Animate Alternative for HTML5/Canvas
I’m honestly stunned that Adobe is discontinuing Animate. In my line of work, it was the only authoring tool that truly let me combine code and animation into interactive media. If a real alternative existed, I would have moved on already but there hasn’t been one. Animate was the one piece of software that actually solved this problem, for me and for many others. That makes this decision hard to swallow as a business move. Still, the decision’s been made, and it’s unlikely to be reversed.
Rive looks like it comes closest to what I need, and I plan to explore it. Does anyone know if Rive supports user code in a way similar to Animate?
But here’s the bigger thought: if we can’t find a proper replacement… why don’t we build one?
For HTML5, Animate was essentially an interface, an authoring environment that interpreted a visual timeline and published working code. There’s no law of physics that says this can’t be recreated. A modern web app could absolutely do the same job. CreateJS is still alive as the core runtime library, so the foundation already exists. The engine isn’t gone, the cockpit is. What’s missing is the authoring environment. And that feels like something this community could rebuild.
If Adobe is done with this space, that doesn’t mean the space is done with us.
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