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At MAX 2011 there have been announements regarding new additions to the Adobe portfolio of products:
- Adobe Announces Agreement to Acquire Nitobi, Creator of PhoneGap
- Adobe Acquires Web Typography Innovator Typekit
Open Source HTML5 Mobile App Platform Accelerates Adobe’s HTML5 and Web Standards Strategy
LOS ANGELES — Oct. 3, 2011 — At its MAX 2011 technology conference, Adobe Systems Incorporated (Nasdaq: ADBE) today announced it has entered into a definitive agreement to acquire privately held Nitobi Software, the creator of PhoneGap and PhoneGap Build. PhoneGap is a popular open source platform for easily building fast, cross-platform mobile applications with HTML5 and JavaScript. With PhoneGap, Adobe® will offer developers the choice of two powerful solutions for cross-platform development of native mobile apps, one using HTML5 and JavaScript with PhoneGap and the other using Adobe Flash® with Adobe AIR®. PhoneGap’s open source framework has been downloaded more than 600,000 times to date and thousands of applications built using PhoneGap are available in mobile app stores that span devices based on Android, iOS, BlackBerry and other operating systems.
“PhoneGap has proven to be an industry-defining app solution for HTML5 developers,” said Danny Winokur, vice president and general manager, Platform, Adobe. “PhoneGap is a fantastic solution for developing a broad range of mobile apps using the latest Web standards, and is already integrated with Dreamweaver® CS5.5. It’s a perfect complement to Adobe’s broad family of developer solutions, including Adobe AIR, and will allow us to continue to provide content publishers and developers with the best, cutting-edge solutions for creating innovative applications across platforms and devices.”
“Adobe has always been a big supporter of the open source community and at the forefront of enabling rich, Web based applications across screens,” said Andre Charland, chief executive officer, Nitobi. “We share the same philosophy about enabling extraordinary mobile and Web applications. Becoming part of the Adobe family with its industry-leading tools and technologies opens up amazing new opportunities for PhoneGap and our customers.”
“We are also excited to announce our contribution of the PhoneGap code to the Apache Software Foundation,” said Dave Johnson, chief technology officer, Nitobi. “Adobe has been fully supportive of our decision, further demonstrating Adobe’s continued commitment to the developer and open source communities. The Apache Software Foundation’s model makes it possible for contributors to collaborate on open source product development and Adobe and Nitobi look forward to engaging with other community members to advance the PhoneGap technology.”
Nitobi is based in Vancouver, Canada and Nitobi’s employees are expected to join Adobe. The acquisition is subject to certain closing conditions and is expected to close by the end of October 2011. Terms were not disclosed.
Adobe today also released its third public preview of Adobe Edge, the new HTML5 motion and interaction design tool that is bringing Flash-like animation to websites and mobile apps using the latest capabilities of HTML, JavaScript and CSS. The new release contains innovative interactivity features and other additions suggested by the development community, and enables content creators to easily deliver a new level of visual richness to HTML5-only websites and mobile apps.
Adobe has also extended existing tools like Adobe Dreamweaver and Flash Professional to bring the next generation of Web standards to designers and developers who rely on those tools. Adobe today released the new CSS3 Mobile Pack for Adobe Fireworks®, which will enable designers to easily extract CSS3 from their design elements in Fireworks and quickly add them to their HTML based websites and mobile applications.
Adobe continues to work closely with the HTML5 community to make important contributions to the W3C and key open source projects like WebKit and JQuery. Adobe has co-authored with Microsoft and submitted to the W3C a proposal for CSS Regions, which enables sophisticated magazine-like layouts using Web standards. Adobe has also contributed a preliminary implementation of CSS Regions to the open source WebKit layout engine, which is already available in the latest builds of Chromium and the WebKit browser. Microsoft has made an implementation available in the latest preview release of Internet Explorer 10. In addition, Adobe today introduced a new proposal to the W3C, co-edited with other W3C members, called CSS Shaders that brings cinematic visual effects to HTML. Finally, Adobe announced that jQuery Mobile 1.0, a popular touch-optimized open source JavaScript framework to which Adobe is a leading contributor, was just made available as a Release Candidate (RC1) this week. Concurrent with this release will be a new version of ThemeRoller, which Adobe has rebuilt from the ground up to enable users to design custom jQuery user interface themes for tight integration in mobile Web projects.
Acquisition Powers the Delivery of Beautiful Cloud-Based Fonts for Use on the Web
LOS ANGELES — Oct. 3, 2011 — At its MAX 2011 technology conference, Adobe Systems Incorporated (Nasdaq:ADBE) today announced that it has acquired privately held Typekit Inc., a leader in the delivery of hosted, high-quality fonts for use on websites. Available as a subscription-based cloud service, Typekit’s vast font library gives designers and developers creative license to deliver beautiful type that enhances the Web experience. Today, more than 250,000 customers use Typekit, including some of the largest sites on the Web, such asThe New York Times, Condé Nast, IGN and many others.
Typekit fonts will be offered as a standalone service and over time as part of Adobe® Creative Cloud. A major new initiative from the company, Adobe Creative Cloud was announced – along with six Adobe Touch Apps for Android and iOS tablet devices – by Kevin Lynch, chief technology officer of Adobe, during his keynote presentation at MAX this morning (see separate press releases).
“Typography is a fundamental design element and something that designers want to be more creative with on websites – especially as these websites now need to be viewed on mobile devices,” said Lea Hickman, vice president, Product Management, Adobe. “Working closely with type foundries, the Typekit team has delivered an outstanding service, empowering designers to present the power of the printed word in new ways – online and on devices.”
Typekit is a fast, easy and reliable way to integrate real fonts into websites and ensure fonts are displayed consistently across all modern browsers. It includes a library of hundreds of fonts from dozens of foundries, all licensed for legal use on the Web. Typekit’s product offerings address a full range of customers, from individuals and small to medium-sized businesses to enterprises and platform partners such as WordPress, Behance and About.me that offer Typekit-powered font menus. Typekit technology is also expected to provide new distribution mechanisms for its foundry partners, including the growing collection of Adobe Web Fonts, which are selected from Adobe’s own library of classic typefaces and optimized for quality on all current Web browsers.
“By joining Adobe, we are now an integral part of the worldwide leader in creative software, and as Adobe moves aggressively into cloud-based services, this will accelerate our vision of reinventing the look and feel of Web through creative and beautiful fonts,” said Jeffrey Veen, chief executive officer, Typekit. “This is an exciting time to be designing for the Web. As millions of new users come online via tablets and smartphones, capturing their attention via high-impact typography has never been more relevant.”