Tired of using Flash Professional when creating web designs or web animations?  Do you want something fresh that works well with HTML5?   Adobe had you in mind when it launched the preview release of their new product, Adobe Edge.  This new tool works around mobile’s limited Flash capabilities, and enables web developers to create designs and animations much like what they are used to doing in HTML, CSS and JavaScript, to keep up with HTML5’s developing standards and growing use cases.

Adobe Edge, first shown at Adobe MAX 2010, is ideal for designers who want an efficient way to leverage Web standards like HTML to create Web content with motion and transitions. The software is intended to work well with other Adobe products, like  Adobe Dreamweaver CS5.5, Adobe Flash Professional CS5.5 and Adobe Flash Builder 4.5 software.  This is not the beta version of the software, this is just a preview made available to consumers so that Adobe can work out the kinks before they release the beta version of Adobe Edge.  Adobe Edge is free to download here.

“Over the last year Adobe has delivered on several significant HTML5 milestones including contributions to jQuery, submitting code to WebKit, and enhanced HTML5 output in Creative Suite 5.5,” said Paul Gubbay, vice president of Design and Web Engineering, Adobe.

“Now, with Adobe Edge, we’re taking our HTML5 tooling to a whole new level and look forward to getting some really useful feedback from the community over the next few months, as we refine the product.”

Adobe Edge works well with HTML as well as HTML5 and it is designed to allow users to add motion to existing HTML documents without impeding the design integrity of CSS-based layouts.   It also enables users to easily create visually rich content from scratch, using familiar drawing tools that produce HTML elements styled with CSS3.  Content created with Edge is designed to work on modern browsers including those on Android, BlackBerry Playbook, iOS , HP webOS and other smartphone mobile devices as well as Firefox, Google Chrome, Safari and Internet Explorer 9.

So what will be the effect of Adobe Edge to Adobe Flash?  Some are thinking that this will be the end of Flash, especially with HTML5’s growing popularity.  But Adobe has not confirmed this, as the company have not committed to releasing anything more than the 1.0 version of Adobe Edge.

Adobe’s Creative Solutions Architect John Cole stated that Adobe is “not going to commit to lifelong products” but added “HTML5 is going to be big.”

The formal release of the Adobe Edge 1.0 is said to be sometime in 2012.  Though Cole stated that Flash and HTML5 will work hand in hand in the future, analysts are looking at Edge as something that the company would develop, as more investors and corporations will be looking to utilize and benefit from HTML5.

Yet it’s too early to tell how Edge will help Adobe survive long term in the mobile market.  Creating new programing tools is an important aspect of leading an industry-wide transition, and applying familiar developer tools to emerging platforms is one way to ease those growing pains.  Couchbase is doing something similar in the NoSQL world, introducing SQL-like tools to unstructured data.

Adobe’s got its hands in several pots when it comes to the future of connected devices, looking to remain an industry leader. Aside from concentrating on building a platform that help developers publish to large app stores instead of competing with current app stores, they released a list of incompatibilities with the recently launched Mac OS X 10.7 a.k.a. Lion as well as the Safari 5.1 update.   Adobe products seem to be working well with the new OS and browser update, but users have reported the loss of functions in some products.  This might well be another reason for the release of the Adobe Edge, to prevent incompatibility issues with HTML5.