The Future of Feathers UI

dqvsra

Thanks Josh for all the hard work you put in this framework and on that forum, I know what it is when your work has to be wiped out, and become unsupported. Shame on Adobe, this is not how "big boss" should act upon others who depends on him.

Wish you all the best and thanks again!

Jacowaco

Thank you Josh for all your work, dedication and support for the community. Whenever i search for something in this forum i find a comment made by you, helping others.

Wish you the best of luck in your new projects!

Zantafio

Dear Josh,
thanks so much for your dedicated and very helpful work.
Always ready to reply as well. I hope that I can still use feathers for some projects before I have ditch it for something that might have not been given the Tynjala treatment and therefore are not half as fun.

singmajesty

I wrote a little bit to share the current status of Starling Framework and Feathers UI using OpenFL:

https://community.openfl.org/t/status-of-starling-framework-openfl/11435

Good luck, and thanks for all the ways you have helped serve this community!

MyFlashLabs

Before anything, I should also thank Josh and Daniel for their great work so far. I'm a fan and a few month ago purchased the Handbook, https://gamua.com/starling/handbook/ which is a piece of art I must say.

I know, it's a pain to see Adobe cutting out the financial support on these frameworks. When I say "I know", I actually mean that; because we have felt this before, around a year ago when Adobe turned us down on supporting our ANEs to make them opensource.

What is changed now? Starling is working perfectly, feathers is also working nicely, The AIR SDK is also receiving updates regularly like always. Adobe has been keeping the SDK updated to make sure the built .ipa and .apk files are smoothly allowed on the app stores. I'm sure the new SDK to support iOS 12 builds and android-64 will also be available when the time arrives. like before.

Nevertheless, it's no secret that Adobe is not marketing AIR and we don't understand why. yet, thinking logically, and by looking at the past, I don't think Adobe would ruin their reputation by suddenly killing AIR. Remember when the 'Flash' name was cursed? Adobe waited for a few years first and then said they will drop Flash after 5 years, 2020.

I don't have statistics but at the time when Adobe announced the finish time for Flash, most of us were not using it any more. We were using AIR. Now compare what happened to Flash with what AIR stands today. I can easily bet that AIR SDK will continue for at least next 6 to 10 years from now.

So, just like how Daniel said:

I want to make some things clear, just to make sure there are no misunderstandings: Starling and Feathers are not discontinued - they will stick around as long as AIR is available and developers are using them.

I am also happy to let you know that our work on ANEs will also continue for as long as AIR is around and people are using it.

To wrap this up, let me also announce the release of V2.0.0 of the ANELAB software which we released this morning! It's implementing ANEs and their resources and merges/reconstructs the manifest file much faster than the older versions. Check out this video to see how it works: https://youtu.be/FaBozwel-0A

Hadi from MyFlashLabs

sHTiF

I am sorry it is quite strange for me to read lines like "Adobe will update it like always" and "no worries it will work" without any clear statement from Adobe. I mean it wouldn't be first time that Adobe did 180 turn on something that seemed like the sure thing.

Ok it would be nice to risk it as a freelance developer, but seriously games on Genome2D do hundreds of millions in revenue yearly while the companies using it employ hundreds of people. And even though large part of it is now targeted through WebGL cross-compilation Adobe AIR is still major part of it. It is VERY hard to just go by feeling that "Adobe will do the right thing". Especially since I think Starling nor Feathers was a major financial burden to company like Adobe.

So people that say "I can easily bet on Adobe" I wonder how big that bet would actually be.

TeotiGraphix

So people that say "I can easily bet on Adobe" I wonder how big that bet would actually be.

You cannot bet on a corporation period. Employees are NOT the corporation, never.

This is exactly why I am walking away because 2010-2011 Adobe showed it's true colors to their "developers". It also showed how little AIR and Flash have to do with revenue from within Adobe.

