
Adobe Launches "Adobe Edge" - HTML5 Animation Tool - dglassan
http://labs.adobe.com/technologies/edge/?v=2
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michaelpinto
It's important to keep in mind that when push comes to shove that Adobe isn't
afraid to eat their own — as someone who had a shop focused on Director and
Lingo I watched then adopt Flash and really shift gears overnight even though
they invested a great deal in Shockwave. I'll grant you that was a long tome
ago, but they still may have the will to adopt in their DNA...

~~~
SimHacker
That would have been Macromedia eating its own children, not Adobe.

Speaking of eating its own children, can anyone explain why Adobe still sells
Premier AND AfterEffects? Why hasn't one eaten the other? Who needs two
different video editing programs?

The only explanations I've heard from Adobe apologists and marketers is that
one is a blah blah blah tool, and the other is a blee blee blee tool. But
users need to both blah blah blah and blee blee blee blee, and there's no
reason to switch between two different programs, or that one program can't
both blah blah blah and blee blee blee.

I think the real reason is that Adobe makes more money with selling two
different products instead of one.

Adobe should eat more of their children.

~~~
talmand
I'm sorry, one product IS a blah blah blah tool and the other IS a blee blee
blee tool. Some users do in fact need blah blah blah blah and blee blee blee
blee at the same time but not everyone needs both, hence two separate
products.

Yes, Adobe does make more money on two separate products but that's not
necessarily the reason for doing so. I guess Adobe makes more money by not
implementing Photoshop features into Dreamweaver as well.

~~~
michaelpinto
Actually shockwave and flash did the same thing, except at the time shockwave
(Director) was actually more full featured with a programming language called
Lingo (this was well before actionscript).

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Stuk
After seeing the demo I thought this was being done in canvas, but no, it's
actually using css transforms applied to DOM elements. SVG is far more suited
to this task.

Also despite it's vector look, all of the lines are in fact pngs
[http://wwwimages.adobe.com/labs.adobe.com/cdn/technologies/e...](http://wwwimages.adobe.com/labs.adobe.com/cdn/technologies/edge/resources/ferriswheel/images/Ferris-
Wheel2.png) . Disappointing.

~~~
pavlov
Shameless plug -- I'm making a HTML5 animation tool called Radi that outputs
to canvas for realtime rendering. It also supports the <video> tag, so you can
seamlessly mix vector graphics and pre-rendered video.

It's available as a free beta (currently Mac-only): <http://radiapp.com>

~~~
Stuk
Looks very interesting, it would be great if you could put a video of the app
in action on that page. I don't have a Mac so I can't try it out myself.

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chrischen
Here's a company doing something similar: <http://www.tumultco.com/hype/>

Seeing as how Adobe has interests in the prolongation of Flash, I'm not sure
I'd trust their HTML5 app...

~~~
cookiecaper
Adobe makes money from its Flash editing tools, so they probably do not care
if Flash is replaced with HTML5 as long as their editing tools for HTML5
become the standard. In fact, Adobe may even be relieved that it looks like
they may be able to drop Flash as a primary platform soon, because they
obviously have difficult maintaining the plugin.

There's still an opening for Adobe to make themselves the standard HTML5 IDE
(as they are the standard photography "IDE") and still reap as much money as
they were making from Flash, but without the overhead of maintaining the
runtime.

~~~
sjs
It'll be interesting to see how this compares to Sencha. What else is there?

~~~
jawher
Genuine question: What does Sencha (a JS UI lib) have to do with Edge (an IDE)
?

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simonw
Sencha have a product called Sencha Animator:
<http://www.sencha.com/products/animator/>

~~~
jawher
Thanks !

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maxogden
demo:
[http://labs.adobe.com/technologies/edge/resources/ferriswhee...](http://labs.adobe.com/technologies/edge/resources/ferriswheel/Wheel.html)

~~~
vnchr
Thank you. That was all I wanted to see on Adobe's site, but it just provided
more bullet points. Why not advertise what your advertising with your
advertisement?

