Air is Dead

[72Pantera]

Let's face it guys. Air is Dead.  Look at the feature list for 4.0.  The pace of development and bug fixes have slowed to a crawl.

It's presented to us as a mobile development platform but you can't pick a video from the Gallery, read the Contacts database or Play a movie.  The forums are full of bugs and when Adobe rarely chimes in it's to ask us to vote.  Shouldn't you just fix bugs?

It's touted as a cross platform mobile environment but it's not listed in a single article comparing them.  No new developer in his right mind would program in Flash at this point. I did for ten years but I'm done. Tired of spending hours on bugs and workarounds.

I wish Adobe would spin out the two or three guys still working on it and open source it.  Maybe they could call themselves MacroMedia.

[Massimiliano_Carli_-_temp]

To say the truth for this I would have an idea (and a bit more). Tell Adobe to open up its marketplace for the provisioning of online services made _WITH_ the application capabilities available thanks to the Flash/AIR platform (as client side technology, in the form: web + desktop application + mobile sidecar application) and the support of a realtime engine server technology (with media servers integration).

The service platform should be skilled to service the online marketplace of worldwide professional users collecting monthly fees ($$). (real cloud-ing).

I see colossal businesses in this direction. Adding this 'new feature' in Adobe means that Adobe HQ will perceive Flash like a central technology (like us - with the consequential benefits for the runtime).

More. This new move from Adobe and the Flash to-OSS transition may have the numbers to shock a bit (as effect, needs to go in-depth) the Flash CC subscriptions collection[1] and the worldwide general interest in the Flash platform could increase if god wants (we have not to exclude that with this approach to Flash marketplace in a near future we could get AIR for Android X86 from Google for free - or with their help).

The entire move before go-to-market can be not so expensive (but we need development time, which we have).

The real match is the design of the overall platform.

In case I can help.

mc

[1] and exists also a hidden new opportunity for more flash developers (of subapps) -- added

[rionero_in_volture]

This is a post very interesting and smart for me.

I say something stupid: if we give the coup de grace to Air? He's dying ... kill it!

a compiler that produces javascript+html. Like typescript or CoffeeScript or haxe.

encouraged flexjs and will continue to sell FlashBuilder and flashCC as javascript+html editor

do not treat me bad!

[Jonathan_at_Idle_Games]

But.. javascript and html suck. What mailing list IS this anyway?

On Fri, Feb 21, 2014 at 6:51 PM, rionero in volture <

[rionero_in_volture]

I agree with you!

but you would get javascript programming in actionscript (compatible with all devices)

- It 's an approach already used by CoffeeScript and typescript and haxe (if I not mistaken)

- I do not write anything new: FalconJs (IF I DO NOT MISTAKE also this abandoned adobe)

Let us realize that javascript is now everywhere!

Air not support WP8 (and samsung TV),

not on the mobile web

is disappearing from the internet.

no customer ask me a Flash site or Air desktop application (only "facebook gemes" and porn sites)

can be used for games in the mobile (android and ios) and mobile app (with BIG trouble)

So "Air" is only for games on ios and android.

Too little, I need more platforms!

it is clear that I have to move on javascript (for me it sucks!)

in order not to die actionscript, for me, has to export to javascript+html5.

love and peace!

[Massimiliano_Carli_-_temp]

> but you would get javascript programming in actionscript (compatible with all devices)

oh god, in my case I would prefeare to wait when it is really ready the Google RTC technology (although I can't see a good tech model if not with Flash and with his actionscript programming model and swf architecture and multimedia programmable capabilities).

And do you really think to use actionscript for the long time without pure Flash developers? mm..

I clearly ask to 'myself', Adobe is really ready to lose the big opportunity to make so lot more money with Flash? Is ADB ready to lose and to make everybody us to lose the big challenge of the online services [web+application] marketplace available in range of the flash technology?

This is a question for Adobe via Chris: may we have 'detailed' Adobe feedback on this point? And what does Adobe think of my proposal? (msg #182)

the Internet innovation which is partially misunderstandood today of the entire Internet Opportunity but that it is in range for the Flash community of developers and their customers (need also a server side realtime engine - my personal formula) will be not more possible if Adobe does not change plans for Flash - and probably it will remain missed till Google arrives (not sure, see belove).

