Adobe Edge, available in beta, is a ‘post Flash’ animation tool. It generates animations constructed with web standards HTML5, CSS3 and Javascript (mainly piggy backing on jQuery).
The interface is very familiar to Adobe After Effects in terms of the timeline and property keyframes. In terms of functionality it has the lightweight options for adding text and basic shapes – though artwork can be imported as GIF, PNG, JPEG and SVG. If you have already dabbled with Adobe Muse and even Flash Catalyst you will have experienced these lightweight applications, almost ‘app’ like, compared to monsters like Photoshop and After Effects.
Very easy to use. This demo was knocked up in quarter of an hours playing. Some nice touches like the inclusion of a good range of ‘ease’ options but some simple features like animating opacity seemed to be missing.
Definitely potential for a tool that plugs the ‘post-flash’ gap and Adobe seem to have a number of strands running here as there is also the ‘Wallerby’ exporter that takes Flash Professional FLAs and converts them to ‘HTML5’. Adobe, who were caught with their pants down when Steve Jobs gave ‘HTML5’ a huge boost with the iPad, are beginning to put together the tools we need in the ‘post-flash’ world.
Useful links
You can download the preview software here
http://labs.adobe.com/technologies/edge/
and see Wallaby here
http://labs.adobe.com/technologies/wallaby/