Adobe Unveils Collaborative Tools, Touch Apps, HTML5 Acquisition

At the AbobeMAX Conference today, Adobe announced a new initiative allowing for collaborative development using the company's tools -- which are widely used by game developers -- the acquisition of mobile HTML5 tool maker Nitobi, and more. The newly announced Creative Cloud will offer members the ability to view, share and sync files from Adobe's popular Creative Suite tools with each other on 20GB of Cloud Storage. Details on pricing for the new service will be available in November, ahead of a 2012 release. Creative Cloud will work with Adobe's desktop Creative Suite apps, as well as a newly unveiled set of Adobe Touch Apps designed for the tablet environment. The new touch tools include a full-featured Adobe Photoshop Touch, as well as Ideas, a vector-based drawing tool, and Proto, a tool that allows for quick wireframe prototyping of web sites and apps. Adobe also announced its acquisition of Vancouver-based Nitobi Software, the maker of open source HTML5 and Javascript mobile app creation tool PhoneGap, which has already been downloaded over 600,000 times. The acquisition follows Adobe's August announcement of Edge, a new tool designed for HTML5 development in an environment similar to Adobe's Flash. Additionally, Adobe has expanded support for Flash-based AIR apps, including games, on TVs, Blu-ray players and set-top boxes through new partnerships with LG and Tivo. The company said it "expects rapid growth for Flash-based applications across connected televisions and other devices." Finally, the company announced that the previously revealed Adobe Flash 11 and AIR 3 development environments will be available for download tonight starting at 9PM Pacific time.