Adobe roadmap for the Flash runtimes | Hacker News Reader

Adobe roadmap for the Flash runtimes

adobe.com

35 pointsalvivar11 comments

It is funny to see how every Adobe announcement about Flash keeps mentioning their "commitment to the platform", when they in recent times have:

1. Dropped Adobe AIR support on desktop Linux ("focusing on Android & embedded", was it?)

2. Dropped Adobe Flash Player support on Android (not focusing on Android anymore?)

3. Dropped Adobe Flash Player support on Linux (except in Google Chrome)

and here they announce that they're also no longer trying to support the "rich motion graphics" use case.

I would say that's their response to what the market is telling them what they want and don't want, of which the market has been quite vocal about the past couple of years. Flash has been slowly evolving into something other than a web browser plugin for years, we're just now reaching that cutoff point. The fun will be if the platform can survive as something other than a web browser plugin.

It _did_ evolve into something other than a web browser plugin; Adobe AIR was launched (with Flex) as a complete solution for writing cross-platform desktop applications.

By cutting Adobe AIR for Linux out as a surprise move, they did not exactly build developer confidence in their ability to provide long-term development platforms worth investing in.

Further, by claiming "commitment" in every press release while simultaneously discontinuing more and more of the platform itself, it's getting harder and harder to believe anything they say anymore.

> and here they announce that they're also no longer trying to support the "rich motion graphics" use case.

That kind of sucks, as there's a slew of amazing things people like Joshua Davis had done with Flash. I've used it on several occasions to script my way out of a complex motion graphics requirement.

<aside> They should really expose the After Effects API to ActionScript though. Most of the hi-end compositing and motion graphics people I know now recommend or want to switch to Nuke because of Adobe's disregard for After Effects' scripting capabilities.

Interesting. So there will be another 3 version with the following features:

Keyboard input support in full-screen mode

Improved audio support for working with low-latency audio

Ability to progressively stream textures for Stage 3D content

LZMA compression support for ByteArray

Frame label events

ActionScript workers (enables concurrent ActionScript execution on separate threads)

Support for advanced profiling

Support for more hardware-accelerated video cards (from 2005/2006) in order to expand availability of hardware accelerated content

Improved ActionScript performance when targeting Apple iOS (What the??? iOS???)

Performance index API to inform about performance capabilities of current environment

Release outside mouse event API

Refactoring and modernizing the current core Flash runtime code base

Work on the ActionScript Virtual Machine

Updates to the ActionScript language

Doesn't seem like there will be anything new that can not be currently albeit less efficiently.

> Improved ActionScript performance when targeting Apple iOS (What the??? iOS???)

Yes, you can wrap a Flash application with AIR to build it as an iOS app. (This is not the same as a Flash plugin for mobile Safari).

http://www.adobe.com/products/air.html

>ActionScript workers (enables concurrent ActionScript execution on separate threads)

Ha! Been asking for this feature for the last 2 years. Now it's just 3 releases away. What's that like...2 more years?

They switched the Flash runtimes to a quarterly release schedule semi-recently. As mentioned in the roadmap document, the release that will include workers is coming in the second half of 2012. Maybe as early as six months from now, if you assume that 11.2 is coming very soon.

It would be really interesting if Adobe made the Flash Platform available for the mainstream console market and tied it in (or preferably made it optional) with a game store where people can buy and developers can sell games for these consoles.

They shut down the AIR marketplace http://www.adobe.com/devnet/air/articles/air_marketplace_faq... but it is worth trying again.

Never even knew that existed!

The problem with the Flash runtime and building applications on it is that UI's created on the Flash runtime get very, what's a good word?, sticky?

Look at Balsamiq Mockups. Weird scroll bars (not OS native) and the UI just isn't as smooth as native OS counterparts. Would you want to browse Amazon that was build as a big Flash app? Of course, no one does.

However, it's seems that Adobe has finally found a niche with the Flash runtime, games.

Disclaimer: Since 2001 and 2010 I was a full time Flash platform/Actionscript developer.

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