Adobe finally tells developers to stop using Flash
Adobe Flash has become somewhat obsolete in recent years, with a strong push away from the platform as alternate methods appear for handling animations online. Today Adobe has announced that Flash Professional will be rebranded to Adobe Animate CC, transitioning away from the platform’s tainted name.
Once the primary means of making animation, browser games and interactive visualizations for the web, Adobe Flash has been ailing for a long time. And now — after almost everyone else recognized the massive security and performance problems with the proprietary tech — its makers Adobe have announced that it will be moving away from the platform.
Adobe said that it would now encourage developers to “build with new web standards”, primarily HTML 5.
In today’s announcement, Adobe described Flash as having “helped push the web forward”, but acknowledged the increasing prevalence of newer languages and open standards.
Flash, which can be slow and battery-draining, is unsupported on virtually all smartphones, leading to a sharp decline in its use. It has also faced several security issues in the past few years, with Mozilla refusing to unblock the platform until “Adobe releases a version which isn’t being actively exploited by a publicly known vulnerabilities”.
Flash won’t be disappearing completely, says Adobe, but its own animation tool has been renamed from Flash Professional CC to Animate CC: Adobe says that around a third of the content created in the app is already based on HTML 5. Flash will also continue to be used in several key areas such as web gaming and premium videos, Adobe insists — areas in which it says “new standards have yet to fully mature”.
Today’s announcement is far from a surprise, since many sites have abandoned the platform for more secure alternatives. Over recent years a large number of Flash’s vulnerabilities have been exploited and in response, top video sites such as YouTube and Twitch followed by abandoning the platform. The platform is now extremely dated, with HTML 5 looking to take its position for web animations.
