Adobe Edge is a suite of web development tools developed by Adobe that enhances the capabilities of their other applications, such as Dreamweaver. The first application in the suite was released in August 2011 as a multimedia authoring tool designed to succeed the

Flash Flash, flashes, or FLASH may refer to: Arts, entertainment, and media Fictional aliases * Flash (DC Comics character), several DC Comics superheroes with super speed: ** Flash (Barry Allen) ** Flash (Jay Garrick) ** Wally West, the first Kid F ...

platform. In September 2012, Adobe renamed the application Edge Animate, and announced Edge Reflow, Edge Code, and Edge Inspect. Also packaged with the suite are Edge Web Fonts, the

PhoneGap Apache Cordova (formerly PhoneGap) is a mobile application development framework created by Nitobi. Adobe Systems purchased Nitobi in 2011, rebranded it as PhoneGap, and later released an open-source version of the software called Apache Cordov ...

application, and access to Adobe's

Typekit Adobe Fonts (formerly Typekit) is an online service that provides its subscribers with access to its font library, under a single licensing agreement. The fonts may be used directly on websites, or synced via Adobe Creative Cloud to applications ...

service. As of November 2015, Edge Reflow, Edge Inspect, and Edge Animate are no longer being actively developed.

Applications

Adobe Edge Animate

On August 1, 2011, Adobe announced the development of Edge as a new multimedia authoring tool to succeed the Flash platform for browser-delivered content, and released a preview version of the software. Edge builds applications based on a foundation of

HTML5 HTML5 is a markup language used for structuring and presenting content on the World Wide Web. It is the fifth and final major HTML version that is a World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) recommendation. The current specification is known as the HTML ...

JavaScript JavaScript (), often abbreviated as JS, is a programming language that is one of the core technologies of the World Wide Web, alongside HTML and CSS. As of 2022, 98% of websites use JavaScript on the client side for webpage behavior, of ...

jQuery jQuery is a JavaScript library designed to simplify HTML DOM tree traversal and manipulation, as well as event handling, CSS animation, and Ajax. It is free, open-source software using the permissive MIT License. As of Aug 2022, jQuery is u ...

and

CSS3 Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) is a style sheet language used for describing the presentation of a document written in a markup language such as HTML or XML (including XML dialects such as Scalable Vector Graphics, SVG, MathML or XHTML). CS ...

. These applications are compatible with

iOS iOS (formerly iPhone OS) is a mobile operating system created and developed by Apple Inc. exclusively for its hardware. It is the operating system that powers many of the company's mobile devices, including the iPhone; the term also include ...

Windows Phone 7 Windows Phone 7 is the first release of the Windows Phone mobile client operating system, released worldwide on October 21, 2010, and in the United States on November 8, 2010. It runs on the Windows CE 6.0 kernel. It received multiple large upda ...

and other HTML5-compatible browsers.

Adobe Edge Code

A code-based HTML editor, Edge Code is designed to complement the other applications in the suite. It is built on the open source

Brackets A bracket is either of two tall fore- or back-facing punctuation marks commonly used to isolate a segment of text or data from its surroundings. Typically deployed in symmetric pairs, an individual bracket may be identified as a 'left' or ' ...

platform, which Adobe launched in June 2012. Rather than replacing Brackets, Edge Code is designed to make it more accessible, and integrate its functionality into existing Adobe applications. As with Edge Reflow, Edge Code is available as a public preview, launched alongside the announcement of the Edge suite. In November 2014 Adobe announced development of Code is discontinued and all Adobe's efforts will go into Brackets.

