The world of rich internet content and animation has been in a transitional period for a while.
For years Flash has pretty much been the only viable option (apart from Silverlight), but now other technologies such as Webkit, CSS3 and Canvas are providing alternatives.
It’s no secret Flash has its enemies, but it’s popular with a lot of producers because Adobe have a good suite of development packages that make it accessible to designers and developers.
In order for new options to overshadow Flash, designers will need development software to make producing rich content for Webkit and HTML5 browsers a lot easier.
There are a few out there, Sencha looks quite promising and Adobe has their Edge software in development for authoring HTML5 & Webkit animations.
Another offering is Adobe Wallaby, an application that will convert Flash animations into a Webkit Enabled version. I’ve tried a quick test myself here, it’s a little limited, and its output only seems to run properly in Chrome. It’s still in development, but it looks promising, and it should provide Flash developers an easy way to create content for the iPad and iPhone.
The main problem with these alternative, as far as I can see, is the animations they output all require a Webkit browser to run. In order for a true shift away from Flash I think we need decent development software that will produce standards compliant animations running purely in Canvas.
