Foreword

When I was about eight, I got a book from my step-dad. We had a PC at home, in fact, it was one of the first IBM PC clones that was made by Sperry, an old mainframe company that was entering into the new PC market. The book was made by IBM and it was a computer programming book aimed at kids to learn BASIC.

The book was illustrated with dragons, robots, and spaceships, and appropriately so. The world of programming was fantasy. It was a world where if you imagined it, you could turn it into reality. I went through that book from cover to cover multiple times, going through the examples and tweaking them to do all kinds of crazy stuff. But what really transformed me was when I finally embarked on my own projects from scratch.

My first projects were little games, but eventually I wanted to do more. As a kid, and as my friends would tell you even more so as an adult, I was a big Star Trek fan. I loved the show, but wanted to make it more real. Since it was my imagination, then programming was the best way to bring it into reality, so I created an application that simulated all of the functions of the bridge of the Enterprise. It had sounds, graphics, I could go to warp speed and fight Klingons, I was able to create something from scratch with only my imagination and the confidence I built through that book.

It was through that book, and the possibilities it exposed me to, that gave me the confidence to take my own ideas and turn them into reality. That same knowledge and world of possibilities is in your hands right now. The Web, animation, and interactivity let you take what you imagine and turn it into reality.

But as with any technology, there are changes and evolutions that happen over time. HTML 5 is the latest of these, but as HTML 5 started to grow, it was a bewildering mess of languages, coding, and concepts to understand. This made it almost impossible for someone to see the beauty that it actually enabled and the opportunity it provided to web professionals.

Something that I have always appreciated about Adobe is how it is able to take complex technologies and bring them to the masses. They first did this with desktop publishing and most recently with digital publishing for tablets. Now, with Edge Animate, this same philosophy has been brought to HTML 5. The same magic I had years ago I now have available to me again. Edge Animate combines the creative drive in all of us with modern technology that allows the world to see it and for us to express ourselves in new ways. It allows our imagination to become reality.

When I was working on the Edge Animate team, it was clear that we were doing something special. Combining the technologies of HTML, CSS, jQuery, and JavaScript together while maintaining the same level of expressiveness and ease of use as older technologies like Flash was a challenge, but also extremely rewarding. Through my work on Edge Animate, I was able to meet some amazing people in the community, including my good friends Tom Green and Michael Clawson. Their passion for combining beauty, design, technology, and expression makes them perfect mentors for anyone who is diving into the Web for the first time or for those who are learning new ways to express themselves after years of working on the Web in the past.

My time with the Edge Animate team provided some of the most rewarding and challenging days of my life, but I am proud of what Edge Animate has become, but even more so—what it is enabling millions of people like you to do: Combine beauty with the Web and let your imagination become reality.

I hope you enjoy Edge Animate as much as I did helping it along in its early days. As Tom said when I first showed him Edge Animate, “The magic is back.”

Have fun.

Doug Winnie
Former Edge Animate Product Manager