One of Steve Jobs’ wishes finally came true as Adobe begins to veer away from Flash and adopt HTML5.
Adobe has announced plans to rebrand its Flash Professional CC software as Animate CC to acknowledge a growing shift away from Flash.
The company explained than a third of content created in Flash Pro CC uses HTML5, leading the company to rename the software to “accurately represent its position as the premier animation tool for the web and beyond.”
As such, the name of Flash Professional CC has been changed to Animate CC, which Adobe said will feature updates for the software, including improved drawing, illustration, and authoring support and integration with Adobe Stock and Creative Cloud Libraries.
While Adobe is rebranding to better focus on HTML5, it says the new Animate CC will continue to support Flash (SWF) and Air formats as “first-class citizens,” with work already underway on Flash Player 12.
The new Adobe Animate CC app will be available starting in January. Previous versions of Flash Professional will continue to be available.
Flash has been under scrutiny for the past several years now and Apple’s refusal to support flash on its iOS devices was a major blow to Adobe and declining use led Adobe to eliminate its Flash player for mobile devices in 2011. Major websites have largely transitioned from Flash due to what seemed like unending security vulnerabilities, with Amazon no longer accepting Flash ads and Facebook’s lead security engineer calling for the death of Flash.
Stay tuned for additional details as they become available.