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Adobe Renaming 'Flash Professional' to ‘Animate’, Shifts Focus to HTML5

Does this mean I won't have to run that update every 4-5 days? You know, the obnoxious one that you can't just check to auto-update but is apparently essential and forces you to be involved in the process for the entire duration?
 
SSD-GUY said:
Steve would be happy.
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ISTR he was still around when Flash on Android crashed and burned, which basically proved him right, at least as far as the iPad was concerned (turns out a lot of the massive catalog of legacy Flash web applications just plain didn't work with a touch interface).

However, between the early days of gratuitous animated titles and the current plague of security holes, Flash served a useful purpose for many years... If you think Flash is the worst thing ever, you must be too young to remember RealPlayer or IE 4/5/6-era "Dynamic HTML".
 
peterdevries said:
No it didn't. It outlived Jobs, but he was around long before that abomination of software was created.
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Flash did have it's time in the sun when it was new in the mid-90's. It was originally designed as part of an MS Windows app where Windows 3.1 and beta releases of Windows 95 were the development platform. While text to binary parsing is not that much of a performance issue these days, twenty years ago, it was a big concern.

Then the web took off and it's binary script engine for PCs was wrapped around plugin APIs of different web browsers (mostly Netscape at the time) so we have an animation platform that was not originally architected for the web. Also, instead of a local animation loading as a "flash file" it was transferred from a web server into the Flash plugin. Thus, you had NO consideration for network lag as you loaded a Flash animation.

In this, Flash reminds me of an ole Burlesque dancer auditioning for a beach party movie.
 
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jayducharme said:
This is the deceptive thing: Adobe is really just changing its name. Although Animate includes a few new features, it still can export as SWF. Adobe isn't giving up the Macromedia legacy. Animate can export -- supposedly -- as HTML5. I assume that works fine with simple animations. I'll be curious as to whether the interactive elements export seamlessly as well.

Flash in later versions had the ability to export as HTML5, but it didn't do that very well. I'm hoping Animate works better in that regard, but I suspect there still will be problems. Adobe is touting Animate's legacy compatibility with Flash, and that often means that sacrifices are made moving forward.
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I disagree. While they'll still support Flash, the aim for easy creation of HTML5 Canvas /& WebGL animations is full steam ahead. I don't really use Adobe CC software but last time I checked (~6 months ago) exporting to HTML5 Canvas was quite impressive for animations and interactive content like games. Really the issue isn't on Adobe's end here, instead it's been the wait for the open standards that are replacing Flash to stabilise and get consistent support by browsers, which is pretty much there (e.g. Edge just implemented Canvas Blend Modes, finally!). Now we just have to wait for JS performance to increase with ASM.js and web assembly, only a couple of years now until we can really achieve the same results with same/better performance and without plugins as we did with Flash.
 
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BillyBobBongo said:
I see the usual responses have already bene posted. There is a huge difference between the program Flash and the Adobe Flash Player Plugin.
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Yes there are big difference but there is a LOT of common code between them, mostly the binary parsing and the animation engine.
 
Lesser Evets said:
Adobe's CC platform is ridiculous. If they want greater sales, sell the software as a final sale or package that doesn't need monthly extortion.
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A monthly Tithe more like. I used Photoshop for more than 10 years. Now? Sorry Adobe I'm staying on the version that I have. I will not pay you or any company a software subscription where if I stop paying I can't use the app.
I do pay some companies for maintenance but in those cases if I stop the upgrades/support stops but the applications keep on working. There is a difference

As for Flash, the sooner Adobe kill off for good the bit the we the end user has to suffer on websites.
Strike one for Steve Jobs.
 
rdlink said:
I'm quite certain that there are few people who aren't affected by Flash every day. From the nearly weekly security updates, to the jet engine sounds that processors make when it's running on a website, to the content error messages that they receive when they finally get fed up and uninstall the POS from their computers.

It can't go away soon enough.
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The reason Adobe is renaming it is exactly the context in your argument. The Flash Professional tool is no more "flash player" than Adobe Photoshop is "PSD/PNG/JPG player"

Flash as an animation tool is way behind when compared to (Corus Entertainment) ToonBoom Harmony, and TB has been kicking flash's ass for quite a while. The main animation tools out there are Harmony and Flash. Harmony is a very expensive product (375 for the basic product's perpetual license, 975$ for the mid-tier product, and 1975 for the Top end product.) Flash needs to come back with a perpetual license to compete with Toonboom. The reason Flash Pro is so behind? Because Adobe acquired Macromedia to capitalize on it's use as a video player, and wanted to own that IP after it's own crack SVG (as an alternative) didn't take off. Why didn't SVG take off? Name one SVG tool that is as good as Flash. There aren't any. SVG support in web browsers is also flakey, while they all support vector shapes, none of them support CSS in SVG equally. Adobe wanted to sell licenses to it's streaming server products, which nginx can now do instead. The big thing now is RTMP for use with Twitch, Google (Youtube), livestream, picarto, and so forth. No adobe products needed.

Adobe's best bet is to keep it's native SWF format and extend it up 8K (UHD), because the SWF format ran out of precision with 1080 FullHD , and you can tell which productions are done with flash at this resolution because of the missing sub-pixel precision. Have HTML5 export as either png sprites+canvas, or vector SVG. Right now, it doesn't do that. The only way to do it is with https://developers.google.com/swiffy/?hl=en Swiffy, and you can only convert very small pieces into HTML5, and Swiffy's output is a mess, good luck trying to fix that.

What I want to do is create "dolls" in flash that I can also setup all the animation for, export that as HTML5 and use javascript to do "onclick(svg.animation.wink)" or something. Untill Adobe actually makes it possible to export an entire flash project as HTML5, there will still be "rich media" SWF files being produced.

HTML5 Canvas = the new "flash", in fact if you use something like pixi.js you actually see a lot of familiarity in how to use Canvas
 
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Max(IT) said:
Adobe in damage control ....
Flash is basically associated with malware, so a smart move to rebrand it. And a smarter move is to jump ship to HTML5.

I'd like to see people bashing Apple a couple years ago about abandoning Flash in favor of HTML5 to apologize now ... but I'm sure they won't.
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Please, Please stop trolling people like this. Silly comments like these lead to excessive arguments on these forums. On a site where people share opinions no one owes you or anyone else an apology.

FYI if you read the story, FLASH, is still alive. Once Adobe finally drops it, for good, and not rebrands it, enjoy the victory dance.
 
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Time to find a new attack vector.
realplayer.gif
 
MH01 said:
FYI if you read the story, FLASH, is still alive. Once Adobe finally drops it, for good, and not rebrands it, enjoy the victory dance.
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Obviously, they're not going to "drop it." They're going to rebrand it and then slowly phase it out of the new product, all the while trying to maintain their current customer base and give themselves an edge in an HTML5 based market. If they happen to drag along all the worst parts of Flash, they don't care: they'll still make money.
 
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