Adobe announced that it has shipped its latest Creative Cloud desktop updates and announced some new developments across its portfolio of tools and technologies.

Most notably, Adobe is reanaming Flash Professional CC to Adobe Animate CC to “more accurately reflect the content-formats produced by this tool.”

Explaining the move on the Adobe Flash Professional Team Blog, Rich Lee writes:

For nearly two decades, Flash Professional has been the standard for producing rich animations on the web. Because of the emergence of HTML5 and demand for animations that leverage web standards, we completely rewrote the tool over the past few years to incorporate native HTML5 Canvas and WebGL support. To more accurately represent its position as the premier animation tool for the web and beyond, Flash Professional will be renamed Adobe Animate CC, starting with the next release in early 2016.

Today, over a third of all content created in Flash Professional today uses HTML5, reaching over one billion devices worldwide. It has also been recognized as an HTML5 ad solution that complies with the latest Interactive Advertising Bureau (IAB) standards, and is widely used in the cartoon industry by powerhouse studios like Nickelodeon and Titmouse Inc.

He notes that Animate CC will continue to support Flash (SWF) and AIR formats as “first-class citizens”. `

“This has to do with Adobe’s successful pivot in the capability of its tools to support HTML5,” IDC software development research program director Al Hilwa tells WebProNews in an email. “The renaming of Adobe’s animation tools reflect that it now emits HTML5 and is widely used for this purpose and so the new name reflects this important change in the capability and usage patterns seen by its users. With respect to the other tools, it is good to see that some of the important features have found homes in Dreamweaver and other Adobe apps.”

“With respect to the new wave of updates, I think Adobe is living up to its Creative Cloud promise of more regular feature enhancements and deliveries compared with a box program,” Hilwa adds. “They remain a successful case study of the transformation to cloud delivery for desktop software.”

Adobe also introduced new desktop app features including precise Dehaze in Lightroom CC, expanded support for UltraHD in Premiere Pro, a new Shaper tool in Illustrator, and the ability to create realistic 3D models in Adobe Fuse CC (preview) and easily import and work on them in Photoshop CC.

There is also news we have some news around the future of Adobe Edge Tools & Services, and Adobe is working on a new HTML5 video player for desktop browsers. More on all of this here.

Image via Adobe (YouTube)