Adobe & HTML

Honestly, I’m not really impressed with many things Adobe’s been doing lately. Actually, I believe that Adobe is going through some sort of an Identity Crisis. Nonetheless, you cannot really ignore some of the innovative and good things they’re spearheading, specially with open standards like HTML.

Recently, few of us were hurriedly called to the Adobe Bangalore office and we met with Paul Burnett (@pburnett), Adobe APAC Evangelist. I was unable to agree with few things that he showed us but was genuinely impressed with many other initiatives from Adobe.

What I don’t like.

Adobe fought back in many ways when the world was abandoning Flash, they even went ahead to say they love the company that fired the first lethal bullet to the Flash’s Kingdom. When Adobe realized that it was not winning the battle, they went ahead and try to re-create the reign they had with Flash in forms that does not necessarily pronounced “Flash” but doing very similar things that Flash did.

Flash is a good solution for the right purpose and still is. Actually, HTML5 is way behind when it comes to lots of capabilities what Flash can do. But that’s it, let Flash shine where it can and leave alone where it’s not its job anymore.

Edge Animate - really? This brings back unpleasant memories of the Skip Intro days. Do the web need to recreate what Flash did but with CSS? Adobe’s Edge Animate can help you create Flash-esque Animation and spit out CSS and Javascript. The very idea of spitting our machine written CSS and Javascript sounds scary to me - a web full of ‘blings, bells and whistles’ but done in ‘html5’?

I’m of the opinion that you don’t really need that bad to animate elements on a website. In case of websites that needs so many moving parts, they’d rather be doing it with specialized tools or Javascript Experts doing the job, not by a tool that spits out JS codes for you!

Adobe & HTML

However, in the same breath, I’d like to appreciate Adobe for their effort with HTML, Web Standards and Open Source. It is too early to say anything concrete but I’ll believe that they have very good intentions for the web.

Edge Reflow

I’m a bit surprised why this is separated from Dreamweaver. Or perhaps they have similar features with Dreamweaver! Sorry about that, I left Dreamweaver soon after Ultradev and I’ve no clue what’s with that tool. Edge Reflow is focussed on the new craze on the web - Responsive Designs. Reflow can help you with grid layouts, responsive designs for multiple screen sizes.

Edge Code

I’m really impressed with Brackets (Github Source), an open-source editor for web design and development built on top of HTML, CSS and JavaScript. If you just want to use an IDE without having to compile the source, Adobe have a ready to use IDE for you, Adobe Edge Code, built on top of brackets.

Edge Inspect

It is still in its infancy but I see good prospects for this tool. Edge Inspect helps your preview your designs on multiple devices in real-time. Inspect can connect to iOS and Android Devices wirelessly. You can browse in your browser and all the connected devices can stay in sync. You can even do a Remote Inspection, make changes to your codes and see your device update instantly. Inspect even makes it easy to take screenshots from all your connected devices and easily save and send them anywhere. Screenshots can be transferred to a folder on your local computer.

Web Fonts

With Adobe Edge Web Fonts, you now have more options for your Web Fonts, besides other popular ones like Google (free) and Typekit (free/paid, also from Adobe).

PhoneGap Build

Adobe PhoneGap Build makes it easy get app store-ready apps without the headache of maintaining native SDKs. PhoneGap Build can build your app with the most up-to-date SDK for the platforms you’re targeting and then deploy them on any platform of your choice.

I’m glad that Adobe is involved deeply with the web and that they felt it to be very important to be part of their strategy. Let’s hope they can help “move the web forward.”