the future of Flash player

[stefanias42466841]

I keep on having this discussion at my department with colleagues: I send them a link with an animation I would like to include on our website, and they say the system it runs on is not longer going to be supported within a few years.  This is an example : http://www.bbc.co.uk/history/interactive/animations/beam_engine/index_embed.shtml

Can you explain to me how this works? How is this animation going to work when Flash Player stops? Do the creators of this animation have to take the initiative to find an alternative application? Or the people who monitor the website upon which it is displayed? And how is this going to work with archived webpages?

If you want to create something similar and anticipate the disappearance of Flash player, what alternative do you use?

I need to know this in order to be able to  communicate with web designers and motion graphic designers, to whom I am going to commission a series of animations,

I would appreciate feedback from people of Adobe them selves, but this system unfortunately does not provide a way of getting into contact with them. I was forced to create an account, which I would rather have not. I think the dependency on Flash Player, and the announcement of its retirement,  Adobe to kill off Flash plug-in by 2020 - BBC News  would be reason to support customers in looking for alternatives and explaining how to go about,

Hope someone can explain,

best

Stefania Scagliola

[moderator: fixed bbc.co.uk/history link (it was going to Outlook Web App login, instead of the expected location]

[_maria_]

Hi,

The Flash Player Product Manager is best suited to answer your questions.  He's notified of forum posts, but I'll forward yours along to him.  In the interim, here's the link to Adobe's official announcement, which contains additional information the BBC News post doesn't:  https://blogs.adobe.com/conversations/2017/07/adobe-flash-update.html

--

Maria

[chris.campbell]

Hello,

I agree with your colleagues, it's going to get harder and harder to run this content over the next 3 years.  First (and most importantly) your customers/viewers will find it increasingly difficult to enable Flash content in their browsers as they each take steps to block Flash from running.  Then, as the article notes, Flash will go away entirely at the end of 2020.

My recommendation would be for the BBC to convert this content to another standard.  What's used will depend on the content, but in the example you've shown I couldn't imagine it would be that difficult to do this in "html5".  Adobe has tools like Animate CC that will assist content owners in converting content from Flash to HTML.  Here's an article that shows how this can be done:

What to expect when converting Flash to HTML5 | Creative Cloud blog by Adobe

Thanks,

Chris

[stefanias42466841]

Thanks a lot, So, I read the article, but I am stil left with some questions: let's check whether my understanding  as a lay person of the consequences of this transition is correct:

- I have always assumed that FLASH was software that enabled you to see dynamic, time based, content, you create whatever content: a recording, an animation, a filmclip, in a specific format and you publish it online, but to be able to see or hear it, you need to download Flash player

- But when you are talking about 'conversion' from FLASH into HTML, it suggests that it is a format in which the content is created, not something through which you get access to it, is that correct?

Let's take the animation of the "BBC as an example:

     - it was created in whatever animation program in the year x

     - it could be viewed on anybody's screen through the software of Flashplayer, something that had to be downloaded

     - now FLASH is gradually going to disappear

     - why can't you just replace FLASH player by a  HTML software package with the same function?

     - From what I understand from your response: to be able to sustain the animation, that is make it still work in the next 10 years, it is not a question of making sure you have the successor of Flash on your computer, you have to actively take the content of the animation,

       convert it into a different computer language HTML, and the publish it again

     - Does this mean that if no one at the BBC converts the animation, it will be lost when FLASH disappears? Or can someone who gets to the animation, sees that it cannot  be opened, get hold of something to convert it and still see it. In other words, are the ways in which the audience can resort to alternatives?

   - I try to understand it by comparing it with searching for music of some obscure band that is not available on the web, you can only get cassettes and you can only listen to it if you have a cassette player. If you happen to have one, you can still listen to the music, and if you have the right tools, you can digitise it and put in on the web,

Hope this attempt to understand the logic and consequences of the disappearance of FLASH  is successful. If I were Adobe, I would invest in creating a clip that explains how to deal with this problem to lay people, it would create a lot of goodwill. It makes them better partners in projects with computer science and software developers. I know that there are many people out there who are afraid to ask, because they fear being perceived as stupid. I don't have that inhibition, and continure asking until I understand,

best

Stef

[Joseph Labrecque]

Yes, if you take no action to convert or rewrite any web based content which targets Flash Player - it for sure will not be viewable/usable on the web past 2020.

[rayek.elfin]

Hi Stefania,

To answer some of your questions:

- the Flash player is required in desktop browsers to view Flash generated SWF (SWF is the output file that is generated from Flash that is deployed to the web, and played using the Flash player plugin in a browser) content. The Beam Engine animation was created in Flash years ago, and it requires a minimum version 7 of the player browser plugin to be installed to work.

- the Flash player only works on desktop machine browsers: Windows, Macs, and Linux.

- the Flash player does NOT work on mobile, for example iPads, iPhones, or Android phones/tablets. The Beam Engine animation is not viewable on mobile devices, and this has been the case since the very first iPad was introduced.

- conversion of Flash content can be 'easy' or 'very difficult' depending on each case.

- non-interactive Flash content (pretty much just an animation that runs without any user interaction) can be relatively easily converted to a movie file. Legacy Flash-based animations and movies can be converted to video in various ways, but it seems Swivel is the simplest method:

http://www.newgrounds.com/wiki/creator-resources/flash-resources/swivel

Newgrounds started out as completely dependent on Flash content, and to preserve all their legacy content they had Swivel developed. They face(d) the same issue as you do now.

- interactive Flash content, such as games and presentations which require user input, cannot be converted easily. Either you record a movie of the entire thing step by step, or you open the legacy FLA file (the original source Flash file) in Adobe Animate CC, and hope for the best - by outputting it to HTML 5. This will break - guaranteed, since old interactive SWF based content relies on a scripting language called "Actionscript", while the newer HTML5 output format requires plain vanilla Javascript. While they resemble each other, they are incompatible. To repair an interactive Flash movie and prepare it for HTML5 output a developer will have to repair/develop it manually.

The trouble is that even with all the code rewritten, it may still not work as expected. The Flash player is a very different technology compared to HTML5, and is still superior in some ways (for example, it is simple to use videos with (semi)transparent areas in SWF output, but really difficult (from a practical point of view) to achieve a similar effect in HTML5 video.

Other issues may pop-up as wel. Html5 is a completely different approach compared to the legacy Flash SWF method.

In short, unless someone at the BBC actively converts each SWF to a movie file AND adds a link and/or embeds the actual converted movie(s) to the respective legacy pages, YOUR SWF-based LEGACY CONTENT IS LOST. Luckily, as long as your legacy content is mainly auto-playing and requires no interactive input, you can use Swivel to convert your existing SWF content directly to 1080p quality MP4s. Batch processing is supported. For a quick basic usage overview, read

http://www.newgrounds.com/wiki/creator-resources/flash-resources/swivel#wiki_toc_3

MP4 is playable in most modern browsers (Chrome, IE, and Firefox), including mobile devices. Do realize high-resolution quality MP4 files may very well require much more server space, and increase the used bandwidth considerably. Flash SWF files are generally very optimized, and another reason why they worked so well for animations.

I hope this is helpful.