Sometime around the middle of 1992, Jonathan Gay decided he wanted to start a company to make something. You may not know the name FutureSplash Animator, but you certainly know the software it birthed Birth, or a wave of the future In recognition of its service to content creators and consumers of all stripes, of its contribution to the proliferation of online video and multimedia, and of that divisiveness that's followed the platform around, the time has come to revisit the rise and fall of Flash-with a little help from its principal creator, Jonathan Gay a raft of Web resources and interviews with others who had a hand in its ultimate success. But it's safe to say that, after a decade in decline, Flash as we know it is about to say goodbye. The Flash authoring tool is part of Adobe Animate, while the rendering engine is included in Adobe AIR-which will be handed over to enterprise electronics company Harman International for ongoing maintenance, as it's still widely used in the enterprise arena.

Technically speaking, the technology will live on. Even Google Chrome, long the browser of choice for Flash content, will soon remove Flash Player. And already, months ahead of this end-of-life switch, Flash has been disabled in most Web browsers (often flagged as a security risk should you choose to override the default settings). In less than six months-December 2020-Adobe will officially end support and distribution of Flash Player, the browser plugin we all associate most strongly with the technology. For better and worse, it helped shape the Internet of today.īut now, after roughly 25 years, Flash is finally nearing its end. Whichever side of the love-hate divide you land on, there's no denying the fact that Flash changed how we consume, create, and interact with content on the Web. Others abhor Flash-based advertising and Web design, or they despise the resource-intensiveness of the Flash Player plugin in its later years. Many gush over its versatility and ease of use as a creative platform or its critical role in the rise of web video.

Few technologies have yielded such divisive and widespread passion as Flash.

Why did adobe flash shut down