Adobe is going to kill off Flash in January 2016. It has taken to HTML5.
It is not killing off the Flash Player Browser plugin which it will continue supporting for another five years at least.
But it is killing off Flash Professional, the software authoring tool used to create animations
The death of Flash Professional will take place with the Creative Cloud update coming in January and Flash Professional will have a new name: Adobe Animate CC, says Ars Technica.
It will still be able to produce Flash (SWF) files and continue to support Adobe's standalone AIR runtime, but it also supports building for HTML5 Canvas and WebGL.
Adobe has been steadily moving away from toward HTML5. In 2012, the company released a range of new HTML5-oriented applications under the Edge brand. These included Edge Reflow for easier development of pages using responsive design, Edge Animate for producing animations, and Edge Inspect for multi-device debugging.
These products are being discontinued and their functionality being incorporated into Adobe's other creative products, Ars Technica said.
Flash Professional, with its HTML5 Canvas and WebGL support, replaces Edge Animate. Flash's enduring longevity was because of its easy timeline-based animation system. Adobe has instead redeveloped Flash Professional to bring its traditional strengths to the HTML5 world.
There's still no strong alternative to Flash Professional for creating interactive and animated HTML5 content. Adobe has successfully handled the transition away from plugins toward to a Web standards world, said Ars Technica.
Here's more on the matter at the Adobe blog
