5 ms·

The company who should fear this turn is Adobe. This is the exact opposite of "market validation" for Flash. This is a competitor signalling that they are no

by tlianza 16y ago

The company who should fear this turn is Adobe. This is the exact opposite of "market validation" for Flash. This is a competitor signalling that they are no longer betting on a Rich (binary) environment in a browser. They see that as a dead-end, and have undoubtedly spent considerable time, money, and effort coming to that conclusion.

cryptoz 16y ago
Adobe makes money with tools, not with Flash. If Adobe makes good HTML5/JavaScript tools, and keeps making Photoshop, they'll be fine.
- Goosey 16y ago
  It's still dangerous to them. They are the de-facto standard for Flash creation tools, but there is a much larger ecosystem for HTML5/Javascript tools. Even discounting existing HTML5/Javascript tool users who may or may not have a grudge against Adobe for Flash you still have to expect a significant amount of currently-Flash devs during the transition.
- tlianza 16y ago
  Indeed, I'm referring to the Flash tool, not the Flash runtime which is obviously free. But, the investment in getting the Flash runtime everywhere is what makes the platform valuable, and therefore what makes the tool worth using. But, I agree with you that if they pivot they should be fine. To some extent they're also (smartly) re-purposing their existing tools for native mobile development: http://labs.adobe.com/technologies/packagerforiphone/ http://labs.adobe.com/technologies/packagerforiphone/ I'm skeptical that they'll be big in the "good HTML5/JavaScript tools" business based on what they have[n't] done with Dreamweaver, HomeSite, ColdFusion, etc. They just don't seem to have a lot of developer momentum there, IMHO.
  - kenjackson 16y ago
    But assuming Adobe makes money from the tools, doesn't this just open up the field for them. AND it relieves them of the cost of having to maintain and update the runtime. Now they can really just focus on the tooling. MS, Apple, Mozilla, and Google focus on the runtime (browser). If seems like if Adobe plays their cards right, they end up making a lot more money, although they become a lot less prominent brand.
    - tlianza 16y ago
      Sure, it could. But, if you're talking about competing over HTML/JavaScript-type tools, the market there is awfully crowded, and most of the competition is free.
mahmud 16y ago
1) Just to take an example, no desktop GUI, much less a pure web toolkit does image manipulation, drawing, filters and geometry at pixel-accuracy like Flash does, at such small footprint, speed, and pleasant language. It's just 1 part of Flash. 2) Flash is ActionScript, and ActionScript is for all intents and purposes "EcmaScript-NG". JavaScript is becoming ActionScript. Adobe got all the predictions right, and EcmaScript is headed that way (I see type-annotations in your js-future :-) and because ActionScript ~= JavaScript, it would be very easy for them to convert to "HTML5", whatever that might become. This is such a trivial exercise, it's done several times a day, js ports of flax libraries. 3) We have already seen CSS3 "IDEs", and you have GWT, Aptana, etc. It's the "HTML5" scene that's going the old Flash way, by integrating development and tools, projectifying scripts, and becoming more organized.
- treeface 16y ago
  Sorry if this sounds stupid, but how is Javascript becoming ActionScript? To name a few major differences: the OO architectures are very different and Javascript doesn't compile.
  - contextfree 16y ago
    Might be more accurate to say that Javascript was becoming ActionScript - ActionScript 3 was based on a draft standard for EcmaScript 4, which at the time of AS3's creation looked set to become JavaScript 2.0, but that didn't end up panning out.
    - mahmud 16y ago
      It's my understanding that Adobe has every intention of remaining a superset of EcmaScript. If ES breaks AS3 compatibility in the future, it's safe to expect that Adobe will keep pace. FWIW, for much of its documentation, Adobe refers to the EcmaScript specification. In fact, Flash instructions map 1:1 to EcmaScript specs, including the type conversion and promotion algorithms.
  - mahmud 16y ago
    ActionScript is a superset of JavaScript with syntactic sugar. All the "differences", mostly type annotations, class-based oop, and traits, are superficial and do not modify the language to any reasonable degree. Every ECMAScript program is also a valid ActionScript 3 program. What do you mean "javascript doesn't compile"? if you mean it doesn't have a native ahead-of-time compiler for an existing physical processor, well, that's not a language problem but a community/effort problem :-)
exception 16y ago
How about if Adobe helped make the decision in the first place? Let's say, Adobe realized Flash is on its last legs, that Apple hate them and their engineering staff have much greater alignment with Microsoft than any other platform. Now let's say the call up Microsoft and say, hey, how about you buy us and put our engineers to work building kick ass H5 dev tools. At the same time, Microsoft realized that like Flash, Silverlight will never achieve universal penetration, hence why developers are reluctant to use it on the web. Microsoft, seeing Adobe having similar issues and spats with Apple think, hey, what if we bought Adobe and put all the Flash engineers on H5. Just a thought.

by tlianza 16y ago

cryptoz 16y ago

Adobe makes money with tools, not with Flash. If Adobe makes good HTML5/JavaScript tools, and keeps making Photoshop, they'll be fine.

