Adobe rebrands Flash Pro as Animate CC

Adobe's Flash interactive media format was once the king of the web. But since the rise of HTML5, the Flash Player has been in slow but terminal decline. Adobe has announced that it’s rebranding Flash Professional CC as Animate CC. The company says that Animate CC will be “Adobe’s premier Web animation tool for developing HTML5 content.”

Certainly, the Web is a different beast from two decades ago, when the first vestiges of Flash started to appear. HTML5 and WebGL are now common, both of which are supported by Flash Pro. Indeed, more than a third of all content created in Flash Pro is HTML5, according to Adobe, so this is more a “repositioning,” as it looks to distance itself from Flash and align itself with current and future standards.

This doesn’t mean it’s ceasing support for Flash, however.The updated software, which will be out in early 2016, will still support Flash (SWF) and AIR formats “as first-class citizens,” according to Rich Lee, Adobe’s senior product marketing manager. The company also said that it’s already working on Flash Player 12 and “a new round of exciting features.”

When the new release becomes available in January, it will be listed as 'Adobe Animate CC' in the Creative Cloud desktop application. When you install or update Animate CC, it will be found on your computer as Adobe Animate CC 2015, not Adobe Flash CC 2015.