14 DAY TRIAL // Adobe is not in the best position it has ever been, as its massively popular Flash platform is getting attacked from all sides. Apple is leading the charge, and the weapon it's using against it is HTML5. The proposed web standard can do many of the things Flash does, offering developers an open alternative. This makes a tool in the recently released Adobe CS5 all the more interesting, as it enables developers to export Flash animations to HTML5-friendly code.
Adobe has managed to stay in the news quite a lot lately. For one, it has just released its latest Creative Suite 5, a massive update to its bread-and-butter software suite. But over the last week, the big debate was the Apple-versus-Adobe battle, spurred by Apple's move to effectively ban all third-party development tools for the iPhone, and subsequently the iPad.
The move affects plenty of companies, but Adobe is especially targeted. What it means is that developers won't be able to build an app in Flash and then export it as an iPhone app if they want their creation to make it into the Apple iTunes App Store.
The HTML5 conversion feature in Adobe CS5 is not fully backed as of yet, but it enables developers to export basic Flash animations as small code snippets that use the HTML5 Canvas element for rendering. On the actual website where the animation will end up, there is very little difference between having a native Flash animation or using the Canvas element, on browsers that support HTML5, obviously. UPDATE: Adobe's John Dowdell points out that this is not an actual feature in CS5: "that video is a sneak peek from MAX 2009, of how things might be able to work together... The understructure is there in CS5, with FXG and XFL, but there's no particular "paste as canvas" in Dreamweaver CS5."
Of course, the feature is far from a Flash to HTML5 converter, which would have been a very interesting tool, but it signals that Adobe is looking at alternatives and not sitting idly by. HTM5 is getting more traction, especially with the announcement that Microsoft's upcoming Internet Explorer 9 will support the technology. The fact that Apple doesn't support Flash on the iPhone or the iPad, two massively popular devices, and that, now, it doesn't even allow apps built with Flash doesn't help Adobe either. The war is just beginning though, and it should be interesting to see how Adobe handles. [via 9to5mac]