> no customer ask me a Flash site or Air desktop application (only "facebook games" and porn sites)

> [Flash/AIR] can be used for games in the mobile (android and ios) and mobile app (with BIG trouble)

This is not true, other than games and standalone mobile apps we can make web+desktop+mobile professional [video/multimedia] applications like complete online platforms a lot complex, eventually with websites concepted as in-app modules (and I'm just a step to be ready to test if it is really possible to work semi-completly full screen).

.

Of course we need Adobe++

[FUNE78]

We don't need Adobe for crappy webdevelopement. Every approach Adobe took is a big fail so far. If they don't hurry up and change their culture, they will simply face the same fate as for example Kodak did. It can go down pretty fast, without really noticing it before.

Summarized:

Dreamweaver CC -> very bad Codeeditor, slow and unreliable, the new colorpicker is a joke, etc.

Flash CC -> no export for industry-standard flashplayers, no actionsscript 2 support, buggy and slow, etc.

Photoshop CC -> no real improvements since years, often not 100% accurate, not fully multicore-capable, etc.

CreativeCloud -> The paymentmodel is pretty arrogant, because technically you would never need a single update anymore to their software

The list is much longer, but if you don't see that Adobe is just there because they are the only ones which offer certain type of programms, you sir must be blind.

[rionero_in_volture]

my "idea" is old and not original.

for example, Typescript, coffeescript, google dart also flexjs or haxe.

All systems to get javascript without using javascript.

Let us realize that flash is not needed anymore to anything!

As a plug-in for the games has been overcome by Unity3D.

That, unlike ADOBE, we invest a lot.

The product is constantly evolving (Unlike Adobe).

Have a dedicated web site (as opposed to Adobe).

Their product is PROMOTED (as opposed to Adobe).

As a platform for making applications do not talk!

Has serious problems to do basic things.

I read: "use the ANE" .... NO!

I don't want to use ANE to make toast messages! to take a picture from your camera roll, to do a share!

I don't want to use a code snippet made by a 16-year-old and use it for my business and pray that it works!

I want to use ANE to connect to arduino or kinetc! YES!

Also does not support WP8 and there is no way to put the maps!

It is not something that Adobe should forget this!

In the end Adobe should realise that without us developers its products worth less than "minefield"

They are lucky they have photoshop and graphics are hard to learn something new.

In short, I agree with "Panther" at 100%. We are not "troll" (TROLL??? that is the blog of a teenager???).

We are in love with actionscript and there crying my heart seeing him die without anyone to do anything ... or see people pretend that nothing is happening.

p.s.

I really appreciate flash developers (which will be 2 or 3 now)!

[Jonathan_at_Idle_Games]

I'm officially making an "AIR IS DEAD" -> Skip Inbox filter

On Tue, Feb 25, 2014 at 2:11 AM, rionero in volture <

[72Pantera]

While simultaneously bringing it to the top of the forum and emailing everyone.  Brilliant!

[makc3d]

It's not about making sense.

It's about sending the message.

[iNDDev]

Jonathan[...] says, "I'm officially making an "AIR IS DEAD" -> Skip Inbox filter"

Ditto.  What a waste of time.  I am not even reading these posts anymore.  It's a flame war (or maybe just a taunting from a car as you drive by).  These opinions flit around aimlessly while the rest of my life and programming moves on. 

[Massimiliano_Carli_-_temp]

rionero you are not a (self) flash/air developer. (ps probably now I understand adobe)

(up) deleted.

[rionero_in_volture]

Why not? Since flash 4 (if I'm not mistaken)

I used to make sites, games and interactive totems.

What I wrote is wrong?

You should write the reason of your accusations.

Maybe I was wrong to write something, I have a bad English, I know!

[Oldes]

rionero in volture wrote:

my "idea" is old and not original.

for example, Typescript, coffeescript, google dart also flexjs or haxe.

All systems to get javascript without using javascript.

