Although it may appear that Adobe is stubbornly holding firm to its commitment to its Flash technology, in reality the company has been quietly slipping HTML5 features into its Creative Suite products -- and now they’ve introduced a public preview for a tool dedicated to creating HTML5 for web designers.
Adobe Systems Incorporated have announced the availability of a free public preview of Adobe Edge, the company’s new HTML5 web motion and interaction design tool. Similar to the existing Flash Professional, Edge allows web designers to create animation to their sites using open standards such as HTML, JavaScript and CSS.
The company claims that “rapid changes around HTML5” have brought them to the decision to release Adobe Edge in an open development scenario -- the application is being released through their Adobe Labs division before it’s even in beta, “in order to allow user feedback to help shape the final product.”
“Over the last year Adobe has delivered on several significant HTML5 milestones including contributions to jQuery, submitting code to WebKit, and enhanced HTML5 output in Creative Suite® 5.5,” said Paul Gubbay, vice president of Design and Web Engineering at Adobe. “Now, with Adobe Edge, we’re taking our HTML5 tooling to a whole new level and look forward to getting some really useful feedback from the community over the next few months, as we refine the product.”
Unlike Flash Professional, Adobe Edge works natively with HTML, allowing users to add motion to existing HTML documents while retaining CSS-based layouts, and of course, Edge also allows users to create visually rich content from scratch using standard web graphics such as SVG, PNG, JPG and GIF. The design stage in Adobe Edge utilizes WebKit for design, preview and manipulation of content in a familiar environment that complements existing web tools like Dreamweaver CS5.5, Flash Professional CS5.5 and Flash Builder 4.5.
Best of all, users can grab Adobe Edge at no cost while it’s in public preview, and it’s available for download now from the Adobe Labs website for both Mac and Windows, with regular updates planned as new functionality is added.
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