Tag: flash

Animate is toast

Edit: After this article was written, Adobe backpedaled on their announcement and changed the status of Adobe Animate to “maintenance mode” instead of full discontinuation. It seems they are in full-on damage control now.

I learned today that Adobe has decided to discontinue its Animate software. I abandoned it about 10 years ago now when so many of its best tools got translated into the Haxe language. I suppose I had a feeling that this day would come eventually. Perhaps I’m surprised that it took this long.

Adobe cited “new platforms and paradigms” being the reason for their decision. I guess that boils down to the following:

Bandwidth: Video is ubiquitous now. Who needs small file sizes for animations? Why not use software that was always for video?

App Development: Technical requirements are increasing in complexity. Developers who could push the technical limits of the Animate software soon needed to go beyond what it could do, and found themselves in a team environment.

Market Share: Adobe’s software has been “calling home” for a long time, for licensing, features, and statistics. They have been collecting data on everything and daily usage will certainly have played a part in their decision.

AI: Unfortunately this will certainly also be sapping away the need for Animate. Why spend hours tweening and editing keyframes when you can write a paragraph for your AI agent to animate for you?

So—thanks for the laughs, Adobe. I understand that you need to do this!

ps: if you need alternatives to Animate, check out this great article from GameFromScratch.

Adobe: It’s not too late to learn from Coca-Cola

Edit: this article was written prior to Coca-Cola’s scandal in 2021 and is not an endorsement of everything the company does. Give credit where credit is due, I say.

Another year is gone now, as is “Adobe Flash Support”. People all over Twitter are reflecting on what they miss about Flash and I find it curious because the software still exists as Adobe Animate and it is still able to do everything Flash ever did, and more. Being the year end, I believe it’s time for another exercise in hindsight. I’ll spare you any year-related puns at this point.

As I reflect on all this I have come to an epiphany:

If Flash belonged to the Coca-Cola company it would be going strong today.

Remember New Coke? I would encourage you to review the story if you weren’t around in 1985. I see many parallels between that saga and the one of Adobe and Flash.

Like Coca-Cola experienced, Flash was in a big decline in its own world. Apple had disallowed the Flash plugin from their devices and there were a few “security issues” uncovered. Losing popularity, both companies felt it was time for a drastic change. Coca-Cola famously changed its formula. Adobe’s solution was to change the name of Flash IDE to Animate.

When “new Coke” came out, the brand was on everyone’s lips and they received a lot of negative publicity—just like Flash. What Coca-Cola remembered at that point is that Coke is not just a product. It is a brand which people loved. They wisely back-pedalled, and not only did they restore the old formula but they used it as a springboard for renewed marketing efforts and came roaring back more popular than ever.

Today, Flash is on everybody’s lips (in the web world at least) and Animate is just a verb that people can do with almost any software out there.

So will Adobe learn from its mistakes…

…or will they just let Animate continue as a discoloured droplet in the Creative Cloud?

It’s not too late to rebrand again. Flash was not just a product, it is a brand synonymous with creativity and fun on the web. Whether they call it “Flash Bang” or whatever, Adobe would do well to reconnect with that web nostalgia and bring back the Flash name. If all the old consoles can do it, they can too.

Adobe: Why no AS3/HTML5 solution for Flash?

Every time Adobe does an article about the Flash IDE’s ability to do HTML5, I am very interested and I check it out. I am always disappointed when they get back to the fact that you have to use JavaScript.

I really cannot understand why Adobe has not endorsed or offered a method to compile Actionscript (or a better language) to JavaScript from within the Flash IDE. Actionscript 3 is clearly superior to JavaScript. Why should we have to re-write everything when we’re in the same IDE? Why are they taking a step backwards?

I would consider Haxe to be the ultimate solution, but Adobe could even use Jangaroo or similar technology to target HTML5—maybe even bundle Google Swiffy. If they did, I’m sure developers would be happy to be able to create both Adobe AIR apps and HTML5 apps from the same code base without needing to install other tools. Those of us using Haxe are already basking in the glory of that.

Perhaps Adobe thinks such a move would eat away at their AIR platform’s popularity. I just don’t know why they bother with JavaScript tools within Flash, when better tools exist. As it stands, I expect that more developers will be doing like I did and begin switching to Haxe with OpenFL, which is a more advanced language than AS3 and can compile to SWF/AIR, HTML5, and a host of other desktop, console and mobile platforms.