And so what? I use javascript from time to time since 90s. And honestly I sniff something wrong, when there are scripts-languages, which emits JavaScript. I always expected that there will be used bytecode instead of obfuscated gziped texts, seems I was wrong. But I still must admit, that you can do nice things in JS, although for example HTML5 video still sucs with comparison to Flash video on my notebook, but that's another story. If you think that JavaScript will give you something what you need, you can use it - now. Why to kill AIR in favour of it?

Let us realize that flash is not needed anymore to anything!

As a plug-in for the games has been overcome by Unity3D.

That, unlike ADOBE, we invest a lot.

The product is constantly evolving (Unlike Adobe).

Have a dedicated web site (as opposed to Adobe).

Their product is PROMOTED (as opposed to Adobe).

When Flesh is not needed anymore to anything - as you say - you are not flash developer anymore. Believe it or not, there are people, I'm one of them, who needs Flash and simply cannot imagine how to do work which I do (now) in anything else (now). I can easily imagine, I would not use AIR (although using AIR is much more simple for me than go native route now, so why to leave it), but I need Flash Pro IDE to create animations and put all the pieces we make together. Yes, it requires more that to press Shift-Alt-F12 like a few years ago, but it's ok. I'm lucky I know how to get job done.

If you talk about Unity, yes, in some cases it's easier to use their product, but for me it's not useful - it's for making 3D aps and I never liked (to play) all these 3D games. I was silent member of Unity2D prerelease, and still don't see anything, what would simplify my work. And I've not seen that the evolution was so rapid as you say. Actually in our company we have 2 teams, one which choose Unity and one which use Flash/AIR - my team (gues which one it is) will show our work on IGF this year, the second simply don't have anything to show. So it's not that you choose Unity3D and win everything.

What kind of promotion do you need from Adobe, you are talking about? Yes, they should be more blogging about their work (for example about new features in AIR), but do they need to repeat all the time that Flash is for vector animations? Unity3D is not that old product, so I understand they need to market it more. Also they are not corporation as Adobe and that's what I like on them. Also they have the Asset store, but it's more logical to have it, when you do 3D words. Adobe start's to have ANE's stores, which you don't like.

As a platform for making applications do not talk!

Has serious problems to do basic things.

I read: "use the ANE" .... NO!

I don't want to use ANE to make toast messages! to take a picture from your camera roll, to do a share!

I don't want to use a code snippet made by a 16-year-old and use it for my business and pray that it works!

I want to use ANE to connect to arduino or kinetc! YES!

so... as I said, you don't like ANEs, somebody else does. Again - what's so wrong with ANEs? It's the only logical way how to communicate with hosting platform and not bloat runtime. I don't understand your note about 16-year-old - why you should use some teenager's code (which may be good btw.) and not write your own? Is it so complicated? Start writing ANEs and one day you may realize, that you know the hosting platform so well, that you don't need AIR anymore.

Also does not support WP8 and there is no way to put the maps!

It is not something that Adobe should forget this!

I want AIR to support WP8 as well, but I also know, that the market share is still minimal. Just today I read that median revenue per app, per month is $1-$50 on WP/Win8 in comparison $500-$1000 on iOS. Regarding maps, I was able to use Google maps with AS2, so I don't think there is no way to use maps.

We are in love with actionscript and there crying my heart seeing him die without anyone to do anything ... or see people pretend that nothing is happening.

Not true - it's happening quite a lot, more that I can catch. I could be learning something new instead of writing this long post. I would say I'm in love with my woman and children, but not with ActionScript. Don't take programming languages as religion, always try to learn something new! And use what is the best at this moment for your needs.

Ciao.

[rionero_in_volture]

What I mean is:

1) do not say that it would be nice to have javascript from actionscript.

I say it's a way not to kill Flash.

It is an idea that also had Adobe years ago. (FalconJS)

In fact there is project FlexJS

2) I'm not saying that Unity3D is better.

I say that Unity3D became a worthy competitor to Flash.

Flash is an Adobe product.

Adobe has a lot of money more Uity3D team

Logical deduction: Adobe is not investing about Flash.

3) I'm not saying that there is something wrong in the ANE

I say that some things there should be internal.

notifications or the camera roll or contacts

In fact PhoneGap has them.

4) I'm not saying that either a large share wp8

I say that the last two customers wanted: ios, android and wp8.

There is no "ane" that can solve this problem.

