Sencha Beats Adobe in the Race for the 1st HTML5/CSS3 Animation Tool

Sencha released Animator, a tool for creating CSS-based animations, that lets designers create interactive HTML5/CSS3-based animations that run smoothly on desktop and mobile devices, without requiring a plug-in.

Sencha Animator enables designers to leverage Web standards and create, cross-platform animations for WebKit browsers, Internet Explorer 10, and popular touchscreen mobile devices. “CSS3 animations offer both cross-platform and performance advantages over JavaScript- and Flash-based animations on mobile devices,” said Michael Mullany, CEO of Sencha.

Sencha Animator extends Sencha’s tools, enabling the rapid creation of HTML5 and CSS3 assets:

• Create complex, plug-in-free animations for rich-media ads that run on any CSS3-compatible ad network.
• Powerful, intuitive, drag-and-drop development environment.
• Full CSS3 support, including animations, 2D and 3D transformations, backgrounds, borders, font effects, and more.
• Interactive timeline and intuitive object property controls.
• Manage sequencing, grouping, easing, and other effects with a familiar timeline interface.
• Create custom interactions with the familiar JavaScript language.
• Export animations to readable HTML.
• Ensure high-fidelity playback on the Apple iPad, Apple iPhone, iPod Touch, BlackBerry Torch, BlackBerry PlayBook, Google Android-based phones and tablets, and Windows 8-based tablets, and take advantage of hardware acceleration, where available.
• Supports ORMMA Level 1 (open rich-media mobile advertising), open standard for rich media ads for mobile devices.
• Available on every major desktop OS (Mac, Windows and Linux).

Sencha Animator costs $199 per seat and volume discounts are available.

It is worth noting that Adobe has been previewing a similar tool, codenamed Edge for about a year, but hasn’t been able to deliver a final product yet.