Adobe Flash Professional

Adobe Flash Professional was a tool for creating animations that could be played in a web browser from websites such as YouTube through the Flash Player plug-in. It also featured a scripting language that allowed interactivity and gained widespread use in the early 2000s. However, it was also criticized for its online security issues and was replaced by Adobe Animate, which retained the animation features with simplified web-based standards.

Product history
Flash was originally created at FutureWave Software as FutureSplash Animator. FutureWave pitched the product to Adobe Systems, but an agreement was not reached and Adobe initially promoted rival specifications to Flash. In January 1997, FutureWave was acquired by Macromedia for an undisclosed sum. FutureSplash Animator then became Macromedia Flash.

Release history

 * 1996: Macromedia Flash 1
 * 1997: Macromedia Flash 2
 * 1998: Macromedia Flash 3
 * 1999: Macromedia Flash 4
 * 2000: Macromedia Flash 5
 * 2002: Macromedia Flash MX (6.0)
 * 2003: Macromedia Flash MX 2004 (7.0)
 * 2005: Macromedia Flash Basic 8 / Professional 8

Macromedia was acquired by Adobe Systems in December 2005. Macromedia Flash was then branded as Adobe Flash.
 * 2007: Adobe Flash Professional CS3 (9.0)
 * 2008: Adobe Flash Professional CS4 (10.0)
 * 2010: Adobe Flash Professional CS5 (11.0)
 * 2011: Adobe Flash Professional CS5.5 (11.5)
 * 2012: Adobe Flash Professional CS6 (12.0)
 * 2013: Adobe Flash Professional CC (13.0-15.0)
 * 2016: Adobe Animate CC (15.1-22)

Discontinuation
In April 2010, Apple CEO Steve Jobs wrote an open critique of the Flash platform to justify his refusal to support the technology on Apple's successful iOS line, which included the iPhone, iPod touch, and iPad. An Apple engineer later stated that Jobs was offended that Adobe CEO Shantanu Narayen would not take his phone calls for what he perceived to be "mere engineering problems". Developers of third-party web browsers began to blacklist the Flash plugin by default due to security issues. In July 2017, Adobe announced that it would phase out support for Flash by the end of 2020.

Rebranding
In February 2016, the professional authoring application was re-branded as Adobe Animate with support for web-based standards such as HTML5.