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wallflower
Anyone remember Macromedia Fireworks v1.0? For a preview version, this is a
good start. Try to extrapolate to when this might be in Adobe CS and include
support for Actions macro recording and seamless roundtrip Illustrator asset
embedding.

I believe the power of Adobe is in the Creative Suite integration and
ecosystem. This is just a standalone technology preview...

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icode
"Download and install the Edge Preview"

This is so pre internet.

~~~
shrikant
No, this is: [on clicking the "Download" link]

 _Please log in with your Adobe ID or create a new account to download the
Adobe® Edge Preview._

WTF?

~~~
wenbert
I immediately closed the window. I spent a few seconds looking for a "skip"
link though.

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mortenjorck
Here's one area where Adobe can really innovate in standards-compliant
animation tools: Automate preloading.

Every "look at this doodad made in HTML 5!" demo I've seen betrays its
technology in the loading. Bits appear here and there, images load one by one;
no matter how solid the execution may be, it _feels_ brittle watching it load
in, unlike a Flash app that loads first, then executes.

There's no reason Adobe can't build in a simple loading spinner that hides the
DOM construction as a piece of dynamic markup loads. It would go a long way
toward making the content that Edge generates feel robust.

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DanOWar
Mac download:
[http://trials.adobe.com/pub/esd/labs/edge/edge_p1_install_ma...](http://trials.adobe.com/pub/esd/labs/edge/edge_p1_install_mac_080111.dmg)

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poundy
The demo works well on the iPhone4
<http://labs.adobe.com/technologies/edge/resources/>

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catshirt
cool thing is that it looks like the animation is pretty much generated from a
json object (likely generated from the program). not that there's many other
ways to do it, but still a nice simple implementation.

[http://labs.adobe.com/technologies/edge/resources/ferriswhee...](http://labs.adobe.com/technologies/edge/resources/ferriswheel/Wheel_edge.js)

~~~
manish
Was it only in my browser the train was going faster on the inclines than on
declines?

~~~
georgemcbay
I think this is because (as samwillis pointed out) the rollercoaster is
actually going backwards, so the inclines are really the declines and vice
versa. Why they are running the animation backwards is another question,
though.

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splatcollision
Good work Adobe, it's important to prepare for the future. Sucks they couldn't
make it a web app, then it could run on my iPad.

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tambourine_man
CSS3 is hardware accelerated on iDevices. AFAIK, it's the only way to get
smooth animations on paltry hardware like this 3G iPhone. And those demos sure
look smooth here.

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hunter4
Tim Langdell will not be pleased.

~~~
sambeau
Thankfully he has crawled back under his stone since the MobiGames debacle.

Or has he resurfaced and I've missed it?

~~~
teamonkey
This is getting somewhat off-topic but he's back.

[http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2011-07-28-langdell-
judge-...](http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2011-07-28-langdell-judge-made-
almost-100-errors)

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leon_
That's pretty cool. I'm a programmer and have 0 clue about animation and
design - but the UI makes it pretty straight format for me to create some
primitive animations. (Which I can then include into my Mac app via a Webkit
view).

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tomelders
Oh dear lord no. This is a bad move.

~~~
andybak
Explain?

And if your only answer is 'ads and crappy splash screens' then think a bit
more deeply before you respond. People round here'd like a little bit more
insight than a simple kneejerk reaction.

~~~
Maci
I'll bite.

I think the "fear" is that once a non-web weary designer get's going with this
there will be absolutely no regard for performance impact since it will render
fine on what ever pimped up work station is in use.

Meanwhile on platforms with lesser hardware where the browser does not have a
full hardware render pipeline the performance will likely be even worse then
flash.

In fact, with the ferris wheel demo Safari eats 10% CPU time, Chrome 30%,
Firefox 50% on a single core. System: OS X 10.6.8, GF 9400M.

Next thing to happen: "Disable javascript / css to save battery life on your
device". :)

