Adobe Looks To HTML5 For Flash-Style Animation

Adobe Systems has announced the first public preview release of Adobe Edge, a new HTML5 web motion and interaction design tool that allows web designers to bring animation, similar to that created in Flash Professional, to websites using standards likes HTML, JavaScript and CSS.

Moreover, Adobe said because of rapid changes around HTML5, the company is adopting an open development methodology for Adobe Edge and is releasing the software on the Adobe Labs site much earlier than normal in the development process – before it even reaches beta – to allow user feedback to help shape the final product.

Public preview

In addition, Adobe officials said that while it is in public preview mode, Adobe Edge will be a no-charge download that web designers can download to explore and provide feedback on.

Adobe Edge, first shown at Adobe MAX 2010, is targeted at developers and designers who want an efficient way to leverage web standards like HTML to create web content with motion and transitions. Adobe Edge is being designed as a fast and lightweight professional-grade tool that complements Adobe’s existing web tools, such as Adobe Dreamweaver CS5.5, Adobe Flash Professional CS5.5 and Adobe Flash Builder 4.5 software.

“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, in a statement. “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.”

The Adobe Edge preview works natively with HTML. It enables users to add motion to existing HTML documents without hampering design integrity of CSS-based layouts, and it also enables users to easily create visually rich content from scratch, using familiar drawing tools that produce HTML elements styled with CSS3, Adobe said. Users can import standard web graphics assets such as SVG, PNG, JPG and GIF files and style them using CSS3. The design stage utilises WebKit to enable design, preview and manipulation of content with incredible fidelity. And the new timeline feature is both familiar for creative professionals and breaks new ground in animation productivity to enable users to define and customise motion applied to HTML elements with extreme precision.

Content created with Edge is designed to work on modern browsers including those on Android, BlackBerry Playbook, iOS , HP webOS and other smartphone mobile devices as well as Firefox, Google Chrome, Safari and Internet Explorer 9, Adobe said.

HTML5 camp

This summer Adobe is sponsoring the Expressive Web Tour HTML5 Camps in cities that include San Francisco, Tokyo, New York City and London to continue providing further support to people interested in HTML5.

In addition, Adobe has launched a new online resource showcasing some of the newest and most expressive HTML5 and CSS3 features being added to the modern web. The new site, which was released on 1 August in beta, was created using new HTML5 and CSS3 features.

For more information including system requirements, visit www.adobe.com/go/edgepreview.