Flash player after 2020 ?

[nocs_]

After the latest news about flash player end of life at 2020 i cant find anywhere any answer on this.

Even adobe dont answer at any of my questions about it.

I dont care about web browswers but mostly for desktop application that is using flash player inside its app as embed.

For the moment is personal but later on it will go public after i get the redistribution license and ofcourse first i need to know what will happen after 2020.

Will my desktop application after 2020 even with redistribution license cant use flash player anymore ?

I dont care about updates of flash player but i really need to know if i will be able to use it inside my application.

Does all the desktop games or applications that use flash player will need to migrate to other user interface and rewrite their hole actionscript code into a new language and new user interface because flash player wont exist or we can use the last flash player of 2020 with the ditribution license and we just wont have any other updates on the player after 2020 ?

Can anyone from adobe give us a clear answer on this ?

[Robert Mc Dowell]

First this is one article made by a guy who is part of chrome team (google inc.)

on behalf of Adobe which is already suspicious. The future always depend from developers and users, nothing else.

And today even if youtube switched their movie player to html5 it does not mean that flash/air is dead, millions

websites,developers and users are using it every day and are really happy with it.

Flash Player was abandoned on Linux in 2010, they restart it in 2017 (and it's very good decision) so in 3 years

a looot of things can happen.

Don't worry, they will (or others) find a way to make swf as a standard.

it will be even easier for the end user with web assembly which you can compile any kind of code into C/C++

[nocs_]

Thanks for your response, well there is a big difference between using an activex on a web distributed page over the www and an activex on a desktop application.

On www sure it is not that safe and many malicious attemps have been made cause its easy to create something with it and has an easy language like javascript, it can be in ads, it can be from outsiders using backdoors etc etc that can be found anywhere on www and in most languages too.

But when it comes to local and desktop apps there is not so much threat (except the intentions of the programmer who made the app) other than that is too rare to happen.

As for my needs as a user interface on c++ projects and with functions also from actionscript is what i need and i think many other developers that used flash inside their desktop projects (games or softwares) with air or c++ used it cause of the easy way of making an interface in no time and with very good interface and graphics too.

As about the 2020 the problem is that noone can just wait until the last months or days to know for sure what will happen and if the player will no longer exist, recreating a full game or program from scratch to another language is not a good option.

Thats why i ask and i hope to get an answer sooner rather than getting an answer too late about it.

[Robert Mc Dowell]

Well, many developers think that switch actionscript to js is evolution.... wrong, it's a massive regression and they know it.

12 years ago even one of the author of JS said that JS is not a long term viable solution and mostly very poor in cross OS, cpu and browser stability.

I suggest to sign the petition here GitHub - pakastin/open-source-flash: Petition to open source Flash and Shockwave spec

change language every 10 years is a good way for google/chrome and co to kill the market,

Now what they (US corp, adobe included, they work together anyhow) planned to embed every complex application with a runtime compiler in C/C++, converting all kind of www language, and certainly they will have to include as1/2/3. If they don't, for sure once the web assembly will be out smart developers will do it, and for sure you will be able to integrate it in your desktop app easier than flash player itself I guess. Never mind, millions developers/users won't stay sit down without to do anything btw, I'm also facing the same problem as you, why to reprogram everything since everything is working well? Especially when you spent a lot of time and money to build it?

[nocs_]

Thanks for pointing to that link, yes i have read that once i was searching for an alternative flash player with the same capabilities but nothing exists or they have many bugs for the moment.

And as a flash programmer of as2 you can imagine that it is not about the money though it is a factor for many users but mostly for the time a programmer could spend on projects on a language to achieve what he wants.I didnt even update to actionscript 3 as a programmer cause it was a waste of time for me because simply with as2 and c++ i can do whatever i like to do, even my webpages in as2 is fine i can do any kind of page i liked so why waste time on relearning as3.

Imagine to have to migrate to another language and remake the full codes of as2 into whatever i pick and recreate the full graphics again, finding the positions according to screens again the states of buttons and options, the canvas, the motions, the tweens, etc etc.

When i first read about flash is gonna end at 2020 i though they will not make updates any more but the player for allready created projects or webpages will remain for those who like to use it, but as it seems it may not exist at all after 2020.

So if anyone like to use it, adobe will see that person as a pirate instead of a programmer that spend much time on creating projects in their actionscript and now he has to respend or migrate to other language which is not an option.

What would happen to c++ if it had the same issue and by the way with c++ you can create even more malicious programs even in webpages than flash itself, and javascript is the same language almost ECMA style which is massively deployed in mobiles too... harmfull enough to get your self inside other peoples mobile.

If it is for security issues then i guess nothing is safe when it comes to coding languages so why only flash programmers have to pay this issue and recreate codes and projects into new coding language which have the same issues in security, and after all its a users choice if they want to use a program run a game or download or surf to a page that may be not so secure.

Its their choice to enable or disable their addons.

A company may reject the use of flash player but that may doesnt affect a programmer or a user that he want to use it in other systems or devices.

The link you suggest is a good solution and yes i hope that adobe will give us back to its programmers a thank you by leaving the player to be used or make it an open source player for those who like to use it.

[Robert Mc Dowell]

You are very not alone in this situation, my main project is massive and has 90% in as2 and after 10 years it works like a charm, even better than if I convert it in as3 (I made some experiments on some part of my code). So for me if they are logic and genuine concerning their choice which is be aware of their developers/users community, they will release the AVM1 and AVM2 in open source, like they did for flex or other frameworks.

Now we shouldn't take a single article made by a google/chrome team guy, talking on behalf of adobe, spreading a wish waiting for a resignation as expectation.

