14 DAY TRIAL // Adobe has been adapting pretty fast to a world where HTML5 is becoming increasingly popular and starting to replace its own Flash technology. The company has said that it is embracing HTML5 and there have been a few moves that confirm this.
The latest is a Flash to HTML5 converter for animations, which is still in tech preview form but is already quite impressive.
Adobe showcased a tool which enables developers to export animations and elements created with Flash CS5 in non-Flash formats, a combination of HTML, HTML5's Canvas element, CSS3, SVG and so on, to recreate the animations without requiring the Flash Player.
The tool was demoed at the Adobe MAX 2010 conference this week and it looked rather solid, despite the fact that this is not something you can expect Adobe to release very soon.
The demo shows how to use the tool to export complex animations into a single HTML file which looks identical to the content displayed by Flash Player.
The really interesting part is that individual elements, objects and animations, ca be used separately and be embedded into any portion of a website.
There's a very good reason why Adobe is embracing HTML5, or at least trying really hard to leave that impression, the company doesn't care as much as you'd think about whether you have the Flash Player installed or not.
Adobe doesn't make any money from the player itself, it makes money from selling software like its CS5 suite.
Of course, having the Flash Player installed on most of the world's computers ensures that developers wanting to develop rich applications pretty much have to use Adobe's tools.
But since HTML5 is supported by quite a lot of companies, Adobe would want to sell tools for developing HTML5-based applications just as much as those for Flash content.
"Flash is great for a lot of things, and this week’s demos showed it’s only improving. It’s not the only game in town, however, and Adobe makes its money selling tools, not giving away players. Let’s help people target whatever media they need, as efficiently as possible," Adobe's John Nack writes.