---
title: "The Resurrection of Flash"
description: "Flash is back from the dead it seems — and for certain archival and cultural projects, that's actually good news."
canonical: "https://steveknowsweb.com/blog/the-resurrection-of-flash"
date: "2023-11-23"
author: "Steve Luiting"
category: "Legacy Web"
tags: "Flash, Archives, Museums"
language: "en"
---
At The Cable Center, the learning-station kiosks were built around Flash on two levels: **Flash drove the animation** visitors saw on screen, and the **kiosk UI itself was authored in Flash**. When those exhibits stopped working, the problem was not just that Flash had been discontinued — **the source files had disappeared**, and the **old working project files were corrupted**. I had no clean files left to rebuild the exhibit from, so I recovered what I could from the compiled .swf outputs and brought the interactives back. If today they wanted to use Flash once again, I could restore them via modern tools like Ruffle.
Kinect experiments on Cable Center learning stations, 2011 — Flash animation and a Flash-built kiosk interface. The original source files were later lost; what remained of the working project files was corrupted.
For museums and cultural organizations, Flash was once the standard for rich interactive exhibits. When it was killed off, a huge amount of important digital heritage effectively died with it.
Thanks to open-source projects like Ruffle, many of those experiences can live again — safely, in the browser, with no plugins required from visitors.
I've been quietly resurrecting Flash-based work for clients who need their history to remain accessible. It's one of the more satisfying parts of what I do.
### Embedding Ruffle yourself
Here are the exact steps and code snippets you can copy. Ruffle lets you play legacy Flash (SWF) files directly in modern browsers — no plugin required.
### Live Demo (right here on this page)
This page loads Ruffle and plays a real SWF at `/flash/techlogo.swf`:
Click if you see a sound/unmute overlay. If the player does not load, allow scripts from unpkg.com or jsdelivr.net (some privacy tools block CDNs).
To embed Flash on your own site, follow the steps below.
#### Step 1: Include Ruffle
Add this in the `` of your HTML page:
```
```
#### Step 2: Add a sized container, then create the player
Put the container in the page first. Give it a **real width and height** (pixels work best). Then create the player after load. Avoid relying only on `height: 100%` when the parent has no definite height — that often collapses in Firefox.
```
```
#### Full standalone webpage example
Copy into an `index.html` next to your `.swf` (or adjust the path). This version uses an aspect-ratio box and absolute-fill player so it sizes correctly in Chrome and Firefox. AS2 files usually play immediately; AS3 may show a play button; audio may still need a click-to-unmute depending on the browser.
```
Ruffle demo
```
#### Complete list of configuration options
Here are common options you can pass to `window.RufflePlayer.config` (set this *before* calling `createPlayer()`):
```
window.RufflePlayer = window.RufflePlayer || {};
window.RufflePlayer.config = {
// Page-wide
publicPath: undefined,
polyfills: true,
// Per-player behavior
allowScriptAccess: false,
autoplay: "auto", // "on" | "off" | "auto"
unmuteOverlay: "visible", // "visible" | "hidden"
backgroundColor: null,
wmode: "window",
letterbox: "on", // "off" | "on" | "fullscreen"
warnOnUnsupportedContent: true,
contextMenu: "on",
showSwfDownload: false,
upgradeToHttps: window.location.protocol === "https:",
maxExecutionDuration: 15,
logLevel: "error",
base: null,
menu: true,
salign: "",
forceAlign: false,
scale: "showAll",
forceScale: false,
frameRate: null,
quality: "high",
splashScreen: true,
preferredRenderer: null, // null | "webgl" | "canvas" | "webgpu"
openUrlMode: "allow",
allowNetworking: "all",
favorFlash: true,
socketProxy: [],
fontSources: [],
defaultFonts: {},
credentialAllowList: [],
playerRuntime: "flashPlayer",
allowFullscreen: false
};
```
Experiment with these to match your original Flash experience as closely as possible. If something plays in Chrome but not Firefox, check the container has a real height (or use the aspect-ratio + absolute-fill pattern above) and that Ruffle is not blocked by tracking protection.