Adobe Launches Animate CC, Previously Known As Flash Professional

Adobe today officially launched Animate CC, the latest version of its animation tool for the web. Animate CC was previously known as Flash Professional, but the importance of Flash has (thankfully) declined over the last few years and the company decided it was time to rename the product to better represent what it is actually being used for.

The new version of Flash Professional Animate CC, as well as an update to the Muse CC web design tool, is now available to all Creative Cloud subscribers.

With Animate CC, Adobe has not just changed the name but also integrated a number of new features into the tool. For the most part, these bring it in line with the rest of its Creative Cloud lineup. New features in Animate CC include support for Creative Cloud Libraries for sharing content between the different CC apps and with other users, for example, as well as built-in Adobe Stock and Typekit support. Animators can now also export their videos in 4K.

Adobe tells me that about a third of the content product in Flash Professional was actually HTML5 content — so the old name really didn’t make sense anymore. “HTML5 has become the standard and this reflects the tool’s role,” Adobe evangelist Paul Trani told me. “We don’t care what you want to do. Want to do Flash? Fantastic.”

Trani noted that, with some very minor exceptions, HTML5 can now replace Flash for almost all standard use cases that Animate CC’s users were looking for.

Adobe is also launching a new version of Muse CC, today, its design tool for building websites without having to touch code. Muse, too, is getting built-in support for CC Libraries, Adobe’s Creative Sync feature, and Adobe Stock. More importantly, though, it now also gives designers the ability to build responsive sites — something that was oddly still lacking in Muse until now.