By now, it should be clear that there is no resistance towards HTML5 and JavaScript from Adobes point of view. We have seen the HTML5 pack for Dreamweaver and Illustrator. I believe they did it as a proof of their true interest in the technologies surrounding the Internet. In addition to that, they didn’t wan’t designers to look elsewhere for tools to design and develop HTML content. Actually, Adobe has always paid interest in these technologies – it would be odd to have the most famous HTML-layout program and not being happy, when it evolves and taken advantage of it.
The update to CS5.5 gave further proof of a dedication toward mobile devices and open standards. We where shown massive update when it comes to mobile development. iOS had to catch up on the possibilities and performance that previously was introduced for the Android platform. Flash Builder and Flash CS5.5 took care of that. HTML5 and jQuery was fully incorporated in Dreamweaver CS5.5 in addition with a lot of other stuff, to bring even more effective workflows to designers trying to approach these new devices and technologies.
But then what … was that it. No, Adobe has an underlying piece of software under the hood. They had already shown that it is possible to take a Flash timeline animation and make it HTML5 compliant. It turned into a tool named Wallaby (working title) – it’s experimental but with a lot of potential for Flash users to leverage on their existing skills.
Aside of that, a brand new program with the working title Adobe Edge is in the making. We have seen technology previews of a prototyping tool, but it has grown to be a fully featured animation tool for HTML5 pages. You can se a short walkthrough where an image and svg file is animated for a start. Afterwards a fully designed HTML page is opened and given transitions to gently introduce the page elements. Everything is layered on top of the existing design, so you wont break the layout when collaborating with other designers.
I really like the way they managed to make the timeline integrate with the DOM elemements. We may end up having an animation tool for pure HTML designers that can match features used by the Flash timeline animators. The only thing we need to see is how well it will be integrated with programming logics and JS-development … maybe Dramweaver is up for another spin.
You can be notified about the public beta at http://www.adobe.com/go/edgepreview_notify and read more about the program at http://labs.adobe.com/technologies/edge/
The future is bright


