Technology and the advancement of softwares are one of my favorite things in this world besides the ones I love and care for and my personal work. There’s something about programs that get new upgrades that makes designers and developers like me want to jump on the bandwagon and acquire that new piece of technology as soon as possible.
Adobe (famously known for their Photoshop and Flash products) have finally launched a tease of their new products. It’s almost like everything we dreamed that CS4 could do, they implemented it into CS5. Knowing that, I’m already going to be in awe to see what CS6, CS7, CS8, and such will bring to the new generation.
As always, there are a few suites a designer or developer can buy to gain access to a collective of programs that would help their workflow and save a few hundred dollars. There’s the creative design suite for those dealing with design, and there’s also the web suite which is obviously tailored for the web designers and developers. Or, if you have the money to spend, then you can drop it all on the master collection.
Adobe just launched their video to show some of the features behind Adobe CS5 Suite in action. If you haven’t watched it yet, you should go and take a look at Adobe TV and watch the movie.
The video shows many unique features from content aware fill, to smart dashes, to browser control.
There’s so many features of CS5 that was shown, and probably features that they haven’t shown, but already the Web features they showed has almost gotten me to take the switch to use Dreamweaver….or maybe not.
The new Adobe Dreamweaver showcases a better engine to be able to view/edit sites made through complex platforms like WordPress or Joomla. In addition, you can see all the linked files that makes the site run, and it also features a new add-on program called “Browser Lab” or something like that (only watched the video once). Basically, it mimics all the current browsers and older browsers so that you can see how your site matches up in different browsers especially that dreadful and annoying Internet Explorer. The best thing about it is the “Onion Skin” mode where you can compare the different browser’s rendering on top of each other and see the little differences between them via outlines.
Smart Radius. Smart Radius. Smart Radius. I’m not spamming for keywords, but just to say that this new tool gets rid of a lot of problems when cutting a stock that has difficult areas such as hair, or spikes. Remember pen tooling to get those exact cut? Well, with smart radius you can do a nice clean extraction without having to spend a lot of time zooming into the picture and adjusting your pen tool points. Although it probably won’t be as exact as the pen tool, you’re still saving a lot of time that can be spent, sleeping or doing another work.
Flash Catalyst is a new addition to the Adobe family, and basically it gives designers a chance to make some really good looking flash sites without delving into any Actionscript or code at all. I’m not familiar on how it works, but from the looks of it, you can import your PSD or AI and then probably just add effects to it like presets in After Effects. I’m excited to see what this program can do. Although, my hatred of flash is pretty much on top of my mind now. I’m not an advocate of HTML5 and it’s new canvas engine, neither am I a big hater of Flash, I just hope that Flash Catalyst can actually help me get through my flash animation obstacles that clients always want. However, on another note, if you haven’t heard about HTML5 or seen any development, check out this article about HTML5 and how it can replace flash (for simple things at least).
I don’t know. The thing that’s holding me back is the fact that it’s not out yet and I don’t quite have the money to upgrade. However, I will download the trial because I’m more interested in the new Dreamweaver and seeing how fast it can be. Like most people, I like doing code in its most archaic form. Notepad (well, Coda/Notepad++) and Mozilla Firefox along with those Firefox add-ons for web development.
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