Adobe Flash Sentenced to Death by 2020

Flash has been one of the foundations of online web design and animation for nearly 15 years. The reasonably easy to use interface and graphical support has allowed for some amazing creations. The go-to tool for a long time for fledgling web design, game creation and wannabe animators. Well, unfortunately, Flash has been given its death sentence as Adobe has confirmed that it will formally discontinue Flash by 2020.

I will miss Adobe Flash

I have used Adobe Flash for quite a long time. Long enough that I remember it before it was called Adobe Flash. I remember it as Macromedia Flash and to be honest when Adobe bought it in 2005, I had pretty much lost interest. I had little talent for animation and even less for drawing on a PC. That doesn’t mean, however, that the announcement, via TechPowerUp, isn’t a little disappointing to me.

From about 2002-2005,  I did have a lot of interest in amateur animation, particular in the golden days of Newgrounds.com where there was some pretty funny stuff and talented people around.

Some of my favorite animators at the time included: Egoraptor (before game grumps and fame ruined him… not really), Ebolaworld (now known on YouTube as Samination), Dave (Retarded Animal Babies) and HotDiggetyDemon.

The end of flash is, therefore, quite a sad occasion. It marks the end of a great era of online entertainment and creativity. Now, admittedly, most of those I named above have moved onto different formats for their work, but I know for a fact that Adobe Flash is still widely used.

Why are they killing Adobe Flash and the impact this will have on Newground

Largely, because the program has some security exploits that are hard to plug. You may have recently heard how Firefox (kinda) stopped supporting Flash due to security concerns. In addition, there was also a major security concern found when Abode attempted to fix the previous vulnerabilities just last October.

There are good alternatives to Adobe Flash these days as well. When Adobe bought the rights to Flash back in 2005, their own in-house animation program had failed. Flash was at the time, more or less, at the peak of its powers. Since then, however, HTML5 has become a far more secure and stable program for web design. Flash has, almost, come full circle with it now, again, being the tool of the animator.

Now, I am not specifically plugging Newgrounds as a website. Tom Fulp, however, was one of the first break out stars of the internet with his Flash animation website. Declining use of animation, increase in internet speeds (meaning video could be streamed rather than Flash having to pre-load graphics) and the growth of youtube has seen the website struggle in recent years. It is possible that the end of Flash may also spark the end of Newgrounds.

Now, I hope that isn’t the case, but that would be a genuinely sad thing. I have no idea what’s currently the most popular animation on Newgrounds, this is, however, the one that introduced me to them. How’s this for a nostalgic blast from the past? Animated in full with Macromedia flash nearly 12 years ago. Now, ironically brought to you via YouTube, the beast that killed it.