Adobe made a strategic decision...one that seriously pissed off lots of people including myself. They were going to back to what makes them money...creating tools for designers. Flex was never a money maker...if they could go back and adopt the ExtJs model, things might be different (but that is speculation at best...we can't go back). Plus, it is hard to push yourself as the tool creator for HTML5 and 'standards' plus push Flash.
This is not true for us on this list and Flash Pro users, but for the standard folks it is very true. They hate Flash and everything associated with it. Never mind their hate is misplaced... it is just a fact. What might really hurt Adobe is their decisions surrounding CC and no more perpetual licenses of their tools. It will be interesting to see if this adversely affects their bottom line and if so, whether or not they will reverse course. Mark -----Original Message----- From: [email protected] [mailto:[email protected]] Sent: Wednesday, May 15, 2013 9:11 AM To: [email protected] Subject: Re: future of flash (yes, that old chestnut again) I worry less about the message than I do the motivation behind the push towards HTML5. It still makes no sense to me from a developer's perspective, though I've tried very hard to understand it. "Standards based" or not, HTML5 is inferior technology when compared to what can be delivered with Flash and AIR (and the ease with which it can be done using development environments like Flex). Users don't know or care about the runtime environment in which their applications run, nor should they. This isn't really about users, though. It's not about the web. It's not about getting behind a "standard". What it's about is creating demand for products that make the difficult task of developing in HTML/CSS/JavaScript a bit more palatable. And where there's demand, there's profit (theoretically, anyway). I don't believe for a minute that this is some noble "drive the web forward" initiative. That's only the veneer. The true goal, in my not so humble opinion, is what it always is and always will be: enhancing the bottom line. There's certainly nothing wrong with a company making money....it's why they exist, after all. But to tout what is clearly a less suitable solution (for RIAs) as the next great frontier is, at best, disingenuous. These are my opinions...your mileage may vary. M. McConnell From: Lee Burrows <[email protected]> To: [email protected] Date: 05/15/2013 06:15 AM Subject: Re: future of flash (yes, that old chestnut again) Thanks Alex. I appreciate your comments - with the 5 year commitment from Adobe, and FlexJS on the horizon, i can relax (a bit). I just worry about your employers sometimes. At Max 2011, the message was "use HTML5 for RIAs", and shortly afterwards mobile Flash Player was dropped. At Max 2013, the message was "use HTML5 for games" - which made me wonder what bombshell Adobe may drop this time. -- Lee Burrows ActionScripter On 14/05/2013 20:29, Alex Harui wrote: > The relevant documents are: > [1] http://www.adobe.com/devnet/flashplatform/whitepapers/roadmap.html > [2] http://www.adobe.com/devnet/flex/whitepapers/roadmap.html > > It is [2] that mentions "five years". > > But realize that, to the best of my knowledge, there is no code that > will cause Flash to stop working after some day about 4 years from > now. To do so > would "break the web" and neither Adobe nor the major desktop/laptop > OS vendors are interested in doing that. It is just that Adobe is not > committing to new versions or taking support calls after that date. Also, > IMO, if something happens that gives Adobe a reason to extend that > date, they probably would, but I don't really know what that would be. > > Meanwhile, Apache Flex is doing the best it can to make sure that Flex has > fewer bugs, supports more locales, etc. And some of us are even > looking into a next generation of Flex that will let you use MXML and ActionScript > to create apps that run in a browser or on mobile devices without Flash/AIR > so you don't have be quite so concerned about this "five year" commitment. > > On 5/14/13 11:12 AM, "Lee Burrows" <[email protected]> wrote: > >> Hi All, >> >> I seem to remember that Adobe committed to supporting Flash Player >> and AIR for 5 years - during, or shortly after, the Flex Community >> Summit (of Dec 11). >> >> Is that right, or did i imagine it? - i cant find any reference to it >> on adobe.com