Adobe Edge Inspect

Edge Inspect, formerly Adobe Shadow, was developed as a way of quickly previewing a web design on mobile platforms without publishing the associated files to a server. It allows

and Android

mobile device A mobile device (or handheld computer) is a computer small enough to hold and operate in the hand. Mobile devices typically have a flat LCD or OLED screen, a touchscreen interface, and digital or physical buttons. They may also have a physica ...

s to be paired to a computer, and each device will display the same site using its native render and presentation modes. Rather than previewing a site optimised for mobile viewing on a desktop machine, Edge Inspect sends the file to paired devices, where it is rendered and displayed. Code may be edited live, with changes being displayed on paired devices as they are made, and screenshots from all devices can be collected remotely from the computer that hosts the connection. It was released with the announcement of the Edge suite.

Adobe Edge Reflow

Edge Reflow is an application designed to allow for development of responsive web design. Similarly to

Adobe Muse Adobe Muse is a discontinued no code offline website builder used to create fixed, fluid, or adaptive websites, without the need to write code. Adobe Muse is one of the early pioneer of current 2020s software design trend of no code movement. ...

, Edge Reflow design is based on the visual layout of a web page, rather than the code that makes it up. This was a completely new tool, rather than a reworking of an old application, or one acquired by Adobe. The initial preview was made available to the public in February 2013, after being announced with the rest of the Edge suite in 2012.

Services

Adobe Edge Web Fonts

Edge Web Fonts provides access to a collection of online fonts, available for use in web documents. These fonts are provided by Adobe, Google, and independent contributors. The service is integrated with the other Edge suite applications, allowing for a larger catalogue of fonts to be used in web development, whilst remaining compatible with all devices. It is also accessible via the Edge Web Fonts site, which generates the code necessary for inclusion in other sites. It is powered by Typekit, but does not provide the same service, and is completely free.

PhoneGap

PhoneGap is a mobile development platform that enables

software Software is a set of computer programs and associated software documentation, documentation and data (computing), data. This is in contrast to Computer hardware, hardware, from which the system is built and which actually performs the work. ...

programmers to build

applications Application may refer to: Mathematics and computing * Application software, computer software designed to help the user to perform specific tasks ** Application layer, an abstraction layer that specifies protocols and interface methods used in a c ...

for mobile devices using

and

. Instead of device-specific languages such as

Objective-C Objective-C is a general-purpose, object-oriented programming language that adds Smalltalk-style messaging to the C programming language. Originally developed by Brad Cox and Tom Love in the early 1980s, it was selected by NeXT for its NeXT ...

, applications are developed independently of their intended platforms, and then compiled and packaged as applications for a range of popular mobile operating systems, including iOS, Android, and Windows Phone.

Typekit

Typekit is a service which allows subscribers to embed fonts into online documents. Unlike Edge Web Fonts, Typekit requires a subscription, which provides access to the font library. The system was initially developed by Small Batch Inc., and purchased by Adobe in October 2011. A free subscription is available to the service, with a more comprehensive option costing an annual fee.

Availability

The applications and services in the Edge suite are available as part of Adobe's Creative Cloud service. Subscription is free, although certain aspects are limited. A complete version, costing US$49.99 per month, is purchasable from Adobe, and lifts some of the restrictions placed on free subscribers. The complete subscription also comes with access to the other applications in the

Adobe Creative Suite Adobe Creative Suite (CS) is a discontinued software suite of graphic design, video editing, and web development applications developed by Adobe Systems. The last of the Creative Suite versions, Adobe Creative Suite 6 (CS6), was launched at a re ...

, along with 20GB of online storage, compared to the 2GB available to free users. ;Remarks: :¹ PhoneGap allows for a limited number of private, and an unlimited number of public applications to be compiled. :² A free Creative Cloud subscriber is allowed to use 2 Typekit fonts on 1 site, with 25,000 visits per month. :³ A complete Creative Cloud subscriber is allowed to use any number of Typekit fonts on an unlimited number of sites, with 500,000 visits per month.

References

{{Adobe Systems

Edge Edge or EDGE may refer to: Technology Computing * Edge computing, a network load-balancing system * Edge device, an entry point to a computer network * Adobe Edge, a graphical development application * Microsoft Edge, a web browser developed ...

Web development software