7 ms·

Flash, HTML5 and Open Web Standards

74 points by _jomo 11y ago

degenerate 11y ago
>> Adobe will release an HTML5 video player for desktop browsers Will this be some kind of Adobe AIR wrapper application to play "packaged" HTML5 games, similar to how the desktop SWF player opens swf files? I can't imagine a need for this except for offline content (such as installation intro screens when you pop in a driver CD, or download a standalone kid's game).
- andrebalza1 11y ago
  I would expect a DRM-compliant video component in it
- thefederale 11y ago
  it's a video player. http://blogs.adobe.com/primetime/2015/11/adobe-primetimes-commitment-to-html5/ http://blogs.adobe.com/primetime/2015/11/adobe-primetimes-co...
  - warfangle 11y ago
    Yeah. Looks like an html5 version of ye olde OSMF combined with a delivery platform.
muglug 11y ago
Big move, but it's curious that they're still positioning themselves for all-vector output when, animation-wise, that style looks pretty dated.
- Raphmedia 11y ago
  I don't see cartoons, animes and animated graphs dying anytime soon. Take a look at some of Adam Phillips work if you want to see some glorious flash animations.
  - muglug 11y ago
    They're great! But they're great in spite of Flash's limitations, not because Flash is a great tool for animators. Adam Phillips' built-for-Flash examples are also fairly old. A bunch of basic tooling present in other animation systems, like virtual cameras, motion blur & particle effects are missing.
- georgechen 11y ago
  The current My Little Pony TV show (and the 3 feature length films) is still primarily put together via Flash 8.
angvp 11y ago
Just kill effing flash!
- wyattjoh 11y ago
  Here was me hoping that this was them announcing EOL for Flash all together.
  - WorldMaker 11y ago
    I was also hoping that maybe at least they might officially take ownership of something like Mozilla's Shumway "Flash in HTML5" runtime and helping existing Flash users migrate away from Flash the plugin.
    - bobajeff 11y ago
      Or OpenFL/haxe.
  - fenomas 11y ago
    It's basically been in maintenance mode for years. All EOL would mean is no more security fixes - why would that be a good thing?
- soccerdave 11y ago
  There is a still huge industry of web games (99% of them in Flash) because that is still the best technology to write cross-platform games in the browser. Kongregate, Armor Games, millions of people playing games on Facebook.
  - benologist 11y ago
    I wouldn't exactly call it a huge industry, it's been shrinking for years as indie devs shifted focus to mobile and steam. FGL.com the main marketplace for monetizing flash games has scheduled shutdowns [1] of all their flash services to focus on their mobile services, they also announced their ad revenue as one of very few providers was collectively down to $50/day [2] when they announced that was shutting down last month. [1] https://www.fgl.com/blog/2015/11/fgl-to-drop-support-of-certain-web-services/ https://www.fgl.com/blog/2015/11/fgl-to-drop-support-of-cert... [2] https://www.fgl.com/blog/2015/11/fgl-will-no-longer-support-flash-in-game-ads/ https://www.fgl.com/blog/2015/11/fgl-will-no-longer-support-...
jamescun 11y ago
While it is good to see Adobe listening to customers, but I can't help the niggling feeling this is closing the stable door after the horse has bolted.
- mmanfrin 11y ago
  The horse bolted, joined a herd, sired offspring, those offspring grew up, the world stopped riding horses, cars became commonplace, roads and railways went up. Then Adobe saw the stable door was ajar.
  - angersock 11y ago
    Wait, flash is stable now?!
- fenomas 11y ago
  Adobe changed course to "HTML5 is the future" several years ago - late or not, the stable door's been closed for quite a while. With that said, the fact that Flash-The-Animation-Tool is getting renamed is fairly big for animators who use it. Adobe hasn't done much with the tool over the past few years and many (well, me anyway) wouldn't have been all that shocked to see it EOL'ed or left to languish in maintenance mode. The fact that they're rebranding it suggests to me that the execs decided they still wanted a vector/timeline animation tool even in a post-SWF world, and to invest in that direction. In a sense changing the name is just shedding baggage, but they wouldn't have done it just to let the tool die under different branding. (former Adobe employee, all content pure speculation)
  - aikah 11y ago
    I get the "negative image" of Flash thing. But it's a dumb decision from a marketing stand point. Customers want stable tools , not EOL'ed tools like Flash IDE (soon) or Adobe Edge Animate which has just been discontinued. The trust is broken and selling is about trust. It means that Adobe doesn't really believe in all these products. I took part in a new Director Beta 2/3 years ago but the product was never released. Adobe just don't know what the hell they are doing, people should be really careful about using any web authoring tool from them. At the same time it creates a good market opportunity for small vendors, I hope some cease this opportunity.
