[Hopperxx] Farewell Flash

[Danny Kodicek]

And now apparently Adobe are frantically backtracking and saying they
*aren't* ending access to Animate at all but are going to continue to allow
people to use it and retain access to their files.

I'm assuming they have had some severe blowback to this and possibly even
some legal threats - and I'm guessing I'm not the only person who
immediately cancelled my subscription either

On Tue, 3 Feb 2026 at 18:39, Danny Kodicek <dragon at well-spring.co.uk> wrote:

> I'm not clear what they're planning either, but I've seen some speculation
> that they're planning to make an AI-driven animation tool, presumably on
> similar lines to the various video generators like veo. But given that
> these generators can already create animation-like content just as
> well/badly as they make video, I'm not clear what this would add. Anyway,
> it's all rumour for now (I'm not even sure whether the "pivot to AI" quote
> I included comes directly from Adobe or whether it's something I picked up
> from someone else)
>
> On Tue, 3 Feb 2026 at 17:40, Jim Andrews <jim at vispo.com> wrote:
>
>> What does it mean that instead of Animate, they are "pivoting to AI"?
>>
>> I'm currently just starting to use Claude Code. In VSCode. Do they
>> imagine that's pretty much how dev will proceed?
>>
>> Have they put out any info on a more specific vision of the tools we will
>> be using?
>>
>> ja
>> On 2026-02-03 3:21 a.m., Danny Kodicek wrote:
>>
>> Well, you don't have much longer! It's no longer supported as of this
>> month and will be shuttered for good next year. They're basically saying
>> you have a year to get all your work ported into other forms or you'll lose
>> it.
>>
>> On Tue, 3 Feb 2026 at 11:10, Robert Gordon <rob at article19.com> wrote:
>>
>>> I actually still very much have Animate in my workflow. Like many of us,
>>> my catalog went from Director to Flash to HTML5. In that last transition, I
>>> kept all of my assets in Flash (later Animate) ‘cause most of them were
>>> vector and the texture atlas exporting was decent enough. Illustrator and
>>> Photoshop (to my knowledge) still don’t natively support texture atlase
>>> export. Will probably keep Animate around a while longer…
>>>
>>>
>>> r o b
>>>
>>> Robert Gordon
>>> The Article 19 Group Inc.
>>> 514.938.8512
>>> rob at article19.com
>>> www.article19.com
>>>
>>>
>>> On Mon, Feb 2, 2026 at 9:52 PM Danny Kodicek <dragon at well-spring.co.uk>
>>> wrote:
>>>
>>>> I'm guessing everyone here has seen the news that Animate (nee Flash)
>>>> is being abruptly discontinued as Adobe "pivots to AI". Considering that
>>>> it's still very much actively being used as an animation tool, despite the
>>>> death of the SWF online, that really does seem like a very sudden and
>>>> callous move, and one that I think they'll regret.
>>>>
>>>> I found myself thinking about how things might have played out if Adobe
>>>> hadn't decided to kill off Director. Even at the time, Flash was already in
>>>> trouble - it had been seven years since Steve Jobs put the first nail in
>>>> its coffin. Shockwave had already been essentially rendered useless, but
>>>> Director was still a viable tool for making apps. Maybe if Adobe had put
>>>> its force behind Director instead, even melded the two tools into one, they
>>>> could have salvaged the situation.
>>>>
>>>> And with Animate gone, what do Adobe really have left that's unique and
>>>> justifies their exorbitant cost? Photoshop, Illustrator, InDesign are all
>>>> still great, but there are so many cheaper rivals out there (Affinity is
>>>> especially snapping at their heels). The PDF obviously isn't going anywhere
>>>> any time soon, so Acrobat will still be around, but who really uses it now?
>>>> Premiere is still my favourite video editor but obviously there are many
>>>> more. AfterEffects is probably the only truly unique tool in the suite, but
>>>> Adobe has never really known what to do with it and I'm frankly astonished
>>>> it's still going.
>>>>
>>>> Anyway, it's 3am over here so I need to get to bed. But I felt the need
>>>> to raise a glass to our old friend.
>>>> _______________________________________________
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>>>>
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>>
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