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There are still many developers and dev-shops working with flash on a daily basis. It seems important they get an official EOL from Adobe with an upgrade path (

There are still many developers and dev-shops working with flash on a daily basis. It seems important they get an official EOL from Adobe with an upgrade path (most likely to html5).

dspillett 11y ago
> There are still many developers and dev-shops working with flash on a daily basis. They need to break out of that stagnation soon or they risk being completely obsolete and not noticing until it is too late. I for one don't have flash installed (or enabled in cases where it is present as a built-in) in my usual browsers (and that isn't going to change: we are long past the point where anything a Flash app does is replicated by something else so if it is a choice of "use flash or don't be able to use X" I'll skip X and use Y instead of re-enabling Flash). I'm not the only one I know with this attitude and while we are in a minority currently that will change over time, and probably not a long time. > It seems important they get an official EOL from Adobe with an upgrade path (most likely to html5). Waiting for that would be a bad business decision on their part. It is obvious where things are going (or at least where they are not going or where they are no going to stay) so waiting for Adobe to tell them the facts is silly. They should be researching alternatives now if they have not done so already and making migration plans.
- CmonDev 11y ago
  > ...being completely obsolete... By technologies/languages that are older than Flash?
  - dspillett 11y ago
    The word obsolete just means not used/maintained/cared-about/relevant any more - it says nothing about age or heritage. Floppy discs are pretty much obsolete yet spinning hard disks, the first commercially available units of which pre-dated the first available floppy disks & drives by 15 years, are still a current tech (arguably they are on the way out, but right now they are still very much here and will be few at least a few years yet).
noja 11y ago
Because they chose to, or because the client required it?
- melling 11y ago
  They're going to get let behind very soon if the don't change for themselves. Few people want technology that doesn't run on mobile. It's their careers. Companies will use them for as long as they can then replace them.
  - reboog711 11y ago
    The Flash Platform can be used to create mobile apps for Android / iOS. It won't work in a mobile browser, though [except for a small subset of old Android / Blackberry devices]. Whether it is a good idea to do this is open to interpretation. Honestly, though, I am not going to lose any sleep over developers / programmers / businesses who are not keeping up on latest development trends.
fenomas 11y ago
> official EOL from Adobe with an upgrade path (most likely to html5) Flash-the-authoring-tool has been able to publish HTML for some years now, and an EOL from Adobe wouldn't mean anything (there haven't been any new features for SWF authoring in years anyway, so killing the tool now would basically just mean killing the HTML-authoring part). The fact that some devs still make Flash content has little to do with Adobe, and everything to do with the fact that some clients (like ad networks) still want SWFs for various reasons.
- sharpercoder 11y ago
  > EOL from Adobe wouldn't mean anything I disagree. There are many people who simply say: Adobe is still developing this, as such it is viable technology. Eol-ing this would solve that problem. I agree it is not any technical solution.
s_kilk 11y ago
And it's not just developers either. Flash is still pretty common in the animation industry.

There are still many developers and dev-shops working with flash on a daily basis. It seems important they get an official EOL from Adobe with an upgrade path (most likely to html5).

dspillett 11y ago

> There are still many developers and dev-shops working with flash on a daily basis. They need to break out of that stagnation soon or they risk being completely obsolete and not noticing until it is too late. I for one don't have flash installed (or enabled in cases where it is present as a built-in) in my usual browsers (and that isn't going to change: we are long past the point where anything a Flash app does is replicated by something else so if it is a choice of "use flash or don't be able to use X" I'll skip X and use Y instead of re-enabling Flash). I'm not the only one I know with this attitude and while we are in a minority currently that will change over time, and probably not a long time. > It seems important they get an official EOL from Adobe with an upgrade path (most likely to html5). Waiting for that would be a bad business decision on their part. It is obvious where things are going (or at least where they are not going or where they are no going to stay) so waiting for Adobe to tell them the facts is silly. They should be researching alternatives now if they have not done so already and making migration plans.

CmonDev 11y ago
> ...being completely obsolete... By technologies/languages that are older than Flash?
- dspillett 11y ago
  The word obsolete just means not used/maintained/cared-about/relevant any more - it says nothing about age or heritage. Floppy discs are pretty much obsolete yet spinning hard disks, the first commercially available units of which pre-dated the first available floppy disks & drives by 15 years, are still a current tech (arguably they are on the way out, but right now they are still very much here and will be few at least a few years yet).

noja 11y ago

Because they chose to, or because the client required it?

melling 11y ago
They're going to get let behind very soon if the don't change for themselves. Few people want technology that doesn't run on mobile. It's their careers. Companies will use them for as long as they can then replace them.
- reboog711 11y ago
  The Flash Platform can be used to create mobile apps for Android / iOS. It won't work in a mobile browser, though [except for a small subset of old Android / Blackberry devices]. Whether it is a good idea to do this is open to interpretation. Honestly, though, I am not going to lose any sleep over developers / programmers / businesses who are not keeping up on latest development trends.

fenomas 11y ago

> official EOL from Adobe with an upgrade path (most likely to html5) Flash-the-authoring-tool has been able to publish HTML for some years now, and an EOL from Adobe wouldn't mean anything (there haven't been any new features for SWF authoring in years anyway, so killing the tool now would basically just mean killing the HTML-authoring part). The fact that some devs still make Flash content has little to do with Adobe, and everything to do with the fact that some clients (like ad networks) still want SWFs for various reasons.

sharpercoder 11y ago
> EOL from Adobe wouldn't mean anything I disagree. There are many people who simply say: Adobe is still developing this, as such it is viable technology. Eol-ing this would solve that problem. I agree it is not any technical solution.

s_kilk 11y ago

And it's not just developers either. Flash is still pretty common in the animation industry.