Today I noticed that Adobe posted an update on what Flash CC changed compared to Flash CS6 on the adobe blog:
http://blogs.adobe.com/flashpro/2013/05/14/what-is-flash-pro-cc/
What’s already sad is that the article didn’t mention that Adobe dropped the Actionscript 2.0 support, which still is the standard in banner advertising. So if you are in the advertising field, be very carefull with upgrading, you will lose the ability to create or edit your AS2 work files. They also removed the kinematic bone tool, jsfl code hinting, the device central, the project panel and much more. Check the list posted here:
https://forums.adobe.com/thread/1248141
So what do you get for for losing all those features? These are the listed changes:
- Optimized for 64bit macs
- Automated higher resolution exports
- The previously free CreateJS export plugin now is integrated
- The GUI can be colored bright or dark
- Better support for retina Mac displays
- Batch exporting to multiple devices
- Unlimited pasteboard/work area
- Small GUI improvements for animators
- A function to toggle comments
- Build in Creative Cloud support for syncronizing flash settings over 2 devices
There’s also a improved html5 export function, but it’s far worse then the free google tool with the same aim, so I find it hard to take it serious.
This was the smallest most useless update in the history of flash. It’s no wonder that the public has the perception that Flash has been given up on. These updates are minor and only helping very few people. The removal of AS2 and various animator functions on the other hand hits animators of ad material hard.
So what’s the conclusion? Mine is keeping Flash CS6 and not upgrading to Flash CC since CS6 is better for animating – and that’s the only thing that Flash Professional is actually decent for.
For coding I switched to Haxe instead of Flash.
Why Haxe?
Haxe allows a user to develope with a language which was based on Actionscript at some point of time but was developed further while Adobe cancelled their language update AS4. It has frameworks for many tasks, is free, open source and has support for Android and iOs applications. It has proper commandline support, meaning you can easily integrate it into build systems, something that never was possible with Flash. There are more reasons, but the most important is being provided by Adobe themselves. They stopped doing proper improvements to Flash long ago while the Haxe developers are actively improving their product for many years.
As the supported platforms for Flashs are shrinking Haxe allow you to export to:
- SWF (Flash)
- Air (iOs+Android)
- HTML5
- native Android
- native iOs
- native Windows
- native MacOS
- native Linux
- webOS
- etc
There are frameworks like KHA for Haxe that support even game consoles:
http://kha.ktxsoftware.com/?systems
Here’s another interessting read:
http://www.gamasutra.com/blogs/LarsDoucet/20140318/213407/Flash_is_dead_long_live_OpenFL.php
Haxe Site: http://haxe.org/
Der Beitrag Flash CC – the best reason to switch to HAXE/OpenFL erschien zuerst auf notboring dev blog.