Adobe Animate CC, a New Era for Flash Professional | Hacker News Reader

Adobe Animate CC, a New Era for Flash Professional

blogs.adobe.com

78 pointscpeterso21 comments

Regarding the state of web graphic standards for animation, I would like to know where SVG animations[0] are going.

With SMIL animations being pushed into deprecation[1] by chrome devs while CSS animations are a inferior replacement, web animations are still a draft[2] and SVG 2 with SMIL 2.1 not being released anytime soon?

[0] https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/SVG/SVG_animati...

[1] https://groups.google.com/a/chromium.org/forum/#!topic/blink...

[2] http://www.w3.org/TR/web-animations/

The last I heard was that SMIL is due to be removed from SVG 2 and replaced with an Animations spec separate from SVG.

That's nice, but the word "script" was nowhere on that page. It supports ActionScript? That is what made Flash special, the union of code and art. I'm unaware of a complete authoring environment for artistic coders to produce things like they could with Flash. In Flash it wasn't all graphics, or all code, you could mix and match any way you wanted. You could right-click right on a visual object, and put script directly on it, along with its own more typical video-like animation keyframes, and along with separate complete code documents to control everything at once. It was really powerful.

Also, it says CC. I've thus far managed to protest the forced subscription model, which Adobe can only get away with by flexing their near-monopoly position. If it is subscription-only, and especially if it doesn't support ActionScript, I won't be paying them any money.

This is very true, and kinda makes this product already seem obsolete if I can code in my favorite IDE instead starting this massive load of crap up. I don't think HTML5 needs an IDE such as this.

Flash was a wonderful way to learn about object oriented programming because you could literally draw an object and add code to it, as you described.

However, I think controlling objects appearances with CSS instead of the IDE or direct code that is mixed with other ActionScript is what finally converted me away from Flash.

The new CSS3 features were too good to pass up especially if I could use them for free and with any text editor.

I doubt they've removed it unless they're splitting animation off into a separate product.

A big push in the last year was the create custom export plugins to expand Flash's interactivity base from just SWF files. For instance, you can use Haxe+OpenFL[1] with Flash CC now, and thus maintain an ActionScript-y programming model, but also export your projects (with full swf support) to C++ and HTML5:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BhE07Y9TUJU

[1](http://www.openfl.org)

Good they updated and see the value in the animation side rather than let it languish in uncertainty.

They were losing ground to Toon Boom[1] and new tools like Spine 2D[2] that takes into account all formats and mobile dev.

As far as animation for shows, Toon Boom really took over that front including most recently Rick & Morty.

[1] http://www.toonboom.com/

[2] http://esotericsoftware.com/

TLDR : This is a rebranding of Flash into Animate CC. A bit confusing since another product is called Edge Animate CC. Or will they merge both products ?

'Note: As of November 2015, Edge Animate is no longer being actively developed.' Source: http://www.adobe.com/be_en/products/edge-animate.html

Flash has been capable of exporting html animations for quite some time now, so I can't say this is unexpected. This seems like a large step in deprecating the Flash name and player in general.

Edge Animate is great, it's really a bummer they're deprecating it.

(Who knows, maybe Animate CC will be Edge Animate more-or-less.)

That's sad, because Adobe Edge was an open source web app running in a webkit/blink window. I always thought it would replace Flash IDE.

It would be nice if Adobe ditched or deprecated SWF in favor of HTML5 / SVG etc. Flash player has been a huge attack vector for malware and the situation hasn't improved. One thing that continues to irritate me is the extra step required to fool websites into thinking that I am accessing their videos from an iPad before they start streaming over HTML. In normal mode, they force you to install Flash and the associated risk.

I think it will happen eventually and the name change might help slightly. Companies will still use flash for advertising in most cases, but hopefully slowly shift out of flash. I usually have flashblock if I have flash installed and noscript setup, really helps block ads as a side effect.

This has been around since 2011 as part of their Adobe Edge platform. I saw this a few years ago when parallax was still a big deal.

It certainly makes it nice and easy to do animations with Animate, but the code it creates is horrific.

Here is one of the examples from the Animate page: http://html.adobe.com/edge/animate/showcase/interactive-marq...

And the underlying code: http://imgur.com/g33rfUy

One of the strengths Flash had from the beginning was a good GUI for content creation. It is good that they are separating this from the platform, which is hitting end of life.

Just when I think I'm out, they pull me back in.

New era of remote exploits.)

We know you asked for more support for technology that everybody loves, so yeah! FLASH FLASH FLASH NEVER DIES ALL THE WAY!!11

I truly loved Flash for it's amazing animation possibilities. And I still love it for that.

Good point, and I completely agree. For cheap 2d traditional cel animation it definitely has some use.

Damn people, ever heard of sarcasm?

I did not vote you down, but your comment doesn't really add much. It's a common sentiment that could have been posted on any article about Flash.

And it makes even less sense on this particular article, since, if you read between the lines, Adobe is acknowledging that Flash is a tainted brand and that SWF is on its way out.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com