14 DAY TRIAL // Adobe will retire Shockwave next month as part of a long-term plan that also included the demise of other products.
In a technical support document published in late February, Adobe explains that while Shockwave would go dark on April 9, 2019, enterprises will continue to receive support according to their contracts.
The company explains that giving up on Shockwave is the result of its existing userbase shrinking, especially because the majority of customers are migrating to alternative solutions.
“As technologies evolve and the use of mobile devices has grown, interactive content has moved to platforms such as HTML5 Canvas and Web GL and usage of Shockwave has declined,” it says.
Flash Player also going dark next year
The decision to pull Shockwave doesn’t come as a big surprise, and Adobe explains that it already discontinued related technologies in the previous years.
“Adobe is providing advance notice to help customers prepare for the change. Retiring the Shockwave player for Windows is the last step in a multi-year process: Adobe Director, an authoring tool for Shockwave content, was discontinued on February 1, 2017 and the Shockwave player for macOS was discontinued on March 1, 2017,” Adobe notes.
What’s important to know is that Shockwave won’t just go away overnight. Even though Adobe itself set a deadline for the tech to be retired, Shockwave will continue to live on for a little longer, and the platform will still work on devices where it’s installed.
However, official download links will be pulled, so it won’t be possible to install Shockwave on new computers. Of course, third-party sources will still host the installers, though sooner or later, everyone should just migrate from Shockwave to alternative products that still receive support.
In addition to Shockwave, also is also preparing to retire Flash Player next year.
Via GHacks