“Photoshop speaks a fundamentally different language from the web,” writes PM Jacob Surber. That’s great for many things, but Adobe’s new Edge Reflow—available to download now, for free—takes a different approach, creating designs that present themselves differently depending on device (phone, tablet, desktop):
Honesty in design: Reflow itself is built using HTML, CSS and JavaScript, with the goal of helping web designers design for HTML, CSS and JavaScript. Our intention is to remove layers of abstractions, so designers can create for the web using the web.
Focus on standards: Reflow will ONLY enable designers to create experiences that are compatible with the web. In some situations this can be limiting, but as the capabilities of the web changes, Reflow will evolve as well. Adobe has committed to contributing and advancing web standards. Our goal is to integrate that work, as experimental features, in our web tools such as Reflow.
Check out a quick tour:
[Update: An overview from Forbes concludes, “None of these tools design the site for you, and they don’t address the engineering issues that I mentioned above, but they sure make the multi-screen design process a lot more accessible to a lot more designers. Someone deserves to be knighted for that!”]
Looks promising! Hopefully some great PSD integration in there. Maybe some day the two could be integrated?