I am not the only one:

https://bugbase.adobe.com/index.cfm?event=bug&id=3648920

5) not saying I love flash as a person.

I say I'm sorry for a technology that could have happened was abandoned by Adobe.

I thank you for philosophy "feel free to learn new linguaggi di programmazione"

... in fact I come here just to distract me from the tutorial to unity3d.

(excuse me for saying so but it's annoying to read these "tips"

I'm not your son)

I express my opinion of the customer (to pay adobe a monthly subscription).

Adobe should be happy to receive my criticism.

Hello

for maps (google), as far as I know, there is no easy way to put them in flash.

I had to do MY implementation for mobile to show maps bing directly in flash.

And, since I had to use google map, I found a trick to communicate with webstage.

it is a "trick" and no flash overlay.

But the map are important for mobile app!

Why Adobe hasn't tried a solution?

[makc3d]

I don't know if you guys actually remember but you could make swfs using javascript long time ago. It was called AS1

[rionero_in_volture]

as1 I used several!

There I also did a chat almost 20 years ago.

My flash actionscript communicates via javascript to an applet to connect on tcp on a java server .... I am not kidding!

That good times!

[Joel_TPE]

Just came across this article: HTML5 vs. PhoneGap vs. Xamarin vs. Native

http://blah.winsmarts.com/2014-2-HTML5_vs_PhoneGap_vs__Xamarin_vs_Native.aspx

Unfortunately the author didn't mention about AIR, if the Author would put in AIR, personally I can see that AIR would be the best choice among all.

We can see that for many people/companies who are serious about mobile today, they are all struggling about whether to go native, hybrid or HTML5 (mobile web). But there is no perfect solution among all, it seem to be gainning on one side and losing on the other side, whether they choice native or hybrid or HTML5.

What actually to be considered when making this decision are:

1) Cross-platform (AIR is)

2) Performance (AIR very close to native)

3) Development Cost (AIR is FREE)

4) Access native functions (AIR + ANE)

5) Development Tools (Flash Pro, Flash Builder and many more)

6) Speed of development and maintenance (AS3 = OOP)

If you are serious about your career in mobile, you have to know and learn some native language (Obj-C, Java), don't be lazy and hoping someone (Adobe) to do everything for you, learning some native language is for your own good. AIR + ANE is almost the best option for mobile development in the market.

Adobe is committed to continue support the runtime and improve the performace of AIR, AIR is not dead, it's just that it does not go with the way you expected it to be (What we expected it to be is for us to be lazy, let Adobe do everything for us).

Conclusion:

AIR (The ability to cross platform) + ANE (The ability to access native function and future proof as mobile device evolve) is the future of mobile development the market are looking for.

AIR + ANE = The Future. Let's promote it!

[AsterLUXman]

Thank you, Chris, for your work and dedication, in helping make AIR/Flash/AS3 into such a truly great cross-platform development environment, as well as for your sustained involvement with the community & forums over the years!

I  personally really enjoy the language and API, and depend on it for my business -- as do a lot of people.  Furthermore, the reality of app development being what it is, I earnestly couldn't afford to stay in business if I had to commit to a single platform, especially in the current mobile landscape.

As we know, the AIR/Flash environment has been unfairly maligned by faddists and vested-interests in recent years -- we know who they are --, but for developers who use it day to day, and are savvy enough to know the difference, these negative views clearly do not fit the reality of what AIR is and provides, today.  Happily, though, it's good to see that many people are finally catching on!  You guys deserve it.

Cheers.

[flexengineer]

Retweeted Joseph Labrecque (@JosephLabrecque):

"We are absolutely committed to moving Flash Player and AIR forward" 02/14/2014 -@ChrisAtAdobe [Flash Runtimes PM]

[Sebastien_M]

Hi Chris,

Adobe AIR is committed to supporting iOS and Android mobile platforms.  At this time we do not have plans to extend this support to new operating systems but we will continue to evaluate these opportunities going forward.

