Blog & Company News

Oct 22, 2012

Tech News: Adobe Unveils Edge Tools and Services

On Monday, Sept. 24, 2012, at its “Create the Web” event in San Francisco, Adobe Systems unveiled its new suite of tools and services for Web designers and developers. First released as a beta version in July 2011, Adobe announced Edge Animate 1.0, a new HTML5 Web motion and interaction design tool for websites using standards like HTML5, JavaScript, and CSS3. “We are excited to put a powerful new set of HTML5 tools into the hands of Web designers and developers and can’t wait to experience the beautiful websites, digital content, and mobile apps they’ll create,” said Danny Winokur, Vice President and General Manager, Interactive Development at Adobe. Adobe also announced that the first release of Edge Animate will be available for free. Adobe says they hope to “encourage Web designers to create using the interactive capabilities of the modern Web” by making it free to developers. “We are passionate about enabling creative people to do anything they can imagine with Web technologies, which is why we’re contributing to the Web platform and making the Edge Tools and Services available for free, including the first release of Edge Animate,” said Winokur in a company press release. Adobe says the Edge brand was built for “Web designers who code and … who value design.” Adobe Edge creates mobile-ready content and apps for delivery to modern browsers and mobile devices. Winokur told PCMag, “One of the things that is important for us, and that we believe benefits the larger Web community, is to have the Web platform – what the browsers are capable of doing – become much more expressive.” Edge Tools and Services include:
  • Edge Animate – Allows Web designers to create animated, Flash-like content using standards like HTML, CSS and JavaScript.
  • Edge Inspect – Allows front-end Web developers to preview and debug HTML content on mobile devices.
  • Edge Code – Available as a preview only, Edge Code is a code editor optimized for working with HTML, CSS and JavaScript and built on the Brackets open source project.
  • Edge Reflow – Web design tools to help users create layouts and visual designs with CSS. According to Adobe, a preview release is expected by the end of the year.
  • Edge Web Fonts – A free Web open source font library for use on websites and apps.
  • Typekit – A service built around Web standards that give designers and developers access to a library of hosted, high-quality fonts to use on their websites.
  • PhoneGap Build – Another service available from Adobe that packages mobile apps built with HTML, CSS and JavaScript for popular mobile platforms.
“We’ve entered this most recent era of the Web where things have started to get quite exciting and the Web has really taken big leaps forward with how dynamic and programmable is has become,” said Winokur in PCMag. “You can really begin to deliver much more sophisticated and much more visually beautiful and expressive application-like experiences.” Since the free release of Edge, Adobe says there have already been over half a million preview downloads.  Edge Animate is expected to be priced at $499 for a perpetual license or $14.99 per month for a standalone subscription.