Don't get me wrong, the engineers at Adobe, most are top class but that says nothing about the top tier of Learjet flying yacht cruising out of touch humans that run it.

johannh

First, thanks a lot Daniel and Josh for the great frameworks. Although I neither work on any games nor using AIR for anything right now, we did make several commercially successful games based on Starling/Feathers and I have enjoyed working with them a lot. They will be missed. The message Adobe gave us clearly states that investing new products in AIR doesn't seem like a wise choice any more. We knew it will eventually be phased out, gradually in a professional way. I sincerely hope you guys find your next big projects that has more promising future!

yooni126

Hi guys
Same as the other I'm sorry for theses bad news and hope adobe makes a best decision for adobe air community...

But I want to tell you that last year I joined a developers team those have their own pure as3 SDK that adds to Adobe Animates directly named "Saffron Code". they had published close to 1000 applications during 7 years till now.
It seems that they are going to introduce it to public in near future. I guess that can be interesting to Adobe. because it adds GPU accelerators and others directly to the Adobe Animates TextFields and MovieClips using pure action script!

mfrasier

Hard to follow (and very verbose), but sounds like you can build with and without Animate. But it also sounds like it still relies on AIR, so using this you'd face the same problems as everyone else should Adobe stop support it?

If I'm wrong, could you break it down for us?

yooni126

Based of our analysis, not only Adobe increased it's new features on last years, but it focused more to upgrade Air native features and OS related features.

(It's clear that Adobe drops Flash player updates from 2016 and no much updates on stage3D from 2018 but there is many new features related to Operating systems introduced.)

So I beleve they plan to focuse on something that is still only owned by them, means Adobe Animate! otherwise why they are focused on those features that could upgrade Adobe Air on Operating systems?

Here you can see full analysis: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1-t6-9VMRtR9LKGlI5tf5fdslXQVc7vqVxLLMx39MY74/edit?usp=sharing

flashy

https://forums.adobe.com/thread/2588663
https://forums.adobe.com/message/9723772#9723772
I think there is nothing to worry about!

mfrasier

That post is old (note they're talking about iOS 11 updates) and well before the developments in this thread. Not a good data point IMO

leokan23

Also the chart above had a lot of SDK updates (maintenance update) as new features. After removing the SDK updates, 2018 (21 new added) was the same as 2017 (24 new added).

pol2095

Wait and see... August 2019

rodrigo

@pol2095, 7 months is a lot of suspense (and drama) for the matter.

pol2095

For Adobe labs Air 33, is not 7 months.
Flash player 64 bit turn on Linux, is not all air to update for Adobe.
For Unity, is bad too, next ARM processors doesn't support 32 bit apps.

yooni126

Thanks for your feedback, we updated the analysis based on your suggestions. still the result is same 😉

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1-t6-9VMRtR9LKGlI5tf5fdslXQVc7vqVxLLMx39MY74/edit?usp=sharing

timwjohn

My heart sank when I read your post, Josh. But I knew in the back of my mind that it was coming. Thank you for Feathers, your world-class UI framework and the tireless support you offerered. It has been a real joy creating with it. Likewise, Daniel - Starling Framework is truly a beatiful thing. I will miss them, though I'm not quite ready to jump ship yet. My companies flagship software is built with Starling/Feathers for AIR desktop, and I'll continue to develop it for years to come.
Josh, please keep us updated on your journey to find a worthy alternative to Feathers and Starling, as I fully respect your judgement and clarity of vision. I know you've used React with positive results, but are you still experimenting? For example, do you intend to give Vue a try?

joshtynjala

For JS development, I'm happy with React and plan to stick with it. I haven't found a React UI component library that I'm completely happy with yet, though. Semantic UI is decent. Material UI is a bit better from an API perspective, but it's obviously Material Design on all platforms (which isn't always ideal). I plan to try the latest version of Ionic, which now supports React (in beta). It looks to be very promising.

A client of mine has expressed interest in OpenFL as a replacement for AIR in one of his apps. I may be exploring options with that too.

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