In clear, don't take it as a prophet words. Also force people to use a technology without any choice is called fascism.

Flash plugin was stopped on Linux in 2010, they restarted to update it this year, (which is a very good initiative), so it means that every article, propaganda or wish to influence the developers/users must be taken as fake news. If for ex 500 millions users need a swf (I insist, swf, not flash plugin) to run their website so for sure adobe or someone else will create a flash plugin environment to make it compatible.

Flash plugin is also responsible for 20 years of internet history, and for archive purpose it needs browsers and standalone swf interpreter, unless they really want to wipe it out... Imagine if the actual browsers weren't be HTML1/JS1 compatible, it would be an absolute chaos.

I think if a lot of people complain about flash security or bugs, and never the browser itself that's because for the people mind add a plugin means the plugin itself is guilty if any crash appears, which is totally wrong. So if adobe was really a google / microsoft competitor and if they like so much to train people to compete against each other they should develop their own browser since long time. But it's not the case, simply because all US corp work together and made it since the start as a fake competition show, the end user and developer being the innocent sheep.

Internet must be like a religious book. If Latin, hebrew, Sanskri language were suppressed 1000 years ago so the humanity won't have a clue of what was the spiritual level in the past.

[nocs_]

Well said zenmaier, lets hope until 2020 adobe or other experts programmers on activex find a good solution for all of us flash programmers.

[jeromiec83223024]

For what it's worth, we don't really test the "ActiveX control embedded in an arbitrary Visual C++ project" use-case.  We know that people do it, but it's largely a hold-over from the days of CD-ROMs and their "online" help systems.

We break embedded support a lot, particularly when making changes to support new requirements in leading-edge operating systems.  We know that there's a lot of content out there, so we do our best to keep it running.

That said, I personally think you should implement that content natively in your desktop applications where possible, to minimize functional risk to your product and to avoid a totally hypothetical scenario where we're simply locked out of a position where we can fix some kind of important bug that affects embedded applications. Either that, or commit completely and use AIR, so that you're at least on our supported solution for desktop application development.

With regard to the embedded ActiveX use-case, my personal, and admittedly very pragmatic opinion, is that as the ecosystems get tighter, we're increasingly likely to get boxed into corners from an engineering perspective.  If you're going for maximum longevity, staying on the vendor-approved rails is probably a better strategy than being clever and injecting a third-party product into the mix.  There's just so much uncertainty in this industry when you're talking 2-3-5 year horizons.

[nocs_]

Thanks for your reply, to make it clear for anyone to understand what i mean by embed and how activex works inside c++.

Consider the application the classic windows internet explorer browswer, while you go with it on a page that needs flash player it checks if the flash.ocx exists on the running Operating system.If the flash.ocx is not there the application cannot run and we need to put the classic "get flash player" for internet explorer cause its the only flash player that uses ocx file all other browswers as it seems are using other kind of files such as dll etc etc, but for c++ we need the ocx flash player file like internet explorer does.

So in order to avoid for the users that wants to use this application to dowload manually the flash player we would like to make the ocx embed inside our application.

By that means that the application will search if the flash player ocx for internet explorer allready exists and which version and if it needs to be downloaded or installed or updated to be done automatically without the need to prompt for it to the user like webpages usually does.

So actually now the c++ project i am refering to it doesnt have anything inside but just searches while it starts for the flash ocx so it can use it and run otherwise it cant run cause its used mainly as user interface and second with actionscript as a second language that communicates with c++ back and fourth.

Chrome is a good example for you to understand what i mean, that if you have no flash player installed on your system it doesnt ask for you to download any flash player but instead is allready preinstalled by the browser while you setup chrome and it updates also as far as tested.So noone actually presses the button to download, activate the flash plugin or update the plugin of flash player, it just runs when is needed in the webpages.

Thats what we want achieve in the application, the way that chrome uses it.

[Robert Mc Dowell]

well, is that not a very good reason to let Adobe to open the AVM1 and AVM2 sources and let the open source community

to manage it, like any HTML/JS standards? Unless they really want to kill their own customers and developers community.

A very good interview of Larry Wall, creator of Perl language, it would be worth for adobe to be inspired of this great guy.

https://bigthink.com/videos/big-think-interview-with-larry-wall

[jeromiec83223024]

AMV2 has pretty much been open-source since inception:

https://www-archive.mozilla.org/projects/tamarin/​

Also, the SWF and AMF specs are also open and publicly available:

SWF and AMF Technology Center | Adobe Developer Connection

[Robert Mc Dowell]

Well, tamarin is a dead project since 2009, a lot of water passed under the bridge since this time.

Adobe never released officially the AMV1 and AMV2 sources from my knowledge. If Adobe wants

to stop flash in 2020 so there is no reason to not release the sources to let the open source community

to play with it for education purpose.

So if you have a link of any AMV1 and AMV2 source, please provide it thanks

[Robert Mc Dowell]

what about AVMPLUS ?

GitHub - adobe/avmplus: Source code for the Actionscript virtual machine

[nocs_]

I will agree with Robert on proposing flash after 2020 to let it be an open source and if they want they can remove any part of code that they dont want to be exposed to public and leave the open source community handle the activex.

It`s a users choice after that if they want to use the activex or not on their devices.

[deaconnickeloded29197798]

I will miss flash              

[jeromiec83223024]

For completeness, here's the official Adobe statement on this topic:

Flash & The Future of Interactive Content | Adobe Blog

I'm going to lock this thread at this point.  If you have an technical question related to Flash Player, or how to migrate your Flash content to the web platform, please feel free to start a new thread.