Quote Originally Posted by lygia View Post
i heard that flash will no longer be used
This is nonsense. It's not going to be developed further for mobile platforms, but as an animator it remains an excellent choice - not only can you use it to produce flash output, you can also use it to produce video and gif animation. It also has direct support for kinematics and 2.5D.

For animation, it is far superior to the animation capabilities of the Xara products, but also far more expensive.

There are many alternatives out there, such as ToonBoom Studio.

I should add that, unlike Xara, Flash and products like ToonBoom Studio will have a lot of resources (many free), for beginners to learn animation techniques using the product.