Drawing Activetuts+ to a Close

Drawing Activetuts+ to a Close

on Jun 29th 2012 with 56 comments

Activetuts+ launched in 2009 with the aim of teaching how to build websites, apps, animations, and interfaces in Flash. Much has changed in the industry over the past few years, and Activetuts+ has evolved several times to continue teaching relevant content.

As of today, we are going to be drawing Activetuts+ to a close in order to concentrate our focus on better covering several exciting new areas of education.

After the break we’ll be explaining our thinking behind the decision, what we’ll be doing with our archive of content, and our plans for the future.

The Evolution of Activetuts+

The web design and development industry has changed a great deal since the original launch of Activetuts+, and we’ve gradually evolved to keep pace with changing development practices.

Over the past year, we’ve moved away from teaching how to create Flash websites, and instead focused on browser-based apps and games. While this remains a relevant topic for many developers, we don’t feel that we’re able to do it justice with our existing legacy of content.

Because of this, we’ve made the decision to draw Activetuts+ to a close, and stop publishing any new content after the end of this month. We’re going to be investing the time and resources we save into several new projects that will have a clearer focus around exciting new topics.

Facts, Figures, and Our Content Archive

Since 2009 we’ve published almost 900 articles on Activetuts+ from 200 different writers, received over 50 million pageviews, and provided 375,000 hours of learning. We’re incredibly proud to have served so many readers over the past few years, and I’m pleased that we will be able to leave our archive of content available!

All the content we’ve published to date will remain available on the site as an archive, and we won’t be taking anything down. You’ll still be able to browse through all our tutorials at Activetuts+, and search through our catalog of older posts.

Plans for the Future

We have some very exciting plans for Tuts+ over the coming months, including new features, new community projects, and — most importantly — several new Tuts+ sites!

We think you’re really going to love the new projects we have in store, and would love for you to remain part of the Tuts+ community. You can stay up to date with these new developments through our central Facebook, Twitter, and Google+ accounts — as well as joining the community at related sites such as Nettuts+.

Thank You!

I’d like to offer a huge thank you to the editors of Activetuts+ who have overseen the site since 2009 — Michael James Williams, and formerly Ian Yates.

Also to the readers who have helped to make Activetuts+ a friendly community over the past few years, and in particular to our talented team of writers who have contributed their time and knowledge to build up such a useful archive of educational material.

We hope you’ll enjoy reading the new sites we have planned over the coming months, and look forward to sharing our awesome educational content with you for many years to come!

A Note from Michael

I would like to extend my thanks as well. Thanks to all of our writers; I’ve enjoyed working with and learning from each of you. And thanks to all of you readers, for your comments, your retweets, your feedback and your support. I’ve really enjoyed being a part of this community. Yes, it’s sad that Activetuts+ is drawing to a close – but just wait till you see what we have lined up next! — Michael James Williams

David Appleyard is davidappleyard on Themeforest
 
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David Appleyard is a designer and writer based in the UK. He manages Tuts+, along with having founded several design websites including Design Shack and PixelsDaily.  

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  • http://games-garden.com Ernesto Quezada

    I’ll still keep this site bookmarked, it’s a great resource and of course we will keep an eye on your new projects. Thanks for all the knowledge sharing!

    By the way, it could be great if the ‘premium’ posts are made available for non-premium users now :)

  • http://www.snaptin.com Ian Yates

    I, for one, am very proud that this site has stood strong for the last few years. She’s been dodging and weaving her way round a very turbulent industry ever since her conception, and is now gracefully making way for the new generation. Well done Flashtuts+ :)

    She was great fun to work with – and I’m very excited to see what springs up in her wake! (Okay, I’ll now stop referring to a website as though it’s a boat.)

  • Sad former-user of activeTuts

    Nooooooooo.

    • http://home.smithwebco.com/ Sean Smith

      I feel your pain. I was really sad but at least they’ll keep the site up as an archive, so much good stuff on here. But… GameDev Tuts is gonna be awesome, and some kind of programming tuts would be sweet :)

  • Roman

    This decision is only about Activetuts, or you plan to take down other sites, too? I’m asking cause I just wanted to join Premium, but this article makes me wonder – what’s next?

    • Alex

      It’s only the ActiveTuts+ site, I think. It’s the only one flash based that doesn’t have a steady industry anymore.

      It’s sad to hear this but I think it got a great run. Can’t wait to see what you guys come up with. Maybe you’ll keep the gaming part in some other form as it is quite popular these days.

      Good luck!

    • http://davidappleyard.net David Appleyard
      Author

      Hi Roman — It’s certainly just isolated to Activetuts+. All the other sites will be continuing, bigger and better than ever :-)

  • Alex

    Also, it is sad to see that there is no Envato Notes post about this, or even a forum post in the markteplace.

