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It's the beginning of the end for Adobe Flash

RIP_flash
RIP, Flash. Shutterstock

Adobe is finally starting to acknowledge that Flash's days are numbered.

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The company announced on Tuesday that it's renaming Flash Professional, the software developers use to primarily make Adobe Flash content for the web, to Adobe Animate CC in early 2016.

Adobe said the renaming of the two-decade-old Flash Professional is meant to "more accurately represent its position as the premier animation tool for the web and beyond." It also means that even Adobe knows that Flash is going the way of the dinosaur.

Adobe said that one-third of all content created in Flash Professional is already made with HTML5, the competing web standard that former Apple CEO Steve Jobs famously pronounced to be the future of the web in 2010.

Flash, which you probably associate with annoying Facebook games and videos that won't load on your iPhone, hasn't had a good reputation for a long time. Most recently, a major security flaw was exposed in Flash that could remotely "crash and take control of the affected system" on Windows, Mac, and Linux.

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Adobe Animate will still let developers create Flash content when it's released early next year, but there's nothing like dropping "Flash" from its name to signal the beginning of the end.

Here's Adobe's video announcing the change:

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