> Remember when targeting Macromedia Flash was going to solve the web compatibility and interactivity conundrum?

This sounds like the set up for a "No? Me neither." punchline. Certainly one of the features of Flash is that it gave you fairly good consistency across computers, but honestly my perception of Flash wasn't that it was going to solve some grand web problem, but more "oooh look, shiny rollover buttons!" and "ooh look, super obnoxious advertisement that forces people to pay attention to it!"

> "oooh look, shiny rollover buttons!"

That's the interactivity aspect. At the time, it was the bees knees of UI capabilities.

Yeah? It was targeted for destruction by Apple because it was buggy and insecure, not because it wasn't delivering.

Don't forget horrendous mobile performance (battery drain)!

Don't forget proprietary.

And the lack of accessibility. You generally couldn't even copy and paste text out of it.