Some people think of it with a tear in their eyes; others claim with relief that it’s a natural necessity that had to come some time; the rest feel the excitement of looking for new solutions. The end of Adobe Flash Player planned on December 31, 2020, is already a certainty. It will bring digital publishers new, exciting challenges in their business functioning.
In 2007, Mark Anders, back then an Adobe employee, described the Flash as a new publishing tool of the century, and pointed out how it changes the digital world: “We have let more people publish – whether it’s blogging or having a MySpace page, or uploading to YouTube”. He probably didn’t expect then that a decade later Adobe would announce the death of this technology.
Although it cannot be denied that Flash had a huge contribution to the development of Internet websites and digital magazines, its time has come to an end. Today we are getting ready to say goodbye to this technology for good.
What does it mean for publishers who have used digital publishing platforms based on Flash?