    • http://davidappleyard.net David Appleyard
      Author

      Hi Alex. I’d just like to confirm that we’ll be publishing a Notes post soon, and announcing the news through other channels as well. We wanted to let our Activetuts+ readers know first. Thanks for your support, and I’m excited to share our upcoming announcements with you :-)

  • http://www.as3gametuts.com Ben Reynolds

    Thanks ActiveTuts+ for all the great tutorials I’ve read over the past few years. It’s sad to see it end, but I’m happy that all content will be archived.

  • Joseph

    Maybe a focus on AIR would be better suitable?

    Anyways… ActiveTuts has been extremely helpful. Thank you!

  • s0ln0

    Yes! No more websites, ads, nor enterprise apps for flash. Time to focus on flash’s new target “Gaming”!

    • Timmy

      So in your opinion, Flash is just for gaming? For the past four years I’ve been developing e-learning modules using Flash. Then, recently we received a new project. We researched into whether or not HTML5 will suit our needs. Unfortunately, after a lot of research, we found that it wasn’t capable due to poor implementation among all the browsers. As it stands right now, HTML5 is a huge step backwards. The potential is there, but like HTML4, non of the browsers agree on implementation. It’s a headache to work with and the results among different browser require developers to check if each feature used is support and if it’s not they have to add programming for a contingency plan to get the desired results.

      Flash is simple and consistent. That’s why Flash is used so much for websites, ads, etc. It’s almost always consistent across platforms. As the focus due to hype moves away from Flash, we are sadly losing a powerful technology and platform away to something that is inferior in so many ways.

      An unfortunately, poor programming will now be moved away from Flash and into the HTML5 realm and people will complain that HTML5 drains the battery and is too slow.

      (Our tests have shown that in most cases HTML5 is much slower than Flash).

      • Andrew

        actually if you read again, s0ln0 is in support of Flash ;)

      • yuanhao

        that’s true.but develope socail game with flash,it’s very popular.easy,fast.

  • student

    NO NO NO

  • brainz

    oh no, now i should copy all content i’ve bookmarked to evernote ,
    btw Thank You for this great site ,i’ve learned a lot from this site , will gonna miss this site

    • http://michaeljameswilliams.com/ Michael James Williams

      Thanks! And don’t worry, all the content will stay online – no need to save it to Evernote.

  • Bratu Sebastian

    Thank you ActiveTuts+ for giving me the power to publish flash tutorials, where people have learned so much. I just hope we get some new cool Tuts+ sites :)

  • ashwin

    Well it is indeed sad and a bit shocking to hear . Is the eventual dwindling of Flash’s reign the reason for closing down ActiveTuts?? Does this mean that there wont be anymore Flash based Game Tutorials from the brilliant authors of this site??? Please do allay the fears of many flash game enthusiasts like me..I am certain that the new venture by you guys would be great, but will it have Flash Game Tutorials or is this the curtain call for Flash Tuts as well??

    • http://michaeljameswilliams.com/ Michael James Williams

      “Is the eventual dwindling of Flash’s reign the reason for closing down ActiveTuts?”

      It certainly didn’t help – but the real problem, I believe, is that Flash is a moving target; the job of a Flash developer is continually changing, and so a site aimed at Flash developers will have difficulty staying relevant. That’s why we shifted away from being “a Flash tutorial site”; unfortunately, our legacy content has given us other problems.

      “Does this mean that there wont be anymore Flash based Game Tutorials from the brilliant authors of this site?”

      Well, we won’t be posting any new tutorials on Activetuts+, game-based or otherwise. But I hope the authors will continue writing tutorials :)

      • ashwin

        Thanks for the reply MJW

        “Does this mean that there wont be anymore Flash based Game Tutorials from the brilliant authors of this site?

        Well, we won’t be posting any new tutorials on Activetuts+, game-based or otherwise. But I hope the authors will continue writing tutorials”

        So this means that there wont be tutorials anymore on Flash related to game development or otherwise on any new channel that you guys open up after closing down Active Tuts due to the reason you stated above and also to another question by an user on tutorials related to desktop development.

        I still find Flash a fascinating tool to learn game programming though!! and i am only sad that some of the best resources seems to have dwindled in my learning path :(

  • http://rjdesignz.com Rahul Joshi

    Why close this down? Why not write articles on Flash and Flex for Mobile and desktop development. The area is new and possibilities are enormous.

    • yorg

      I garre with you

      • yorg

        “”agree” i meant

    • http://michaeljameswilliams.com/ Michael James Williams

      Because that would mean yet another shift in focus. Plus, we could only ever cover half the topic of AIR for mobile development; anything about general mobile app design and so on is already covered by our sister site Mobiletuts+.

    • Timmy

      I agree. It’s a new frontier and Flash is being used in new ways. Why abandon it now? Flash has been leaping forward with new features and better support across multiple platforms.

    • http://www.markduiker.com Mark

      Unfortunately even Android is dropping Flash support.

      • Timmy

        Adobe is not dropping Flash support on Android. It’s dropping Flash in the browser. It’s not dropping Flash as a native app development platform through AIR.