I  can understand all you concerns about quality and security but I'm a bit/lot disapointed when I read something like that. I'm commited to Flash from years now and one thing I have always loved about Flash is the cross-platform feature. Now Flash just support 2 mobile OS - it's not really what I call cross-platform - It's more develop once and then compile for all the supported platform. Mobile is a huge base of users today and target the more important OS should be priority - personnal opinion here. Adobe promotes a lot Flash as a really good solution to develop games so should be logical to target platforms where those players are. Windows Phone is not that much important today but it exists and has a user base - it's a shame to not be able to deliver our games/productions to those players.

Besides that I'm happy to see Flash and Action-Script still evolving and I'm pretty sure I will still be commited to those techs for a long time.

[Phasor1]

Hi Chris,

I know the new features are not yet closed, but what about easy / problem-free StageVideo and Stage3D integration?. I can not believe this feature it's not so important to many developers. I think the integration of video should be a key feature in a multimedia platform like Flash / AIR. Adobe actually promotes it in their roadmap (gaming + video).

Thanks

[Jean-Marc_Le_Roux]

Hello Chris,

I've never heard any platform developer saying that "security", "quality" and "performance" were not in their intent or somehow even remotely critical. Yet, those are just words and, no offense, but as a developer it sounds to me a lot more like corporate bullsh*t than an actual plan. Without a cold hard feature list I won't believe you because:

• Adobe has publicly claimed there would be no major upgrades/additions (and the "Flash Player Next" section of your roadmap is a good reminder of that).
• Those new "features" cannot even remotely begin to compare with the start of what the competing platforms are doing (namely HTML5 and Unity).

I spent the majority of my time during 2013 listening and interacting directly with our customers.  That includes developers on this forum, our strategic partners, and thousands of end users using Flash Player and AIR.

Well excuse me but I've never heard of you guys.

Yet we've tried! For the past 4 years we've been building Minko (http://minko.io), one of the largest open source projects for Flash. We're building a direct competitor of Unity using AIR, Flex and Flash, working with major game companies (Ubisoft, Chillingo, BigPoint...). We also take a great deal out of helping the community by contributing actively in every Online Flash Conferences (our presentations are in the top 10% of whole SlideShare with more than 10 000 views, so it looks like someone cares...).

We even created a way to program the GPU using AS3 and runtime-compilation. We also created an awesome shader editor called ShaderLab. Not a single word from you guys. Not even a blog post or a tweet AFAIK. The guys from FlashDaily seem to care more than you ever did.

We took every opportunity to tell you what's wrong with your products and we've always tried to do our best to help.

And neither Adobe nor the Flash/AIR dev team ever cared to answer. Not a single time.

Flash/AIR platform was evolving too slowly for our needs.

And we're a team of just 7 developers! Just... 7! We work with companies that hire dozens of Flash devs: I can't imagine how they feel right now.

In the last year, we've started re-writting Minko entirely using only standards (C++, JavaScript...). We now have close to 1 million lines of code 100% portable to target Windows, Mac, Linux (remember Linux?), Android, iOS and HTML5 from a single code base. Feature wise, we already have more than what Flash can do and we haven't even released a first beta. And it works flawlessly even in HTML5 with close to native performances!

We've got all the features we've been asking you for years, and even more. What did we do? Stop using AS3 and Flash.

And yet we still have that charming "develop once, deploy everywhere workflow".

Do you know how many optimization tricks we used? None.

Do you know how much the things we lack in AS3/Flash/AIR have proven to be actually useful? Just about invaluable.

Do you know how much the developers/community of the platforms we used care about our work? A lot.

Actually, a single HTML page with a rotating cube got more attention from the Mozilla guys and he JS community than our dozen of cool Stage3D demos ever did, especially from Adobe. But I guess Flash already has too many open source project with 1 million lines of code, right?

We would like to keep targeting Flash because we love it.

Yet you guys "apparently" dropped Crossbridge. You know, that tool supposed to bring close to native performances. But "performance" is supposed to be at the core of your 2014 strategy, right? Doesn't look like it in the facts.

The corresponding issue has been opened for 4 months, with 55 comments from the community. And no one from Adobe answered. So we've built all this awesome tools for Flash/AIR. You never cared about any of it. And now we're going to deliver it to just about any developer in the world except the Flash community because, then again, you guys failed to do what you promised.

Now, you are crossing an even bigger line.

