Is Animate just Repurposed Flash?

[Jason Burnett]

I have been playing with Animate for a while and wondered if this is just Flash with a new name? It does rudimentary animations and though it claims to support Canvas, it still uses Actionscript 3.0 instead of Javascript. 

Can someone explain why Animate exists and why it doesn't support HTML5/CSS3/ES6 for web content? Will this product continue to be supported if it's not compatible with iOs devices?

I started with Flash and was crushed that it cannot be used anymore. I learned JS and HTML5 and now I can do just about everything I used to be able to do with Flash in JS. Why Animate? It seems like a step in the wrong direction. Please explain. Thanks.

[n. tilcheff]

Hi mate,

Animate is Flash.

After the vicious attack led by Apple and the all-too-easy capitulation by Adobe, it became fashionable to hate Flash and every random Internet user joined.

In a clumsy attempt for a reset, they chose this non-name for the application and for a while decided to focus on the only loyal customer base they had - character animators.

That's why the stupid name - Animate.

I would not qualify the animation capabilities as 'rudimentary'. Quite the opposite. It has serious UX flaws, but the potential and capabilies are huge and have always been. Many animated TV series and feature films have been made in Flash.

But just like there is no cure for schizophrenia, they are again in full relapse, trying to cover all potential bases - VR, HTML5, animation production, children, professionals and what not - spreading too thin with all the expected consequences - leaking loyal users like never before.

[ClayUUID · Accepted solution]

Also, no, Canvas documents do NOT use ActionScript. They use plain vanilla JavaScript, with CreateJS as the backing API.