Life After Flash

On Monday, November 30, 2015, Adobe announced that FlashProfessional CC will be replaced by Adobe Animate CC in early 2016. It’s thesame program, only the name is changing. In our eLearning space, we use or seeFlash every day. It’s so ubiquitous that sometimes a single web page containsmany instances. Yet Flash isn’t an “open” program. It’s 100 percentproprietary. HTML5 is open and doesn’t require a plug-in to be installed foryour browser. Don’t mourn the end of Flash.

The Flash format (FLA and FLV) isn’t going to die in 2016,and probably not in 2017 or 2018 either. According to CNET, about 27 percent ofthe web is still populated by Flash content and Flash ads. Adobe is encouragingweb designers and content developers (that’s us!) to move to Adobe Animate CCand use other software to create content. Our bread and butter programs likeAdobe Captivate and Presenter, Articulate Storyline, and Studio are fine withthis. In fact, they already support responsive web pages and can handle all themedia types we typically put into our lessons. LMSs will like that too. Thebrowsers that display our content will be happy as well. Flash has made mybrowsers crash more frequently than I thought possible.

A wee bit of history

In the mid-1990s, a small company named Macromedia marketeda program called Director. Director could only use pixel-based images to createanimations. For the 1996 release of Director, Macromedia included a “free”program called Flash. The web was nascent and there was growing demand for bothvideo and animated content. Flash used vector graphics where Director couldn’t.Macromedia also released a browser plug-in called The Macromedia Flash Player,along with the Shockwave Player for Director. It was a game changer. Thepromise of a multimedia universe online was becoming a reality.

In 2005, two events changed the web: Adobe bought Macromediaand YouTube launched. YouTube started an avalanche of video content and usedFlash as the method to deliver the content. In 2006, Google bought YouTube. Thepopularity of video rose exponentially, and now there are about 300 hours ofvideo uploaded to YouTube every minute. That’s 18,000 hours of video uploaded eachand every hour of the day! I’ll let you extrapolate that into hours of videoper day and month, but the number is staggering. Then Apple launched the iPhonein 2007. The online world was changing seemingly faster than the speed oflight. Fast forward. By 2009, Flash was everywhere. In 2010 Steve Jobs wrote“Thoughts on Flash.” He announced iPhones and iPads would no longer supportFlash. The Flash world started to crumble.

Ubiquity

Flash is everywhere on the Internet … except on phones.iPhones and iPads, along with Android devices, don’t run Flash. In Figure 1,you can see just how ubiquitous Flash has become. There are no fewer than nine (!)instances in that figure. Each one of the red circles or partial circles in theimage below is a separate instance of Flash on the page!

Figure 1: Each red circle is a Flash instance on the page in thispicture

Problems

Flash is also a security risk. That’s why Mozilla (Firefox)and Chrome “banned” it from their browsers for a while. For years, Adobe hascontinuously updated the Flash Player to close security holes.

It also causes browsers to crash frequently. I’ve blockedFlash from my browser and they sure seem snappier with no Flash running on thepages.

What to do

Are there other tools that can take the place of Flash? Thereality is the FLA and FLV formats are going away, not the program, even thoughit’s going to be called Animate CC. But there are lots of tools to replace it.I’m going to start with the assumption that everyone who uses Flash also usesPhotoshop, so I’ll just leave this at programs that have a timeline. (OK, youcan do timeline work in Photoshop, but it’s a bit of a kluge.)

Animation programs

Adobe Animate CC: The Flash Professional CCreplacement. Some sites, such as SC Magazine, state that using Adobe Animatewon’t remove the security issues associated with Flash, but that’s only if youuse Flash files, which Animate CC can still create.

Adobe Edge Animate: This program publishesHTML5, CSS, and custom JavaScript all based on your animation timeline. It’s asnap to use and when I first tried it, I found myself wishing Flash could bethis easy. It’s great for the animations you’ve been doing.

Crazy Talk & Crazy Talk Animator: This comes in two versions. Thefirst animates talking heads and the second does whole body animations. Thefirst can use your voice and facial movements.

iClone 6: This is the same company that makes Crazy Talk.But this tool is 3-D.

ToonBoom:This software is used by many networks and animation houses, but can be veryexpensive. Their plans include outright purchase as well as subscriptionmodels. The three versions have differing capabilities; only the Premiumversion seems to make sense and it’s just under $2,000.

Adobe After Effects: This is the Swiss ArmyKnife of visual programs. You can create the most polished animations andvideos. If you want to do something you see in your mind, you can do it here.Yes, it has a steep learning curve in the beginning, but once you get theconcepts and two or three paradigms that After Effects presents, you’ll wonderwhy you never used it before. And if you’re a practiced Flash programmer,there’s Action Script in After Effects too.

Video editing programs

PremierePro: Perhaps the most widely usedvideo editing program. You can also animate with it. The beauty of the AdobeCreative Cloud is evident here because the Dynamic Link engine allows you towork with After Effects, Audition, Photoshop, etc., where you can change yourcontent and have it update in Premiere Pro … or vice versa in After Effects.

FinalCut Pro: Only works on Apple desktops and laptops. FinalCut used to bethe program studios used, but it lost that lead when they released a newversion in June 2011. While there have been many updates since then, and the programis as good as it ever was, Apple changed the program without asking their usersand they did not like it. Many switched to Premiere Pro at the time and haven’tswitched back.

Sony Vegas & Sony Catalyst: I’ve always liked Vegas and then VegasPro. I’ve loved this program since it was released in 2001. It was called VegasVideo then. It started as an audio software package and when it added video,the visual feel was intuitive and easy to use. After Sony bought the SonicFoundry company in 2003 they left the programmers alone. My only problem withthe software is that it’s been a bit unstable.

These are the three pre-eminent NLE (non-linear editing)video programs, but they can all be used for so much more.

It’s not going away

Flash isn’t going away any time soon.If this serves any historical perspective, Sony has just announced that as ofMay 2016 they will no longer manufacture and ship Betamax videotape (remembertape?)! It takes a long time to finally see the end of something that’s been asubiquitous as Flash has been over the last 20 or so years. Flash will be withus for a while yet.