Edge, Animator or Hype?

Question

To make widgets with interactive animations, it seems to me there are now three choices:
- Adobe Edge, now free in preview, uncertain what the final price will be (probably expensive)
- Sencha Animator, $199 for version 1
- Tumult Hype, $49.95
Adobe Edge looks cool, but I have not been able to find a price indication and I'm not going to invest in a learning curve for a tool that will be too expensive. It is also not clear how you turn Edge stuff into widgets that can be used in iBooks. Nice about Edge is that it can import SVG. Sencha looks good too and it works with iBooks, but I find it pricey and there is also not an upgrade policy, hence, will I be paying big  bucks again for version 2? Tumult Hype has a nice price, but there is not a lot of info out there about doing interactions and using it in combination with iBooks.
So, I am looking for information. What do people use?

Answer 1

What do people use?
Interesting topic.
Had never heard of Adobe Edge or Sencha Animator but did have a copy of Hype on my system. After some quick browsing, I decided to compare its use against the free Motion Composer download which seemed to be an innovative approach while the other two programs looked to be for more seriously inclined users requiring more time than I wanted to invest in checking out such applications. Of the two, I still prefer Hype and after a few hours use, deleted the Motion Composer "try before you buy" test app.
While the program's concept was exactly what I was looking for, the software seemed more like a "work in progress" rather than a product ready for market. I managed to creash the app three or four times (don't apply a paragraph effect to a text component that doesn't contain a define paragraph), was disappointed to find your cannot mix text styles within a text component, and found the previews in the browser did not always run as they did in the main app window. Also, since the exporter module could not be accessed, I was unable to see what export options were available or test output to see if it mimics the problematic browser preview or the app's more smoothly running internal preview. So at three times the price of the Hype software package, I quickly decided Motion Composer was simply worth the difference in price.
The latest Radi posting also looks interesting if only for its ability to export animations as video files. (Was, however, a bit disappointed that the QT sampe file was in the MP4 container type.) Especially since my current work flow is to screen capture Hype's output to create iBooks Author "Intro" M4V video files. Unfortunately, I will not be able to test Radi's free beta software immediately since Hype just released their latest v1.5 update today which contains many new major changes—including the ability to export Widget files. Basically this means I will probably have to create another iBooks Author project tonight (converting a public domain ePUB to iBooks Author format) for which I will have to download and prepare some NASA JPL public images, create an intro video, as well as, see if I can come with some pretext for including a test Hype Widget.
In any case, to answer your original question, I'm continuing to use Hype based on its combination of price and feature set which primarily targets the non-professional user but I will still remain open to other similar applications which may hit the market in the days and months to come. In case anyone is interested, here is the URL for the 20-second, video only, test "Intro" file created using Hype. (The file was originally created as a simple HTML 5 file but I decided to use it as the "Intro" Media file to see how that iBooks Author page workd as this was my initial use of the application.)