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SALT LAKE CITY — If you're one of the many Web, game, desktop publishing or video enthusiasts using Adobe products these days, you're probably pretty excited about the aggressive direction the company is embracing.
At its recent MAX Conference in Los Angeles, Adobe introduced everything from cloud services to new touch technologies to a little program called Edge, which takes many of the features of Adobe Flash and places them into a CSS3, HTML5 and JavaScript friendly environment.
"Edge was built from the ground up to allow you to build the richest, most creative Web experiences using nothing but Web standards," said Paul Gubbay, VP of Web and Interactive Design at Adobe, at the MAX event.
Gubbay then demonstrated some of Edge's capabilities by previewing a cut-scene from the game "The Adventures of Timmy: Run Kitty Run," created by the American Fork company Rain Interactive.
"Sometimes (users) just do mind-boggling stuff that we weren't expecting was even possible with the tool in the stage that it's in," said Gubbay. "One of the companies that's been doing some of that work is Rain Interactive."
In a recent interview with PRWeb.com, "Run Kitty Run" creator Adam Kahn said, “Edge just worked so perfectly for what we were trying to accomplish. Not only did we get these amazing cutscenes out of it but we’re the first game — the first app, really — to ever use this technology.”
Those familiar with Adobe's Flash application will immediately feel comfortable with the Edge interface. The program allows you to pull objects into a central timeline, animate the objects based on keyframes, and then assign scripts or triggers to those objects to produce interactive content for the Web — or, in Rain's situation, iOS applications.
So while companies like Apple continue to turn their noses up at Flash and Web developers gravitate toward solutions that don't require a plug-in, tech- watchers like PCMAG.com have suggested that Adobe's Edge is "something of an acknowledgement by the premier design software house that the Web is moving away from Flash."
But this is not the case, according to Devin Fernandez, Group Product Manager at Adobe.
Fernandez told KSL.com that "Flash and HTML5 products will continue to co-exist. Flash is well-suited for the upper echelon of rich content and interaction for things like 3D gaming applications, premium video and data-driven enterprise applications while HTML products like Edge will be used for things like rich ads, interactive web pages, branded experiences and HTML add-ons embedded in the browser. You will see Adobe innovating in Flash and innovating in HTML5."
While such comments probably will not hush the speculative, both Flash and HTML5 developers have a lot to be excited about with the results coming from Edge, especially since the software is currently only acting as a public preview.
As for when an Edge product will be officially released, Fernandez said, "At this point we have not made any decisions about the final product. But, based on the continuous high volumes of user feedback, it is possible that a 1.0 release could be ready by 2012. At this time we are really just focused on getting new iterations of Edge out early and continuing to engage with the community to see what features and capabilities they want added as they help us shape the future of Edge."