Goosey 16y ago
It's still dangerous to them. They are the de-facto standard for Flash creation tools, but there is a much larger ecosystem for HTML5/Javascript tools. Even discounting existing HTML5/Javascript tool users who may or may not have a grudge against Adobe for Flash you still have to expect a significant amount of currently-Flash devs during the transition.
tlianza 16y ago
Indeed, I'm referring to the Flash tool, not the Flash runtime which is obviously free. But, the investment in getting the Flash runtime everywhere is what makes the platform valuable, and therefore what makes the tool worth using. But, I agree with you that if they pivot they should be fine. To some extent they're also (smartly) re-purposing their existing tools for native mobile development: http://labs.adobe.com/technologies/packagerforiphone/ http://labs.adobe.com/technologies/packagerforiphone/ I'm skeptical that they'll be big in the "good HTML5/JavaScript tools" business based on what they have[n't] done with Dreamweaver, HomeSite, ColdFusion, etc. They just don't seem to have a lot of developer momentum there, IMHO.
- kenjackson 16y ago
  But assuming Adobe makes money from the tools, doesn't this just open up the field for them. AND it relieves them of the cost of having to maintain and update the runtime. Now they can really just focus on the tooling. MS, Apple, Mozilla, and Google focus on the runtime (browser). If seems like if Adobe plays their cards right, they end up making a lot more money, although they become a lot less prominent brand.
  - tlianza 16y ago
    Sure, it could. But, if you're talking about competing over HTML/JavaScript-type tools, the market there is awfully crowded, and most of the competition is free.

mahmud 16y ago

1) Just to take an example, no desktop GUI, much less a pure web toolkit does image manipulation, drawing, filters and geometry at pixel-accuracy like Flash does, at such small footprint, speed, and pleasant language. It's just 1 part of Flash. 2) Flash is ActionScript, and ActionScript is for all intents and purposes "EcmaScript-NG". JavaScript is becoming ActionScript. Adobe got all the predictions right, and EcmaScript is headed that way (I see type-annotations in your js-future :-) and because ActionScript ~= JavaScript, it would be very easy for them to convert to "HTML5", whatever that might become. This is such a trivial exercise, it's done several times a day, js ports of flax libraries. 3) We have already seen CSS3 "IDEs", and you have GWT, Aptana, etc. It's the "HTML5" scene that's going the old Flash way, by integrating development and tools, projectifying scripts, and becoming more organized.

treeface 16y ago
Sorry if this sounds stupid, but how is Javascript becoming ActionScript? To name a few major differences: the OO architectures are very different and Javascript doesn't compile.
- contextfree 16y ago
  Might be more accurate to say that Javascript was becoming ActionScript - ActionScript 3 was based on a draft standard for EcmaScript 4, which at the time of AS3's creation looked set to become JavaScript 2.0, but that didn't end up panning out.
  - mahmud 16y ago
    It's my understanding that Adobe has every intention of remaining a superset of EcmaScript. If ES breaks AS3 compatibility in the future, it's safe to expect that Adobe will keep pace. FWIW, for much of its documentation, Adobe refers to the EcmaScript specification. In fact, Flash instructions map 1:1 to EcmaScript specs, including the type conversion and promotion algorithms.
- mahmud 16y ago
  ActionScript is a superset of JavaScript with syntactic sugar. All the "differences", mostly type annotations, class-based oop, and traits, are superficial and do not modify the language to any reasonable degree. Every ECMAScript program is also a valid ActionScript 3 program. What do you mean "javascript doesn't compile"? if you mean it doesn't have a native ahead-of-time compiler for an existing physical processor, well, that's not a language problem but a community/effort problem :-)

exception 16y ago

How about if Adobe helped make the decision in the first place? Let's say, Adobe realized Flash is on its last legs, that Apple hate them and their engineering staff have much greater alignment with Microsoft than any other platform. Now let's say the call up Microsoft and say, hey, how about you buy us and put our engineers to work building kick ass H5 dev tools. At the same time, Microsoft realized that like Flash, Silverlight will never achieve universal penetration, hence why developers are reluctant to use it on the web. Microsoft, seeing Adobe having similar issues and spats with Apple think, hey, what if we bought Adobe and put all the Flash engineers on H5. Just a thought.