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Adobe has a new Edge in its HTML5 tools
Adobe has come a long way in more than three decades as a company, and while a lot of attention lately has been given to security breaches and its subscription model, there is a lot of innovation going on behind the scenes. Last month, I had the chance to sit down with Sarah Hunt, who works on Adobe Edge tools and services, one of Adobe's newest parts of its multimedia-oriented software. Edge is a collection of HTML5-based tools that help designers and developers work with the web. Competing software that fall into this category includes Tumult's Hype and Sencha Animator. I have a subscription to Adobe's Creative Cloud, so I also took the chance to take a look at the software myself. Design If you're familiar with the current design of Adobe Photoshop, then you will be right at home with the tools in Edge. Everything is laid out in palettes on a dark background. The bulk of your work takes place in Edge Animate, and at first it's a bit overwhelming to have all this information in front of you at once. Coming from Hype, it was a bit jarring to go from a sparse environment to sudden clutter. But, as I explain below, having all this information works for the program. Adobe Edge Animate also has a template gallery and you can save templates as well. Use One of the things I love about Adobe Edge Animate are the tutorials. Upon first launch, you're given the chance to go through a series of step-by-step lessons to help you get comfortable with the software. Even if you're familiar with a competitor's software, it's a fantastic resource. For those new to this sort of work in general, it can be a godsend. There's plenty of books out there covering the same material, but this is all baked into the software. I would love to see similar tutorials come to Photoshop, InDesign and Illustrator - especially Illustrator. The tutorials are very easy and cover creating objects, basic animation, resizing, extending, reuse and motion paths. Once you're done with a design in Edge Animate, you can take it out to Edge Inspect to test on mobile devices in realtime. You can also bring it to Edge Reflow, which is a responsive design tool or tinker with the code in Edge Code, a commercial version of my favorite open-source code editor, Brackets. My test project was done through one of the tutorials. Following the steps, I completed a basic keyframe animation of bouncing letters, using the little toggles in the properties panel to control the keyframes. I enjoyed not having to puzzle over a record button or with the timeline for these, which was the steepest part of my learning curve with Hype. I also liked not having to flip through an inspector for other data. I caught on with Edge Animate a lot faster than I did with Hype, even though my learning curve with it was fairly quick as well. The software titles share enough similarities in basic tasks that if you go into Edge Animate with any knowledge of its competitors or Flash, it won't be hard to use. To change touch and swipe events, you need to right click on the object and select the action. I really wish there was an additional panel for this. One of Hype's features that I loved was the ability to see what browsers and devices your project was compatible with while you're working on it, something I would love to see here. Hunt acknowledged that the Edge tools does encourage people to do some coding. But, if you're familiar with timelines, there's a lot you can do with Edge. As a former print designer, Edge is built in such as way that I didn't feel intimated by using those skills to create a web product. While there is some coding involved, features such as motion paths are nearly impossible to hand-code and are best served by products such as this. Hunt said that the developers wanted to make people be as creative as possible, with as much UI help as possible. "Do you have three hours?" Hunt asked when I asked what was in the works. "There's so many things that we want to do." One of the active projects is introducing audio storytelling to Adobe Edge Animate. Other planned features include integration with InDesign and expanding it to chart-building, article linking, ePub3 support and other features such as drawing, tweening and video. Conclusion The Adobe Edge tools and services are part of an Adobe Creative Cloud subscription, and if you have this subscription, then take advantage of it. The Edge tools are extremely easy-to-use, and there is a lot of positive creative energy and excitement coming from its development team. As working with interactive and responsive design becomes more prevalent, these HTML5-based tools are going to become far more important than my beloved InDesign. If you want to try the Adobe Edge tools, there's a trial available on Adobe's wesbite. A monthly subscription is $49.99 and has access to all of Adobe's software. You can subscribe to just Adobe Edge Animate for $19.99 a month.