        From what I read, Flash in the browser was getting too expensive to support due to all the fragmentation and hardware. Adobe was constantly having to add programming time to support each mobile device. There wasn’t a simple cookie cutter solution to make flash work on all Android devices. Some devices had hardware graphics acceleration and others didn’t, not to mention on the different versions of Android itself. Thus, it was increasingly becoming more and more expensive.

        Bottom line is, Flash is being used to develop AIR applications that are being published as native Android and iPhone applications. That’s the new target.

        Flash on the web is still everywhere, though we may see that advertisements are going to be republished using HTML5 and JavaScript.

        However, the results of HTML5 aren’t clear cut. Browser adoption has been poor and developers are always having to program checks to see if a feature is supported and if not, they have to add extra programming that can be used as a backup solution to give the desired result.

        I personally hate using HTML5 due to it’s unpredictable results. Flash is still decades ahead.

    • http://rjdesignz.com Rahul Joshi

      Autodesk Scaleform, another good reason why not to close activetuts.

  • frank

    Weak. Lame. Cop-out.

  • pepperpunk

    Thanks for keeping all of the content online, too many companies who run useful websites these days think “stop updating” must also mean “nuke from orbit and erase any trace of it ever having existed” (I’m looking at you, igoogle).

    • http://michaeljameswilliams.com/ Michael James Williams

      Haha yeah, I know what you mean. It was a high priority for us not to just ditch the content.

  • David

    Sad news but knowing there will be new projects coming soon makes it better.

  • Arif Khan

    Sad news, I loved this site very much

  • Bryon

    Does this mean that as an archive, all content will be view-able to free users as well?

    I can’t justify paying for premium when new content will never get added.

    As a side note I’m very sad to see this shut down. Flash games and applications are just as big as ever. I hope to get a response to my previous question.

    • http://michaeljameswilliams.com/ Michael James Williams

      The Premium content will remain exclusive to Premium members, as far as I’m aware.

      I understand that you wouldn’t want to pay if nothing new is going to be added (although of course there are plenty of other tutorials, courses, and ebooks covering other subjects that I feel make the membership worthwhile), but on the other hand, readers that previously paid for content might feel let down if it were suddenly available to everyone.

      • Bryon

        You are correct, I don’t know why I wasn’t thinking that before.. good call :)

  • arnold

    another reason , is there are few people who visit this sites?, am I right?

    I think the HTML 5 tuts, needs to be moved at nettuts
    http://active.tutsplus.com/category/tutorials/html5/

  • http://www.nitras.be nitras

    Well thats sad news, but i am sure there will be a good replacement.
    Thank you for the opportunity to write some tutorials here on the active.tutplus side of things.
    good times, glad to help people and last but not least.. learn myself!

    Glad that these resources will be open for the public, just because….
    Flash ain’t dead…! by far :)

    I still code on a daily base in flash, heck, this week only i had 3 new flash jobs in the mailbox.
    (yes they are air apps) but its flash in essence :)

    long live flash!

  • yuanhao

    hope i can hear some good news later….

  • ???

    How sad. You bring this to a close and yet craptuts with crap os X?

    I’m ashamed. Canceling my premium.

  • http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_ibg8ZQ3ixtE/TP_-WCOvMDI/AAAAAAAAAJU/eZZt5j7GObE/s1600/crying_face.jpg Andrew

    I still come here everyday by force of habit..then I remember :’(

  • http://www.thinkingimpairedstudios.com Kelsey

    I hope you guys have more up your sleeves than Mactuts…

    • http://michaeljameswilliams.com/ Michael James Williams

      :)

  • Matt

    D’oh just went premium. What is the new / better site for AIR / mobile that you recommend we can expect to continue for the near future…

    • http://michaeljameswilliams.com/ Michael James Williams

      No plans for AIR, but Mobiletuts+ is still going strong!

  • Richard K.

    That’s a shame. We need to collective prove to Envato that adding an AIR section to MobileTuts+ as a viable need as a source for tutorials.

  • brainzz

    even if this section is closed , is it better to still post new announcement from envato like new section GameDevTuts or best articles of this month ? so people still can link from here ( just a suggestion)

    • http://michaeljameswilliams.com/ Michael James Williams

      We’ve been discussing that, but have decided to leave the site as it is. Thanks for the suggestion, though!

  • Bhavani

    What about Java?

  • Dmitry

    O NOOOOOOOOO!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

  • Steve

    Snow White was poisoned by an Apple, seems its catching.

  • s0ln0
  • http://www.facebook.com/victor.e.campudoni Victor E Campudoni

    I hope that you can revive this some day. I always enjoy the tutorials on this site. It helped me to sharpen my skills and to learn new tricks.

  • http://twitter.com/WesOHaire Wes O’Haire

    You guys are like a bunch of floppy disk makers complaining about the arrival of the compact disc. Retool.