Adobe to kill Flash Player plugin in 2020

[Tycho Magnetic Anomaly]

First the news by MS they are dropping MS Paint form future releases of Windows..

...and now this announcement by Adobe. Sure it was inevitable, but the cold reality of the final death of Flash is lingering even more in the air.

RPS article:  https://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2017/07/26/adobe-to-kill-flash-player-in-2020/

I am looking at this as a two fold thing. from a web standard point of view but also as a web content tool / artist tool.

As a web standard, well this news dose not bother me so much because combinations of HTML / CSS can do what flash was doing.

As a content tool for artists (emphasis on the "artist") is un-supprising news yet saddens me that no alternate tool has been made by anyone that comes remotely close to Flash.
Creating rich visual content for the web is now solely in the domain of coders that know how to use HTML5/CSS (with support from artists).. and its a final nail in the coffin for artist that can't code.  I mean just look at the web today, sanitized web designs and layouts all over the place. A far cry from the rich visual experiences you got when flash was at its height that now today's average bandwidth can more then handle and I think its because coders are leading the development of web designs rather then artists.

Its been clear for many years now that HTML5 was bound to take over, yet nobody seems to have considered a HTML5 alternate that an artist can use with little or no code knowledge,  even Adobe themselves... the same Adobe that seemed to cherish "the artist" with its other products seems to have chosen to abandon the artist in such a major field of modern technology, ie the web.

thoughts?  .. I know some of you still use flash, perhaps not in a web content context, but still, the death of it as a web standard will inevitably follow the discontinuation of developing the software itself, even if your not using it for web content.

[MysteryMeat]

Personally I think this is good. Adobe Flash player has been a dead albatross for years, from the still unpatched security flaws to the just awful optimization. It being officially dead will hopefully encourage programmers to seize the market with an HTML5 or css based animation program capable of what flash is.

As for the other part I think Microsoft might have actually released a statement saying they take it back on mspaint being dead

[eishiya]

I'm with MM, I'm glad it's dying. The Flash-heavy period was the worst period of the web, in my opinion. The over-plainness of the web now is not a consequence of losing flash, but of responsiveness - designers don't want to put the work in to develop beautiful artwork that looks good on all screen sizes, or artwork that is only seen by half of the visitors. Even then, I prefer this over-plainness to the usability nightmare that was Flash.

I feel like your "it's only for coders" sentiment is conflating Flash the technology with Flash the authoring tool. Just because there aren't great HTML5 authoring tools now doesn't mean there won't be in the future.

There are already plenty of resources out there for designers to write dynamic CSS-based content without knowing how to code (in the form of well-organized code sample libraries with demonstrations). There are already JS+Canvas engines that abstract away the hard parts of coding visuals and interactivity. Creating a visual editor is probably the next step. With Flash officially dying, the demand for such tools is likely to increase to the point where creating them becomes viable.

[Tycho Magnetic Anomaly]

How I see it is perhaps flash was ahead of its time (back then),  most peoples bandwidth struggled to load flash content quickly enough, I think if flash had arrived now (but without the existence of html5) things might have been different.

Regarding the security issues, well I think long before flash was marked for death people (folks influential in web standards) started to disregard it, so less and less effort and time was put into patching security issues. I am sure its the same with any other medium, they all suffer security issues but are eventually patched sufficiently due to continued development and confidence of filling a web standard.

Also can you name one webtool that is non-coder friendly that exists today that can take full advantage of the power of html5/css in the same extensive way flash did?
I am sure some will come, but I think its a bit slow in coming. I have used some tools such as Macaw (discontinued now ) which enabled "decent" designing of web content, but was a far cry away from what flash (the software) could do in the hands of an artist. Ok sure flash has its action script but even without using that (or very minimal) an artist could produce something great.

I realize websites these days are far more complicated in context to function and back-end stuff, clients demand so much more such as social integration, dynamic content, responsive layouts/light weight..etc etc and HTML 5/css are doing a fantastic job of that, but I feel flash was never given the opportunity to try integrate itself into modernizing web standards because of the hate for it so early on in its evolution.

Also I am not saying that websites are boring these days, there are many many awesome designs out there, but the more exotic designs that an artist could have otherwise have done in flash (or something like it) are now solely in the realm of experienced web coders.

Just goes to show how important some knowledge of code is these days for an artist to apply his or her trade in areas of digital interactive mediums.

I knew flash was pretty much dead for a long while now, yet I am still sad to see it go and sad to hear adobe announce its final nail for its coffin.

I had many wonderful years with flash, so long!

King of the impossible!