To many it may not have changed the way we look at computers but Apple’s iPad has certainly changed the way we see their roles. For many a computer is something that we run our business on, edit photos or even the multimedia hub for our home. However for those that just use computers as a portal to the web, the tablet PC has enabled them do this faster and more effectively than before. For those of us that design for the web though, lack of support on the iPad for Flash (Adobe’s multimedia animation plugin for the web) has meant we have had to adjust our methods for developing websites viewable on the device.

This could all change with a new development from Adobe. Their new product Edge utilizes the latest web technologies such as HTML 5 & CSS3 along with good old Javascript to create some of the animation and interactivity that we love from Flash websites. Usually saved for coders, Adobe have created a beautiful UI to manage these technologies aimed at designers, not just developers. A free preview version is out now for designers to get using today, with the full product set to be released early next year. I’m sure Flash will always have its place on the web but there’s no denying plugin-less solutions like Edge will make cross platform web design a fair deal easier.