cft 11y ago
I think in the normal human language this announcement means that while the new IDE will support Flash compiling, Flash is being switched into maintenance/security fixes only mode.
- whatever_dude 11y ago
  The VM/player has been like that for a couple of years. Their change list[1] has dwindling features, and their roadmap[2] makes it clear there's nothing coming in the future. [1] http://www.adobe.com/devnet/articles/flashplayer-air-feature-list.html http://www.adobe.com/devnet/articles/flashplayer-air-feature... [2] http://www.adobe.com/devnet/flashplatform/whitepapers/roadmap.html http://www.adobe.com/devnet/flashplatform/whitepapers/roadma...
  - andrewbinstock 11y ago
    >their roadmap makes it clear there's nothing coming in the future. In fact, the roadmap makes the opposite clear. Not only have they maintained a steady stream of quarterly upgrades and new releases, but they specifically committed to continuing to do so: "Adobe is continuing to develop and improve both Flash Player and AIR. As we progress forward and commit items to our quarterly releases, we will update the release timing for these features in this document. In 2015, we will continue the attention that we give..."
  - zwetan 11y ago
    OK, let's see those "dwindling features" of the last couple years you have: Workers for Android, Support Android x86, Support for iOS x64, Workers for iOS, Support iOS 9, Mac OS X 64bit and soon (in beta): Windows 64bit, Support for Android TV It's simple, every quarter since 2011, Adobe release a planed Flash player and AIR version update. here the list: http://www.adobe.com/devnet/articles/flashplayer-air-feature-list.html http://www.adobe.com/devnet/articles/flashplayer-air-feature... and they don't even include everything (for ex: AIR v19 added support for iOS workers) you can see more details in the release notes: https://helpx.adobe.com/flash-player/flash-player-releasenotes.html https://helpx.adobe.com/flash-player/flash-player-releasenot... if you read the v19 release notes https://helpx.adobe.com/flash-player/release-note/fp_19_air_19_release_notes.html https://helpx.adobe.com/flash-player/release-note/fp_19_air_... just scroll down to the part that list "Released Versions" that's 15 runtimes and 4 SDK. So "dwindling" you say ? nope, not even close to it, quite the opposite in fact.
bobajeff 11y ago
"Flash continues to be used in key categories like web gaming and premium video, where new standards have yet to fully mature." Can anyone elaborate on this? I can maybe understand premium video but games? What does the Flash runtime have that isn't mature yet in Web APIs?
- ebbv 11y ago
  It's horsecrap. It's mostly just a case of companies with poor quality games that continue to be cash cows not wanting to put in the effort to port to HTML5 (because it wouldn't serve much purpose anyway, since their customer base are generally people who don't know anything about standards and probably instally any plugin they're prompted to install.)
  - babuskov 11y ago
    Players are rapidly moving away from the web. The casual ones play their games on mobile and hard core ones are back on PC. Developers know this and that's why you can see a huge influx of Flash-like games on mobile and somewhat on PC (Steam Greenlight is full of those).
- yoklov 11y ago
  Context2D is slow and lacks a lot of features present in flash. It's not even really close. If you're willing to put in the (large amount of) legwork, WebGL solves this, but it works on far fewer machines (even assuming up to date browsers) than flash -- well, if you discount mobile at least, not that WebGL on mobile works very well across the board. Flash also was able to give you much better guarantees about things looking identical across browsers. This takes a lot more work when doing game UIs in HTML/CSS, to the point where my recommendation would be not to use HTML/CSS for games where this matters. HTML5 audio element is very unreliable (it plays when it feels like) and limited. WebAudio theoretically should be better, but in practice you get pops and skips fairly frequently (depends on browser, etc). There are other things too, but it's been a while since I did any work in flash/actionscript. Those are the ones that immediately come to mind.
- jaequery 11y ago
puppetmaster3 11y ago
Adobe lost the trust of it's community when Adobe killed Flash. THE END.
- aikah 11y ago
  Agreed. But the Flash community needs to learn that hard lesson that any proprietary tech is bad in the long run, Macromedia may have been a different breed but Adobe just wanted to cash in on Flash and ultimately destroyed it. And by the way thanks Elop /s Macromedia, Nokia, what a track record... Ironically projects like Haxe will survive all that Fiasco, unfortunately, there was never a push for an Opensource flash authoring tool that could have replaced Adobe's.

