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A Look at Adobe Edge Animate

 

AdobeĀ® Edge is a new web motion and interaction design tool that allows designers to bring animated content to websites, using web standards like HTML5, JavaScript, and CSS3.

Adobe re-branded their as yet to be publicly released Edge as Edge Animate. Hmm I think that might have been to make people aware that it is an animation tool, not one which can do all the intricate things that Flash can do. Regardless, this product seems to fill the gap that Flash left when HTML5 came on strong when it was apparant that the Flash Player literally sucks (battery power) on mobile devices. Regardless that it is the most ubiquitously installed software on the planet, the Flash Player is not available to those with the iOS.


Getting Started with Adobe Edge: Adobe Fellow Mark Anders gives you a quick overview of how to get up and running quickly with Adobe Edge, a new tool for creating animated and interactive content for the web using HTML5, CSS3, and JavaScript. See the link for preview 7 below.

Edge Animate works on the HTML5 web standard and creates the CSS and Javascript output so that everything is ready to move to your live website. While this is very much a traditional looking Adobe interface (from the darker CS6 format) it also will be familiar if you have used either Flash or After Effects. This is really about animation – I have to stress that. The timeline is very liner and approachable.

I would suggest looking at the resources at the bottom of the page before you bother to even open it up. Remember – it is in preview mode still, so there is still some improvements coming. See the preview 7 video below as well which shows the latest batch of updates.

Like Muse, this product is not without it’s critics. It does however have a place if you have ever tried to export HTML5 from Flash where your project has multiple symbol layers. For me, I am not really able to take time to learn HTML5 from scratch, nor do I prefer to learn that way, rather I like to deconstruct existing projects. The software comes with tutorials and examples that help, as well there is a lot of material available from Adobe to supplement any training style.

So no, it does not proport to replace the high end programming language required for most HTML5 applications for which Dreamweaver is suitable, nor does it replace Flash, but it does serve a purpose for those who are on tight timelines, tight budgets, or just wanting to be able to add HTML5 to their repertoire of tools.

Edge Animate will be available as a product and it will be free for subscribers. I will post more indepth reviews as I use it more. So are I was able to make this test file from the tutorial and it was pretty straight forward, having known Flash.

Resources