I hear that Flash is starting to go away. I know later this year Chrome is withdrawing support for it, and I wonder what is going to happen with it eventually. I'm sad that so many people seem to not like Flash because it is the platform I have the most experience in.
Sidenote: I know Flash is now renamed to Animate, and I figure Adobe was trying to rebrand probably so as to lose a little bit of the bad sentiments towards it(just a theory).
I know this is more of a "news" type question than a coding question, but does anyone know if Flash is going to continue to be a thing or should I bail before the bitter end?
Edit: someone said something about air being a still supported platform for chrome or coding in flash in general. Any more tips for how difficult/easy it would be to either transfer my code to it or starting a new project from scratch learning different coding syntax or is it mostly the same as AS3 in general. I know a little bit of unity with C# would it be easier to switch over to that?
First you'll need a bit of background.
Flash or more specifically Flash Player, is a browser plugin that allows running ActionScript compiled for it.
There are other ActionScript compilers out there, such as the AIR compiler. Adobe AIR is not going away any time soon.
You'll be able to continue developing ActionScript 3 projects if you target them to AIR instead of Flash Player, after Flash Player is discontinued.
AIR can run on Windows, Mac, iOS, and Android.
On a side note - Flash Professional was most likely renamed to Animate since it does so much more than just produce "Flash Player" content. It can publish AIR, HTML5, and create animations at the very least.
Related
Is there a way to specify a splash screen for an Android AIR application in Flash Pro? I've seen a number of techniques but none for Flash Pro.
Thanks.
Flash Pro is no different than any other AS3 IDE except that it gives you visual tools to create with. You still have access to the exact same code and techniques. You can use SplashScreenImage to do it, if you're using Flex. For the most part, you don't want to do anything that runs code on mobile, which is why Flex doesn't allow you to. So no animation, no movement, no anything. Just a static image.
Regardless, any technique you've found should work just fine on Android and with Flash Pro. As I said, there is no difference between an app created with Flash Builder, IntelliJ, Flash Develop, and Flash Pro. They all use the same compiler, same runtime, same codebase, etc.
If you right-click on a game of movie in a website and see a box with the bottoim line "About Adobe Flash Player..." does that necessarily mean that the content was made with Flash (Either Flash Pro, Flash Builder, FDT, Flash Develop)?
Does it mean that the creators for sure used AS3, or could you in thery have an html5 or union project running in flash player?
Yes, it means the content is made in Flash. If you view source for the website, contents made in flash have .swf extension.
But the creators may not have used AS3, it may be made using AS2 if older.
Hi there...
I am having a query about how to publish in HTML5 format through flash.
I have a .fla file containg animation and Actionscript 3.0, when i publish it to HTML, it ask to download flash player in browser. But it is not necessary to have flash player in the browser while loading the .html file. So plaease guide me for the issue.
Thanks in Advance..
You're misunderstanding what the menu means by publish to HTML. This is simply publishing a SWF file and a corresponding HTML file that has HTML code to embed the SWF. This is not a cross compilation option. Those exist but that's not what you get in Flash CS5 by default.
If you're interested in Cross Compilation from AS3 to HTML/JS you can check out Randori and also projects like FalconJS:
http://blogs.adobe.com/bparadie/2011/11/19/what-is-falconjs/
I saw a talk about both of these recently in Chicago by some of the developers. They both seem like promising concepts (basically dodging the flash player).
The other option if you're trying to develop for mobile deployment is to package your code as an air installer. This will run your code on top of the AIR runtime (which has support on tons of devices, iOS, Android, Blackberry etc.), but this is not an in the browser experience, but rather a download the app type deal.
From what I got from the two developers (one from Apache Flex, one the creator of Randori) neither wanted to put too much trust into Adobe's platform given it's no longer supported on most mobile devices.
As an aside Adobe also has a product called Edge that allows you to do animation with a similar tool-set to what you get in Flash and exports HTML/JS/CSS. If you're not interested in AS3 or object oriented programming or type-safe languages cross compiling might not be the best option. I've personally been playing with AngularJS lately and been liking it due to the parallels with Flex, but there's a lot of great scripts/libraries/frameworks out there, if you explain a bit more of what you're trying to accomplish I can give more directed guidance.
I have clients that ask for animations that will work on ipad. For that it would have to be non flash. They will also want the animations to work in IE. My question is, is there a best practice for this? I am assuming using flash and export with flash html5 export. Sniff out canvas capability and provide a fallback for IE6/7/8 to flash. The reason is its much faster to build complex character animations with the flash IDE timeline and css3 is better performance. Or is it best practice to build everything in something with javascript, like greensock, and build it one timed function after another. Or is there something that will convert flash or canvas animations to javascript for IE users who don't have flash installed and don't support canvas?
Try Adobe Edge.
http://html.adobe.com/edge/animate/
Looks very impressive.
I am helping to build a video based website. My client wants the website to be viewable on ipads/iphones. Therefore, I absolutely can not require the flash viewer.
One of my developers wants to use AS3 for scripting special features in our player. If AS3 scripting is used, does that mean my users must have the flash plugin?
Thanks!
If it's just about playing videos, then html5 based option would be great. But if the requirement is more complicated and the developer is more comfortable with AS3, then you can have an AIR app re-packaged as iOS app (that's a supported workflow from Adobe).
Yes, the users would have to have the Flash Player installed to view an AS3 flash file (.swf).
But your developers might implement an html5 alternative of the video player for iOS that doesn't require flash (which probably will be missing some of those special features) so the website might still be viewable on iOS devices.
My advice would be to simply ask them if it will work on iPad and iPhone :-)