74 points by _jomo 11y ago

>> Adobe will release an HTML5 video player for desktop browsers Will this be some kind of Adobe AIR wrapper application to play "packaged" HTML5 games, similar to how the desktop SWF player opens swf files? I can't imagine a need for this except for offline content (such as installation intro screens when you pop in a driver CD, or download a standalone kid's game).

andrebalza1 11y ago
I would expect a DRM-compliant video component in it
thefederale 11y ago
it's a video player. http://blogs.adobe.com/primetime/2015/11/adobe-primetimes-commitment-to-html5/ http://blogs.adobe.com/primetime/2015/11/adobe-primetimes-co...
- warfangle 11y ago
  Yeah. Looks like an html5 version of ye olde OSMF combined with a delivery platform.

muglug 11y ago

Big move, but it's curious that they're still positioning themselves for all-vector output when, animation-wise, that style looks pretty dated.

Raphmedia 11y ago
I don't see cartoons, animes and animated graphs dying anytime soon. Take a look at some of Adam Phillips work if you want to see some glorious flash animations.
- muglug 11y ago
  They're great! But they're great in spite of Flash's limitations, not because Flash is a great tool for animators. Adam Phillips' built-for-Flash examples are also fairly old. A bunch of basic tooling present in other animation systems, like virtual cameras, motion blur & particle effects are missing.
georgechen 11y ago
The current My Little Pony TV show (and the 3 feature length films) is still primarily put together via Flash 8.

angvp 11y ago

Just kill effing flash!

wyattjoh 11y ago
Here was me hoping that this was them announcing EOL for Flash all together.
- WorldMaker 11y ago
  I was also hoping that maybe at least they might officially take ownership of something like Mozilla's Shumway "Flash in HTML5" runtime and helping existing Flash users migrate away from Flash the plugin.
  - bobajeff 11y ago
    Or OpenFL/haxe.
- fenomas 11y ago
  It's basically been in maintenance mode for years. All EOL would mean is no more security fixes - why would that be a good thing?
soccerdave 11y ago
There is a still huge industry of web games (99% of them in Flash) because that is still the best technology to write cross-platform games in the browser. Kongregate, Armor Games, millions of people playing games on Facebook.
- benologist 11y ago
  I wouldn't exactly call it a huge industry, it's been shrinking for years as indie devs shifted focus to mobile and steam. FGL.com the main marketplace for monetizing flash games has scheduled shutdowns [1] of all their flash services to focus on their mobile services, they also announced their ad revenue as one of very few providers was collectively down to $50/day [2] when they announced that was shutting down last month. [1] https://www.fgl.com/blog/2015/11/fgl-to-drop-support-of-certain-web-services/ https://www.fgl.com/blog/2015/11/fgl-to-drop-support-of-cert... [2] https://www.fgl.com/blog/2015/11/fgl-will-no-longer-support-flash-in-game-ads/ https://www.fgl.com/blog/2015/11/fgl-will-no-longer-support-...

jamescun 11y ago

While it is good to see Adobe listening to customers, but I can't help the niggling feeling this is closing the stable door after the horse has bolted.

mmanfrin 11y ago
The horse bolted, joined a herd, sired offspring, those offspring grew up, the world stopped riding horses, cars became commonplace, roads and railways went up. Then Adobe saw the stable door was ajar.
- angersock 11y ago
  Wait, flash is stable now?!
fenomas 11y ago
Adobe changed course to "HTML5 is the future" several years ago - late or not, the stable door's been closed for quite a while. With that said, the fact that Flash-The-Animation-Tool is getting renamed is fairly big for animators who use it. Adobe hasn't done much with the tool over the past few years and many (well, me anyway) wouldn't have been all that shocked to see it EOL'ed or left to languish in maintenance mode. The fact that they're rebranding it suggests to me that the execs decided they still wanted a vector/timeline animation tool even in a post-SWF world, and to invest in that direction. In a sense changing the name is just shedding baggage, but they wouldn't have done it just to let the tool die under different branding. (former Adobe employee, all content pure speculation)
- aikah 11y ago
  I get the "negative image" of Flash thing. But it's a dumb decision from a marketing stand point. Customers want stable tools , not EOL'ed tools like Flash IDE (soon) or Adobe Edge Animate which has just been discontinued. The trust is broken and selling is about trust. It means that Adobe doesn't really believe in all these products. I took part in a new Director Beta 2/3 years ago but the product was never released. Adobe just don't know what the hell they are doing, people should be really careful about using any web authoring tool from them. At the same time it creates a good market opportunity for small vendors, I hope some cease this opportunity.

