The King is dead, long live the King

Flash, the once beloved darling of the internet age is taking its last breaths as Adobe finally kills off the brand name.

Five years ago, Apple’s Steve Jobs predicted that HTML5 would usurp the leader in web graphics, and many carriers were quick to drop Adobe within the following years. Even Android, who leveraged the power of Flash Player on devices equipped with the operating system eventually caved to industry pressure and pulled support from the operating system. As time goes on. HTML5 continues to get more community and industry support, and is looking like a strong replacement for the aging platform.

The move itself is more of a marketing ploy however, as we’ve seen with the rebranding of Internet Explorer to the Edge Browser, Flash is being merged with Adobe Animate and will still be prevalent in design circles and still utilized by designers for a few years to come still. While HTML5 is the preferred platform going forwards, Flash as we know it is dying.

Many of us remember our 90’s in the PC era with Shockwave Flash Player, purchased by Adobe early on in the age of the internet, it grew to be the powerhouse on which the web was built when it came to graphical media. Websites like Newgrounds and Kongregate hosted and continue to host vast amounts of flash based games, and many game User Interfaces still use Scaleform software to convert Flash into vector based images for video games.

The Evolution of the internet has had its share of software that has come and gone, we’ll definitely see more software die off as time marches on.