Adobe Edge swells to include Tools & Services, streamlines the designer web
Adobe really wants web designers to kick things up a notch. Not satisfied with where Edge has gone so far, it just released a full-fledged Edge Tools & Services suite to cover the bases for polished desktop and mobile pages on most any modern platform. Motion tool Edge Animate (formerly Edge Preview), automated previewing tool Edge Inspect (formerly Shadow) and mobile app packager PhoneGap Build have all arrived in the suite as version 1.0 releases, and come with both Edge Web Fonts as well as TypeKit to spruce up text. A pair of pre-release utilities, Edge Code (Brackets) and Edge Reflow, are also joining the group to tackle the nitty-gritty of editing web code and layouts. Any of the apps will readily cooperate with third-party software, although they won't always be cheap: while most of the Edge suite is free to use in at least a basic form as long as you have a Creative Cloud membership at any level, Edge Animate is only free during its initial run and should eventually cost either $15 per month or $499 in a one-time sale. For pros that want to burnish their corner of the web to a shine, the result just might be worth the expense.
Adobe upgrades its Digital Publishing Suite with iPhone viewer, improved social media features
Between rolling out Creative Suite 6, Creative Cloud and a new video platform for broadcasters, Adobe's been mighty busy lately. If that's not evidence enough that the outfit is making good on its promise to restructure around digital media, hear this: the company just announced a slew of enhancements to its Digital Publishing Suite (DPS), which Conde Nast and others use to format magazines for mobile devices. For starters, publishers now have a way to tailor content specifically for the iPhone, just as they can for the iPad, Kindle Fire and Android tablets. So far, we know Conde Nast will be using this tool to build a modified edition of The New Yorker, though Conde Nast hasn't announced when it will become available for download. Meanwhile, art departments used to working in InDesign can now take a single a layout and repurpose it across multiple devices. Similarly, DPS is now integrated with Adobe Edge, which means publishers can create HTML5 animations and then easily port them over to their digital editions. Moving on, SocialSharing is exactly what it sounds like: it promises to make it easier for people reading these magazines to share stories using built-in email, Twitter and Facebook functionality. Getting more granular, a new font rights policy means that once a publishing company buys rights to use a certain font, it won't have to pay additional per-usage fees every time someone downloads the app. Lastly, Adobe announced that Meredith, the company that brings you (yes, you) Better Homes and Gardens, Parents and Fitness will also begin using the platform to create digital editions. Hold onto your britches, kids.
Adobe unveils CS6 and subscription-based Creative Cloud service, up for pre-order now (video)
Adobe's biggest day of 2012? Go ahead, don't be afraid to call it what it (probably) is. For starters, the outfit is introducing Creative Suite 6 to the world in formal fashion, with 14 applications either unveiled or refreshed. Photoshop CS6 is graduating from beta -- seeing an update that'll provide "near instant results" thanks to the Mercury Graphics Engine -- while Content-Aware Patch and Content-Aware Move are sure to please artists suffering from the "Surely you can fix this in post!" clientele backlash. Adobe Muse is happily entering the scene for the first time, described as a "radical tool that'll enables designers to create and publish HTML5 web sites without writing code." (We're still waiting for Flash to comment.) In related news, those who aren't up for paying $1,299 (and up) for one of the new suites can try something a bit different: monthly installments. That's coming courtesy of Creative Cloud, an quasi-new initiative designed to harness the power of cloud-based app distribution and streaming in a way that'll make CS6 more accessible than any of the packs that came before. You can tap into CS6's amenities over your broadband connection for $74.99 per month, while those who agree to an annual subscription can get in for $49.99 per month. To be clear, that provides unbridled access to any CS6 tool: Photoshop, InDesign, Illustrator, Premiere Pro and AfterEffects, and the rest of the gang. If you're jonesing for Photoshop alone, that one will be available for $29.99 per month (no contract) or $19.99 per month (annual agreement). There's no set release date just yet, but we're told to expect the new goods "within 30 days," and pre-orders seem to be a go. Head on down to the source links for more details on each individual aspect, and catch a promo video for the cloud-based subscription offering just after the break.
Adobe's Edge tool promises Flash-like animation through HTML5
Even as many onlookers declare HTML5 adoption the beginning of the end for Adobe's once-ubiquitous Flash platform, the company has embraced the web standard through properties like its Creative Suite and Wallaby. Adobe will be taking things a step further with Edge, an HTML5 design tool that promises to allow "web designers to bring animation, similar to that created in Flash Professional, to websites." The software is currently in public preview mode, available as a free download for web designers, in hopes of getting some feedback that will help shape its final release.