cft 11y ago

I think in the normal human language this announcement means that while the new IDE will support Flash compiling, Flash is being switched into maintenance/security fixes only mode.

whatever_dude 11y ago
The VM/player has been like that for a couple of years. Their change list[1] has dwindling features, and their roadmap[2] makes it clear there's nothing coming in the future. [1] http://www.adobe.com/devnet/articles/flashplayer-air-feature-list.html http://www.adobe.com/devnet/articles/flashplayer-air-feature... [2] http://www.adobe.com/devnet/flashplatform/whitepapers/roadmap.html http://www.adobe.com/devnet/flashplatform/whitepapers/roadma...
- andrewbinstock 11y ago
  >their roadmap makes it clear there's nothing coming in the future. In fact, the roadmap makes the opposite clear. Not only have they maintained a steady stream of quarterly upgrades and new releases, but they specifically committed to continuing to do so: "Adobe is continuing to develop and improve both Flash Player and AIR. As we progress forward and commit items to our quarterly releases, we will update the release timing for these features in this document. In 2015, we will continue the attention that we give..."
- zwetan 11y ago
  OK, let's see those "dwindling features" of the last couple years you have: Workers for Android, Support Android x86, Support for iOS x64, Workers for iOS, Support iOS 9, Mac OS X 64bit and soon (in beta): Windows 64bit, Support for Android TV It's simple, every quarter since 2011, Adobe release a planed Flash player and AIR version update. here the list: http://www.adobe.com/devnet/articles/flashplayer-air-feature-list.html http://www.adobe.com/devnet/articles/flashplayer-air-feature... and they don't even include everything (for ex: AIR v19 added support for iOS workers) you can see more details in the release notes: https://helpx.adobe.com/flash-player/flash-player-releasenotes.html https://helpx.adobe.com/flash-player/flash-player-releasenot... if you read the v19 release notes https://helpx.adobe.com/flash-player/release-note/fp_19_air_19_release_notes.html https://helpx.adobe.com/flash-player/release-note/fp_19_air_... just scroll down to the part that list "Released Versions" that's 15 runtimes and 4 SDK. So "dwindling" you say ? nope, not even close to it, quite the opposite in fact.

bobajeff 11y ago

"Flash continues to be used in key categories like web gaming and premium video, where new standards have yet to fully mature." Can anyone elaborate on this? I can maybe understand premium video but games? What does the Flash runtime have that isn't mature yet in Web APIs?

ebbv 11y ago
It's horsecrap. It's mostly just a case of companies with poor quality games that continue to be cash cows not wanting to put in the effort to port to HTML5 (because it wouldn't serve much purpose anyway, since their customer base are generally people who don't know anything about standards and probably instally any plugin they're prompted to install.)
- babuskov 11y ago
  Players are rapidly moving away from the web. The casual ones play their games on mobile and hard core ones are back on PC. Developers know this and that's why you can see a huge influx of Flash-like games on mobile and somewhat on PC (Steam Greenlight is full of those).
yoklov 11y ago
Context2D is slow and lacks a lot of features present in flash. It's not even really close. If you're willing to put in the (large amount of) legwork, WebGL solves this, but it works on far fewer machines (even assuming up to date browsers) than flash -- well, if you discount mobile at least, not that WebGL on mobile works very well across the board. Flash also was able to give you much better guarantees about things looking identical across browsers. This takes a lot more work when doing game UIs in HTML/CSS, to the point where my recommendation would be not to use HTML/CSS for games where this matters. HTML5 audio element is very unreliable (it plays when it feels like) and limited. WebAudio theoretically should be better, but in practice you get pops and skips fairly frequently (depends on browser, etc). There are other things too, but it's been a while since I did any work in flash/actionscript. Those are the ones that immediately come to mind.
jaequery 11y ago

puppetmaster3 11y ago

Adobe lost the trust of it's community when Adobe killed Flash. THE END.

aikah 11y ago
Agreed. But the Flash community needs to learn that hard lesson that any proprietary tech is bad in the long run, Macromedia may have been a different breed but Adobe just wanted to cash in on Flash and ultimately destroyed it. And by the way thanks Elop /s Macromedia, Nokia, what a track record... Ironically projects like Haxe will survive all that Fiasco, unfortunately, there was never a push for an Opensource flash authoring tool that could have replaced Adobe's.