Adobe Edge beta brings Flash-style design to HTML5
Adobe announced a beta version of what appears to be a basic HTML5 animation authoring tool. It’s called “Adobe Edge”. Edge, sporting a very similar interface to many other Adobe products such as Flash and After Effects, allows developers and designers the ability to create and manipulate simple shapes and typography — with the final product rendering HTML5 code.
I’ve always hoped Adobe would take this direction with their authoring tools, instead of putting all their chips in on Flash. But the beta of their Edge tool still leaves me uncertain. In it’s current infant state, the tool is more of a proof of concept by Adobe — asserting their interest in open web technologies. Its creations are not compatible with older browsers, renders code not exactly easy to manipulate without Adobe’s tool, and is quite limited in its capabilities. Some have even created demos using Adobe Edge poking fun at the new tool. With all that aside, I’m optimistic Adobe will find a solution to ease the burden of creating HTML5 animations. There’s certainly a void in this space right now that needs to be filled. But for the time being, it’s back to doing by hand.
The HTML5 boom is coming. Fast.
So you’ve probably heard about this HTML5 thing. It’s a pretty big thing. Developers such as myself salivate at the chance of getting to play with some HTML5. Unfortunately, we also have to be realistic and accept that not all of our users are on modern platforms that support the latest and greatest HTML5 technologies.
In a blog post on GigaOM, they cite a report by ABI Research where it’s projected that “2.1 billion mobile devices will have HTML5 browsers by 2016, up from just 109 million in 2010”. While they don’t qualify what an “HTML5 browser” is, it’s clear that smartphone manufacturers are watching HTML5 closely as it evolves and are ensuring a level of support for open web technologies like we’ve never seen before.
The article also notes an update, linking to an article by the W3C where they project HTML5 to “achieve broad interoperability” by 2014. This all sounds about right. With Microsoft’s previous monopoly over the browser market, there was no reason to innovate on the scale we see today. There was no competition. Today, we’re seeing growth in the browser space like never before. And we’re enjoying every bit of it.
If you’ve been following the evolution of Google’s Chrome browser, you’ll know it’s been going through version numbers like they’re going out of style. They’ve settled on a rapid release cycle and seem to be quite happy with it. In just two years Chrome is already up to version 12. Compare that to Mozilla’s Firefox which is currently at version 5 in the 7 years it’s been on the market. Now, of course, version numbers are simply milestones recognized by the browser creators — they don’t imply any sort of level of support for new technologies. Traditionally, major releases (such as Firefox going from version 3 to 4) take months if not years to occur. Well that’s about to change for Firefox.
Similar to Google Chrome, Mozilla is adopting a rapid release cycle for their Firefox browser. So who cares? What does a change to their development processes mean for us? Well, if you’re a website owner, I’d be watching browser usage stats a little more closely over the next year to see how things shake out. We may begin to see a greater fragmentation in browser usage across various version numbers, changing the way we do development and testing.
Imagine the following scenario: you’ve decided to support any browser used by at least 8% of your users. Anything that falls below this line is given either a degraded experience or is completely unsupported altogether. However, what happens when you find that 12% of your users are using Firefox 5, 6% are on Firefox 6, and another 5% using Firefox 7? Which versions do you support? In total, 23% of your site’s visitors are using Firefox — but “technically” 11% of them fall below you’re general support line. What about those corporate users who might get stuck on a particular version of Firefox for a year before their IT group authorizes an upgrade?
To be honest, I have no idea what we should expect in a year from now. It might all be fine, it may add a little bit of chaos, I don’t know. All I can do is suggest is that we keep a close eye on this.
