Flash Roadmap Whitepaper Published

We have just posted a new whitepaper on Adobe.com. The whitepaper, titled Adobe roadmap for the Flash runtimes lays out the 1 to 2 year roadmap for the Flash runtimes (primarily Adobe AIR and Flash Player). This includes information on specific planned releases, longer term player work, and supported platforms.

This is actually the third Flash platform white paper that we have released in the past week (Adobe’s view of Flex and its commitments to Flex in the future, Adobe Flash Player and Adobe AIR security), and is a part of a larger process of trying to provide clear and open communications around our thinking and plans for the Flash platform.

The primary goal of the whitepaper is to have a single definitive resource that provides clear insight into Adobe’s plans and thinking around the roadmap for the Flash runtimes.

While in the past we have been open around our plans for the Flash runtimes, there was never a single resource where developers could find all of the latest thinking and plans around those runtimes. News and information was often spread across multiple resources, including the Adobe website, Adobe blogs, personal blogs, forum posts, and even tweets. We will still leverage these various means of communications, but they will build on top of the whitepaper. As our thinking and plans around the Flash runtimes evolve, we will update the whitepaper with those new plans.

This is also part of some more extensive changes at Adobe to help us avoid some of the communication missteps which have caused so much consternation and frustration over the past couple of months. Not only does the publication of the whitepaper give us a clear and concise way to publish information and plans around the Flash runtimes, it also provides developers with a definitive resources on where to get the most current information around the Flash platform.

This speaks to another goal of the whitepapers. We understand that we have damaged our trust and credibility with the community over how we have communicated some of the recent changes around the Flash platform and that trying to regain that trust is a long term process. We have to be clear and open around our plans around the Flash runtimes, and then demonstrate that we can follow up those plans with actions. This whitepaper lays the foundation of the first part of that, and hopefully our actions and runtime releases over the next 6 to 12 months will demonstrate the second part.

Finally, as part of the release of the whitepaper, I and some other members of the Flash and evangelist teams will be visiting user groups world wide. This will be an opportunity to go over the roadmap in more detail, have a frank and open discussion around recent changes around Flash, as well as discuss Flash’s role on the web and how it related to HTML5. The first set of meetings are over the next two weeks in Europe, and we will announce more for North and South America, and Asia over the next couple of weeks. If you would be interested in hosting a meeting, just shoot me an email at mesh@adobe.com.

We are already planning an update for the whitepaper in a couple of weeks, so if you find anything is not clear, or would like it to cover other topics, please post them in the comments, or shoot me an email.

UPDATE: I have archived the whitepapers so they remain available:

• Adobe roadmap for the Flash® runtime PDF
• Adobe’s view of Flex and its commitments to Flex in the future