

Quick thoughts on Edge (Adobe's html5 keyframe animator) workflow & practicality - robfitz

Edge[1] is Adobe's upcoming html5 version of Flash. I just finished giving the free alpha a shake.<p>It uses a timeline and keyframing similar to what you see in the Flash editor.<p>It spits out a list of keyframes as as js list, which is then translated by edge's js into the appropriate series &#38; combination of jquery animations.<p>Some of the reviews are overly pessimistic because the editor starts blank and all you can add are boxes &#38; text. But you can also load up existing html and work on that.<p>The workflow to get anything useful to happen is kind of annoying, since it won't handle templates properly and you need to inline your css.<p><pre><code>  1. Inline your css
  2. Load up the desired template in a browser
  3. View &#38; save source to strip the templating
  4. Load that html into Edge
  5. Create animations
  6. Dig out the animation js object and add it to your project
</code></pre>
So that's pretty annoying for now! But the keyframe animation editor is a <i>huge</i> time saver compared to editing jquery animations by hand, so if you are using lots of them all in one place, the time savings might be worth it.<p>The biggest gain is going to be making slight tweaks to a complicated animation, since it's a nightmare to stretch, squeeze, and re-organize the timing of a long string of animations by hand.<p>A less common case which is also a huge win for Edge is if you're doing something like rotating, scaling, and moving all at once where the resulting coordinates are going to be non-obvious.<p>[1] http://labs.adobe.com/technologies/edge/
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whichdan
Clickable: <http://labs.adobe.com/technologies/edge/>

