Twitter feeds have been blowing up in the past 24 hours ever since Adobe announced they are no longer going to support the Flash Player mobile browser plugin. Social feeds quickly embellished this news as “Adobe kills Flash”, and “Flash is dead” with predictions that the desktop version is next or at least should be. This behavior reminds me of a childhood game called “Telephone” where you whisper a short phrase in your friend’s ear, they repeat it to someone else and your story goes around the room until it gets whispered back in your own ear as something completely different. The only difference is that with today’s rapid-fire social mindset, the game only requires two people, in this case Adobe and anyone with a Twitter account.
For those of you who love to use Flash for animation and are hearing tweets and blogs announcing the death of Flash, don’t worry, Flash is far from dead. There is a lot more to Flash than a mobile browser plugin for Android devices. Check out what Thibault Imbert (Flash Player Product Manager) and Lee Brimelow (Adobe Evangelist) have to say, they may ease your mind as to the future of Flash. Adobe understands that very few people are developing for the mobile Flash player and the best way to deploy mobile content is in the form of native apps.
But there is validity to thinking that perhaps, this is the beginning of the end for Flash as a platform. We can only wait and see. Yes, I still use Adobe Flash on a daily basis and yes I am learning Adobe Edge at the same time because it’s new and probably the best chance for designers and animators to easily author content for HTML5. Better to get in on the next big technological platform while it’s learning how to walk.
As a modern day designer and animator, it’s important to me to understand the direction the industry is heading and how I can evolve my skill set to stay afloat. It would be negligent of me to ignore the tangible technological shift to HTML5 but it would also be silly to completely abandon Flash as an animation tool. I have faith in Adobe to develop Flash in away that allows me to keep up with current industry trends. But the bottom line is, there will be, for the foreseeable future, an internet, mobile devices, games, motion graphics and interactivity – all needing design and animation of one kind or another. The thought that the authoring software used to develop for these platforms may not be Flash is probably me just being a little bit sentimental. After all, it’s been over eleven years of using Flash almost everyday. That’s a long time spent with a software program. It has almost become an extension of myself. Losing it will be the worst break-up of my life. I’ll have to get all my CDs back and that favorite black T-shirt I used to wear for days on end.
The loss of the mobile Flash player is nothing compared to the loss of 750 Adobe jobs. That’s 750 family’s directly affected by this decision and many of those who now find themselves unemployed are friends of mine. I’m realizing now I may never get the chance to see them again. Conferences, on a social level, may never be the same. The news of the layoffs hurts a lot more than the killing off of a mobile browser plugin. Software is just software, there will always be another program for me to adopt. But friends are irreplaceable and the thought of no longer working with them and raising our glasses year after year at Adobe MAX will sting for a long time to come. My best wishes to all of you. Now get out there and create some cool start-ups!
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Here here Chris. I use Flash every day at work. Our main application is Flash-based. I also do a lot of presentation work with Flash and animation work with it too. I’ve spent a good part of the last 8 years of my life devoted to learning it and teaching it. I still think it’s a fabulous tool with HUGE potential. When used correctly, Flash is awesome. There are some jaw dropping web sites out there that are all Flash-based.
I too, can’t imagine a world sans Flash.
A well-written and balanced POV. As you know, I was deep into Flash at the beginning, back when it was the only reliable tool for cross-platform interaction and motion graphics. At one time, I worked for a company who built their entire offering around a CMS solution they’d developed for Flash. They hired 70 people, got a bunch of clients, and when Flash started changing up their platform – poof – there went the company value prop (and not long after, the company). Lucky for me, the skills I developed at the time were broader than than any one tool in my toolbox. An experienced creator knows the difference between craft and tools – I suspect that, regardless of what happens to Flash in the long run, the most invested users will continue to be valued contributors to the evolving landscape of cool.