Adobe finally admit Flash is dead with the new Adobe Edge
Adobe have announced the launch of a new tool called Adobe Edge, the HTML5 Web Motion and Interaction Design Tool.
The free download of the BETA version of the software will allow web designers to create animation in HTML5 and CSS3 as opposed to Flash.
Ever since Steve Jobs banned Flash from iOS there has been much debate over it’s future. Adobe always stuck by it’s product, but this is a turning point seeing the company covering all bases.
When it comes down to it though, HTML5 is a web standard and Flash is just a 3rd party platform. This statement alone guarantees that HTML5 will dominate Flash and wil be the the default for web based animation and any kind of intereactive content in the future.
Adobe said, “Adobe Systems Incorporated today 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.”
Adobe Edge is being offered as a free preview download from Adobe’s Web site. Mr. Anders of Adobe said it was expected to be introduced to the public in 2012.
Grab it here:
is this really an admission that flash is dead? flash offers the same video capabilities and seamless version updates no matter what the platform. allowing mpeg4/h.264 video and mpeg4/aac + mp3 audio. with html5, chrome supports only webm, firefox supports only theora and IE/Safari support only h.264. so now we need to detect which formats a browser supports and offer up that format, something html5 was supposed to stop. IE, Chrome, Firefox 3 and below, Firefox 4 and above and Safari all have totally unquiely different javascript engines that all behave in different ways, so all the different behaviour will have to be abstracted away with the likes of jquery or prototype. Canvas works differently depending on not only the individual browser, but the platform, and browser versions, such as IE9 supports all standard canvas extensions, plus directx 10. ie10 supports dx11. firefox doesnt support any directx, but does support webgl, chrome supports bits of webgl that google like, and is heavily sandboxed, slowing it down, and making sure that true hardware acceleration will never be as affective as a full GL or DX implementation, and safari doesnt support any hardware acceleration as of yet.
i think this is more of an admission of “we need to do something to appease the html5 fan club, so here is something we are working on”