Dive Brief:
- Going out with more of whimper than a bang, Adobe effectively killed off the Flash brand.
- In a move to also to reflect support for HTML5 and WebGL, Adobe renamed its Flash Professional animation tool Animate CC.
- The “cc” in Animate CC stands for Creative Cloud. Rich Lee, senior product marketing manager for Adobe, explained in a blog post the new name “more accurately represent its position as the premier animation tool for the web and beyond.”
Dive Insight:
The newly named product will be available in early 2016 and reflects support and a focus on the more popular, and secure, HTML5. Lee wrote in a blog post, “We completely rewrote the tool over the past few years to incorporate native HTML5 Canvas and WebGL support.”
The move effectively kills off the ailing Flash brand at Adobe.
In a separate blog post, Adobe somewhat eulogized the end of Flash, writing, “Adobe has a history of pioneering and advancing industry standards. We embrace standards and, where none exist, we create them. Flash has played a leading role in bringing new capabilities to the web.”
Flash has been under increasing fire for security issues. The plugin began being blocked in more browsers as well as having the chief of security for Facebook calling for Adobe to announce a “kill date” for the browser plugin.
"Analysts have seen its demise as inevitable, and Adobe is have been investing in HTML5 design tools even as they continue to distribute Flash. The industry needs to comes to a consensus that HTML5 is the only standard for Flash to completely disappear, which seems to be likely," Andy Kahl, director of research at Sizmek, told Marketing Dive in July.
Kahl also said, foreshadowing Flash's end, that technology is vulnerable to time passing, and as with anything it has to adapt to stay relevant.