Yesterday Adobe, the company behind the much loved and even more hated Flash technology, introduced Adobe Edge. In their own words:
“Adobe® 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.”
In other words, Edge promises to do the same as Flash, but this time it’ll be based on web standards. Which means that, in theory, Edge animations can be SEO-friendly.
Additionally, and perhaps more importantly, because Edge uses web standards it’s almost guaranteed to work on nearly all devices – including Apple iOS devices, which are notoriously Flash-allergic.
In fact, it seems this may be the biggest reason for Adobe to introduce this technology, as the pervasiveness of iOS devices grows and Apple’s anti-Flash stance is unyielding even in the face of massive criticism.
That doesn’t make Edge a Good Thing, however. To quote my colleague Toby Osbourn:
“I can see no standout use case for animations on the web in HTML. Just because they are written in markup doesn’t stop them from being unsemantic bloat.”
I have to agree with his sentiments there. Aside from online games, there aren’t a lot of convincing arguments in favour of expansive web animations. But maybe that’s just my ‘less is more’ aesthetic preference shining through.
Posted in News, Tools | Tags: html 5
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So…. it’s a visual HTML 5/JS/CSS3 editor? Doesn’t sound new, except for the fact that I don’t know any other really great editors already. It could make HTML 5 more accessible to the masses – which is only going to be a good thing for accessibility and add to the rumours that this really is the year for mobile.
I agree with “less is more” – animations for animations’ sake is pointless – but many great interactive apps/widgets/sites could be made with HTML 5, not just animations. Excited to see what this software can do for the web!
Normally I like the idea of designers seeing what HTML can do (and of course what it can’t) but in this instance I think letting designers create markup (no matter how well written by the program) is a bad thing.
Design is what comes after markup, let the designers stay in CSS and if they are playing nice give them 15 minutes of jQuery.
I am quite excited about this (and wrote a post here http://www.dantheseo.com/adobe-edge-seo/) going to be playing around with it this week to see how useful it will be for SEO. Although after a quick 10 minute play last night it doesn’t look like it will be a massive flash replacement but that may be down to limited features during the preview.
[...] Feelings On Adobe Edge Aug022011 Leave a Comment Written by TobyToday I was put on record (with my consent!) complaining about Adobe’s new tool – Edge.Tonight I figured I would [...]
I have tried it on iOS devices and android and it works fine.
Of course there is a use for it though, if you make a banner for someone (I’m playing the role of designer to a client) you can tell them that not only will the banner be shown to people on the chosen website but will also be readable by search engines.
The argument against that though is that it produces near to no HTML5 and most seems to be operating in JavaScript.. Near enough nullifying my previous statement but its in Beta guys so give it time!