Has Actionscript become useless?

Question

With the advent of HTML5 and CSS3, it is correct to state that the language Actionscript used in applications Flash became a "dead" language or it was used in some other Adobe application?

Answer 1

I have been working with technology for a few years, since its peak. I can say that I have experienced the ups and downs of the actionscript-3 and I was sad to learn that in 2020 Adobe will definitely end support for Flash Player, one of the most successful plugins of the 2000 era.

Introduction to Adobe AIR

To answer your question, it seems that Actionscript is still far from dying. Currently there are thousands of applications developed with the language in the Apple Store and Google Play. What really happened was that Adobe gave up on keeping the apps for the web and concluded that will focus on the mobile development market. This was due to the fact that there was a decline of the Flash Player on the mobile platform and that compromised the user experience, since in smartphones of the time the Flash was still a heavy program, even with the release of Flash Lite (besides also the little push by Steve Jobs), which hasn’t changed much since the iPhone launch, despite Adobe’s efforts.

The virtual machine that is replacing Flash Player is currently the Adobe AIR (amazing some people still do not know that it exists and generally know it as "the annoying little program that needs to install for such a little game"). It is able to compile for multiplatform desktop, mobile and also some Tvs and today is my main working tool.

It is also worth remembering that the Actionscript language is used in virtually all Adobe coding software, after all, it is the owner of the technology. However, with the popularization of the language and the Sdks made available for free, other free programs appeared, such as the Flash Develop.

You can still use Anes which are Adobe Native Extensions. They allow you to "extend" the Actionscript language, making it communicate with native languages of the device on which the application is being developed, such as Java on Android, Swift on iOS, C# on Windows, etc...

Where Actionscript is currently used

With Adobe AIR, I can say property that programmes are developed interns such as Socket Servers (for online games, for example), communication programs with Mysql and Sqlite Databases, helpers on RTMP servers, media conversion program and there are also some external programs to display media such as videos, music and of course swf (which is the strength of AS3).

Contrary to what many think, Flash Player is still used for certain things. However, as I mentioned, more rarely do you get to see it on the web. Some activities in which it fits is in Digital Signage, for example, which is used to display information in real time and in this the Flash is still good. You can still see some very good (rare) web software, such as Pixlr Editor, that will definitely be off the air soon.

Security, unfortunately...

What still makes it impossible to use Actionscript for large, closed and secure programs is something that Adobe has been fighting to date. Not unlike other languages as3 still has many security flaws and many bugs are fixed with each release it launches, but due to its popularity, the language has become the main target of invaders and crackers invade the users' computer, either through simple warnings from "outdated Flash Player" to failures in the core of the VM.

A program that has become the life of programmers a hell bad is the JPEXS, which opens any type of swf file, including those overshadowed, and makes all the code of your program available in instants. This means that the development of anything in as3 is compared to a web application (maybe even less secure), which makes it less advantageous, since in the web every application is able to work on any platform.

Completion

Nowadays the programming market is very competitive and this competitiveness is closing to the language as3. A lot of help I’m looking for from the active programmer community is at Soen and even there you don’t find results. There are some things impossible to accomplish on AS3, whether by language or project limitations. Risking something with Actionscript after 2020 (or even after today) is in my opinion take a shot in the dark.

Answer 2

Actionscript is not a Flash-only language.

You can use it on the server side with Redtamarin for example. You can use it in Flexjs. You can use it in Flex. And obviously in Flash itself. And you can create web and desktop projects with Flash and AIR.

Redtamarin Project: http://redtamarin.com/about/description

Example of AS3 (thought it would ring a bell?). The cool thing is that AS3 was object-oriented. You could instantiate some element and treat it with AS3. Also had the possibility to import data XML for popular elements within Flash.

botao.addEventListener(MouseEvent.CLICK, escreve)
function escreve(e:MouseEvent){
   texto.text = "Olá, mundo!"
}

Until recently I saw a Flex application running normally in the browser. Despite this, I don’t know if I would be the best option right now, even though I have the whole background of Adobe, and in my opinion AS3 is not dead yet. Flash maybe yes...

Google itself has a very interesting animation tool, Google Web Design which makes it possible to make animations responsive, with the concept of "Time Line" and "Actions" and in the end allows you to export in HTML5/CSS3 (optimized and mobile friendly) - Minus point for the Flash in this regard.

Google Web Design Link https://www.google.com/webdesigner/

Answer 3

Adobe has already adapted the AS to this.

In Animate (Flash replacement) AS3 is used together with Javascript to output the HTML5 canvas. Unlike the old Flash the Animante is not restricted only to the generation of SWF files, from the AS3/JS codes it exports files in HTML5 and Javascript, even linking to external libraries as Createjs as you can see here: https://helpx.adobe.com/animate/using/creating-publishing-html5-canvas-document.html

Enabling game creation, interactive learning objects etc, all in HTML5 canvas. I use these resources a lot at work.