli and Luca Damasco, Wick is a free web tool for creating games, animation and everything in between for the internet, and it's entirely browser-based (see our Adobe Flash Pro CS6 review for a reminder of what the old software offered).

Your creations will work on any device with a web browser, without the need to download any extra software.

Inspired by tools such as Flash, HyperCard and Scratch, Wick is a hybrid of an animation tool and IDE, and first came about when Rispoli's eight-year-old sister started to outgrow Scratch and needed a more sophisticated tool. What started as a simple prototype has since been refined into a more polished tool, and it's ready for you to play with now.

It's easy to get started with Wick: follow these simple tutorials and you can quickly make an animation by simply drawing a few frames (or importing your own images) and exporting them as a .GIF. Beyond that you can add motion tweening and start scripting events, and you can even import JavaScript libraries for more complex projects.

Wick is free software that you can run, distribute, change, and redistribute as you wish, and it's open-source so you can view the codebase and even help improve it over on GitHub. As Rispoli explains, "We hope that the web as a community can come together and help build Wick and bring the spirit of Flash to the next generation of online creatives."

You can find out more about Wick here, or simply hit the Wick editor and start playing! Some creatives have already started, and are sharing how they got on.

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