Mashable: Monday night, Adobe released a new, experimental Flash-to-HTML5 conversion tool codenamed Wallaby.
Wallaby is an AIR app that lets devs and designers quickly and simply convert Flash Professional files to HTML5— and when we say “simply and easily,” we mean it’s a matter of dragging and dropping. The company is specifically hoping this tool will make it easier for designers and developers to get their content onto iOS devices like the iPhone and iPad.
We saw a demo of Wallaby last fall; while some of the company’s CS5 software offered HTML5 plugins already, we said Wallaby was different because it supported elements and resources within animations, not just the animations themselves.
Wallaby is being released on Adobe Labs; Adobe is asking devs and designers to take it for a test drive, see how the HTML5 code looks, and give feedback accordingly.
Adobe has had an interesting time trying to articulate its position on Flash and HTML5 over the past year or so. To put it briefly, the company feels there’s still room in the current technological and creative spaces for Flash, but it doesn’t think that either Flash or HTML5 has to exist to the exclusion of the other. Therefore, as a company that, to a large extent, exists to serve the creative and development communities, it wants to create great tools for both the HTML5 and the Flash camps.
In a release, a company rep stated, “With more than 3 million Flash developers in the creative community, Adobe continues to look for new ways to help them build on their existing skills and to make their content available to the widest possible audiences. User response to the Wallaby technology preview will enable Adobe to better understand what types of innovations are needed in our long-term investments in both Flash and HTML5 technology.”
Check out last fall’s demo of the app, and in the comments section, let us know what you think of Wallaby so far. And if you do decide to download Wallaby yourself, let us know how it worked out for you.