Flash is a great choreographer – there it is, I’ve said it. Flash detractors have always been more reluctant to learn Flash than knowledgable about it’s performance and compatibility concerns (which were very few, a long time ago). But without better mobile penetration, and even with the fall-backs, it’s been hard to justify continuing in that medium for some time now, (insert rant about Apple’s iTunes profits being put before the animation concerns of some of their most loyal fans, here).
Your options boil down to essentially 2: Adobe Edge Animate and Greensock. One has a stage and one is going to be practical for most deployments. So where to spend your valuable coder’s R&D time?
Here are the four things to consider:
1. Your Comfort With Code VS. Your Love Of A Stage.
Some say that Adobe Edge Animate has a UI that’s easier for designers to learn. In GreenSock, you need to hard code everything.
2. Performance.
Edge Animate will never match the speed and optimal browser performance of GreenSock.
3. File Size.
GreenSock is light. Edge Animate has a 100K just for the library.
4. Browser Support.
Edge Animate is IE 9 and up. Greensock is backward to to IE 6 for many features.
I will always miss the workflow of a Flash stage, especially as a designer, but I’ve invested this far in being a coder, it may be time to embrace the control and performance of hand-coding animation and start really getting something more out of HTML 5.