I’ve mentioned this on here before, but I stand by it: developing Flash is the most fun way I have found to program.
Now, part of this is because Flash was one of the first things that I learned to program, so it’s probably a big rose-tinted because i was younger and it was new, but even as a thirty-something I still have had a blast playing with Flash MX Pro (legally acquired, of course).
Flash is so interesting to me, because it is animation first, but the programming was bolted on pretty elegantly. You could animate something using professional tools, highlight it, make it a movie clip, and immediately export it to code and hack against that. Yeah it was hard to maintain for big projects but it was fun how quickly 15 year old tombert could go from a few drawings to a simple game.
I miss it.
I learning to program with as2 and as3.
> We are not discontinuing or removing access to Adobe Animate. Animate will continue to be available for both current and new customers, and we will ensure you continue to have access to your content. There is no longer a deadline or date by which Animate will no longer be available.
Making a zombie product probably has a lower impact on their revenues.
"We're going to provide support and security patches" means "in a year we'll quietly stop any work on it anyway"
"we've listened and we're going to keep offering Animate" (crowd cheers)
".. but we're not going to make any changes to the software" (crowd cheers louder)
"wait why are they still cheering"
.. the joke being that the customers don't want the software to materially change, just so long as it continues to run.
Exactly what my guess about this is too. People who rely on Animate shouldn't rest easy just because Adobe backed off this time.
> A material number of customers see Animate as a differentiator from our competitors, so even if we only provide support and security patches, the investment is justified for retention.
I don't really think there's a hidden agenda here. The announcement surfaced new information for them, they probably reframed their own analytics and saw insights that backed maintaining Animate as a result.
I wish SWF became a common HTML5 transpile format.
Perhaps you could render to Canvas/WebGL/WebGPU, but you still need to reproduce the entire engine there.
This year's jam just started:
Either it has value and shouldn't be open sourced in which case why not keep developing it.
If it has no value whats the excuse not open source it as a sign of good will for artists and developers to invest time in your ecosystem, otherwise the message is "If you build with our apps and systems you will be locked out of your work forever when its an inconvenience for us, even if you're paying us hundreds a year"
https://www.reddit.com/r/adobeanimate/comments/1qv5yju/updat...
Absolutely abhorrent communication. There was no “confusion”, they even admit later in the messaging they changed their plans:
> More importantly, Animate will continue to be available for both new and existing users. This is a change from what we communicated in the email yesterday for the status of Adobe Animate, its time-frame, and availability.
Just lead with that, no need to throw sand in people’s eyes.
I stopped using Flash long before it became Animate. I'm really sad to see it go, and that Adobe has so little love to this important piece of the web and the Internet.
As far as I know, there is nothing comparable to the Flash experience on the market.
this also just goes to show that its reckless to base all your software on a closed platform like that. Sooner or later it will come back to bite you
