When Steve Jobs decided that Flash had to go, there were no good alternatives for creating that type of interactive content that would run on mobile devices. With the wide spread adoption of HTML5 there are two good tools available for creating standards-compliant content.

Adobe Edge

Adobe has introduced Edge, a suite of apps for creating and programming animations and online apps. Edge Animate is the core working app for content creation. Edge Reflow for creating responsive layouts. Edge Code is an HTML, CSS and JavaScript code editor. All are available under the Adobe Creative Cloud license (starting at $49.95 a month).

Tumult Hype is a Mac only app that does pretty much everything that the Edge suite does, in a single app. Best of all it’s only $29.99.

Both programs work similar to the way Flash did. They are frame/layer based, where each element is placed on a layer and on a set of frames. Both programs have strong animation tools allowing for very sophisticated movement with relative ease. They also both allow actions to be programmed using JavaScript. The single biggest difference is Edge can not work with video. So if you want to insert video in your project you’re out of luck. Fortunately Hype handles video very well, including an easy method of including all the variations on encoding needed for all the various browser requirements.

So, while neither one has quite the sophistication or ease of use that Flash has, both are good replacements that will keep your work mobile-compatible and ready for the next big change in technology.