HTML5 did ruin Adobe’s plans regarding Flash. Most operating systems don’t natively support Flash rendering and users have to install additional plugins… Seems like Adobe felt in love with HTML5, because they released their own HTML5 video player about 10 days ago.

Flash to HTML5

After they released Dreamweaver CS5 and Illustrator with some HTML5 tools, they started to think and made another smart move for their business model. At Adobe’s MAX Conference, an important announcement was made: Flash to HTML5 Conversion Tool. It sounds a little bit strange but it’s true. Adobe doesn’t want to let Flash in the dust!

How does it work? Their tool allows developers to export Flash CS5 animations into a combination of HTML code, HTML5 canvas element, SVG (Scalable Vector Graphics) and other tags. Finally, the entire code acts just like the original animation, but is rendered directly by the browser (most mqjor browsers already support HTML5 and CSS3). An important thing that you might want to know is that Adobe didn’t say anything about the release date. Here is a 4-minute demo, which speaks for itself. I would be very interested to know the footprint of both versions.

Anyway, the most important part of their tool is that you can use only one element somewhere on your website. They presented an example with some buildings, letters and other objects. You can put the letter on the top of the site, and the buildings on the footer, everything animated, and this is really cool. I admit, they did something that most of the developers didn’t expect to see. The tool isn’t ready, and as you may see in the movie the HTML code is really messed up, but this is only a demo/preview version.

Why this move? For sure Adobe studied the market, saw that Flash is losing some market shares. There are many companies and people that really like Flash( there are some things that Flash can do, and HTML5 can’t do… yet) and they want a Flash website. But their website will not be visible under iOS (Apple’s OS) because they banned Flash due to poor performance. So developers can convert Flash to HTML5 and everyone is happy. Adobe will make a lot of money with this tool (I hope it will be freeware!) because Flash CS5 sales will grow again. Moreover, Flash ads will be converted to HTML5 on the fly, especially for iOS.

What do you think of Adobe’s move? Do you think you’re going to convert Flash into HTML5?