Community wise, the Flash Online Conference have been running for more than a year now. It's one of the biggest (if not the biggest) Flash event with dozens of developers for each event. And it's not like they are many Flash events to attend to, right ? So many talented people from the community taking so much time to make so great conferences about all the stuff they're trying to pull out for Flash and AIR.

Yet, how many times did Adobe participate? Not a single one out of 8 conferences. The least you could do is stop telling us you're talking to developers. Because that means a) we're not important enough to be those "developers" you're talking about or b) you're not really doing it that much.

In any case, that's an insult to the hard work of those talented guys.

Regards,

[slizzart]

Hi Chris,

It was a very positive surprise this morning to see the updates in the roadmap and thanks for sharing here as well.

As all of us here I love Flash/AIR and I keep basing my business on that, hence I'm constantly worried regarding its future (I used to work with Director and the way it 'disapeared' felt weird).

My problem is that Adobe has stayed extremely quite the past 3 years regarding this unfair non-sense (Flash/AIR is dead and HTML5 is the future (yeah 2020) etc.) and by that I mean that it feels to me that the burden was shifted to the community to keep it "alive".

Community did great things (with Adobe's support in many projects) however the trend hasn't changed. Any question regarding Flash or AIR at Casual Connect this year in Amsterdam resulted to 'Flash is dead' and many loughs. This is not a big problem unless you work with clients that are not very technical and also speak with competitors. Those competitors wheather they're able to deliver or not will poison the clients with the Flash is dead bs. That sometimes scares clients away

Even if we know how much is true and how much isn't, I think that Adobe should start marketing it a bit better and be more protective over its technology by strong presence in such conventions. It might be that in theh States MAX is enough but here in Europe it's a bit of a problem. Here, outside of the Flash/AIR circles, Flash/AIR is dead and Adobe has stopped developing it.

Regarding cross-platform as others also mentioned in the cross-platform gaming scene now the main alternative is Unity3D, I already know that it would be a hassle for me to build the rest of my game with Unity3D as it's mostly a game engine and not as generic as AIR, however I can ship my game to Win8 devices as well (not to mention consoles cause they're out of my league budget wise). On the other hand at the moment Facebook is more important so I don't mind the trade of Win8 devices for good stable desktop flash. However it would be nice to know that once Win8 is stabilized and has enough users (that could very easily happen this year) Adobe will add that in its arsenal in a sensible for our business timeframe.

To wrap it up, in my ideal world Win8 would be supported in Q3 (if needed) and Adobe starts being much more vocal about AIR and the gaming SDK (joining conventions, starting contests etc.). If I had to chose honestly I'd love to see the latter!

Thanks for all the good work and the great news!!!

[72Pantera]

I love(d) Flash - I'm just willing to admit that it's dead. That's not trolling; its just a fact. Was Visual Basic great? Yes, but it's dead.  Dead means that the controlling company has either stopped developing or turned the burn rate down to a pilot light. Don't be fooled by the fact that Adobe still publishes a RoadMap and keeps one guy working on it.  As Jean-Marc demonstrated above - they've stopped. The sad part is that it had/has such a loyal following that developers have continued to stack bricks on the decaying foundation.

Notice that Chris talks Security and Stability.  Notice too that he never gives any metrics on their effort.  I'm for freedom, equality and jobs in America but that's not a plan. It's 2014 and you can't mix Stage3D and StageVideo.  You can't pick a video from the GalleryPicker.  You can't integrate to the Contacts, Email or Notification system on the 2 billion smartphones in the world.

Even the die-hard among you know what the 2014 RoadMap for a viable cross platform development environment should look like. It would be two pages - not ten sad bullets.

Windows8 now ships with every new PC and Microsoft has it running on tablets and phones. The reason that Adobe won't commit to support it is the same reason they haven't fixed the two year old URLLoader bug:

THEY HAVE NO RESOURCES COMMITTED TO FLASH!

They can't come to shows. They can't fix bugs.  They can't add platforms. They can't monitor the forums. They haven't even removed Flash Next from the Roadmap. They have no resources.

Anyone who can look at the state and pace of mobile and hold the 2014 Flash/Air RoadMap up to that light will reach the same conclusion:

AIR is DEAD.