Filed under: Software
Adobe releases Dreamweaver, Fireworks and Soundbooth betas
Adobe Labs today released public betas for the next generation of Dreamweaver, Fireworks, and Soundbooth apps, part of their Creative Suite product. Once downloaded and launched, the betas will only be active for 48 hours -- unless you have a CS3 license. Creative Suite 3 customers will be able to extend the trial period (presumably until the final versions are released, though the deactivation date is not mentioned in the press release).
The Dreamweaver beta includes a much-anticipated (at least by me) change to the WebKit rendering engine for previewing and live editing.
Fireworks has been re-vamped to look and feel more like other Creative Suite apps, and now allows users to export design comps as interactive PDF documents.
The Soundbooth beta now includes multiple track support, and the new ability to match volume levels across multiple files. Plus, users can preview MP3 compression settings before saving them.
Soundbooth (719MB) requires Mac OS X 10.4.11 or later, running on an Intel processor. Fireworks (634MB) and Dreamweaver (262MB) have the same OS requirement, but can run on a G5 processor or better.
Thanks, Kent!
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Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
Quine said 12:22PM on 5-27-2008
Great now they're ruining fireworks' UI?
I really don't like adobe's UI design choices.
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Street Trees said 12:27PM on 5-27-2008
So how far away are we from CS4? I agree with Quine on the UI choices. Yuck.
http://www.filterra.com/index.php/design/
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Robert Palmer said 12:31PM on 5-27-2008
Adobe carefully avoided any discussion of release dates.
And a programming note: TUAW will be reviewing these three apps in the coming days.
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Sean Flanagan said 1:16PM on 5-27-2008
Adobe is going to have to do a hell of a lot to Dreamweaver to get me to switch back from Panic's Coda. Coda is a masterpiece in comparison as it is, and it has an imminent 2.0 release that will likely debut well before CS4 does.
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Robert Palmer said 1:26PM on 5-27-2008
I couldn't agree more, Sean. Adobe has an uphill battle to win back serious coders.
Joey said 3:30PM on 5-27-2008
I agree. I made the switch this year from Dreamweaver to Coda and, while Coda also has its flaws, I'm never looking back. It's faster, easier to use and it has really increased my productivity.
That said, the bigger question for me is, can Fireworks replace Photoshop in my web comp workflow? To date I've never used FW so I'm curious to see what the advantages of this app are...
Quine said 1:21PM on 5-27-2008
I actually amend my design comment on cs4 ONLY with the following conditions:
1. they make it so the panels stop resizing when opening new ones and follow the maximize-within-available-space strategy that macromedia panels used to use
2. they make the ui RESPONSIVE. right now if you click an object or the canvas, it takes a full second to change in the property inspector. it did that in cs3 too and it makes fireworks not worth the money because it's so much slower than it should be now. (hence why I've been using pixelmator instead even though it lacks a lot of fireworks' features).
Also, beta tester beware! This is the buggiest beta i've seen in years!
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Steve (Athena Design) said 1:26PM on 5-27-2008
With regards to " Creative Suite 3 customers will be able to extend the trial period (presumably until the final versions are released, though the deactivation date is not mentioned in the press release)."
I have just downloaded and activated CS4 and the BETA beta will expire 30 days after CS4 is available for purchase.
With regards to Coda I agree I use CS3 to quickly put a site together and then use CSSEdit and Coda to adjust/fix on the fly.
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J.Y. said 2:32PM on 5-27-2008
I've been very frustrated with Dreamweaver CS3 on both my intel Macs (Macbook, new iMac). It's pathetically slow. This is an issue that Adobe has been aware of since 6/2007, but no real fix works. The suggestions they make cripple the product, and still do not really help (for example, they actually suggest running it in Rosetta mode!): http://kb.adobe.com/selfservice/viewContent.do?externalId=kb401608&sliceId=1
It's really maddening to see them messing with a new Beta, when the really expensive CS3 upgrade I bought at the end of last year is almost non-functional. Anyone else have DW slowdowns on Intel Macs?
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frogbat said 2:37PM on 5-27-2008
glad to see fw continually being developed - the text features are getting the cs3 treatment for better or for worse. It was one of fireworks' weaknesses. they should have more emulation of css properties or a full css palette in fireworks where i can visually layout my css better.
i'm glad it's getting a ui update if that means i'll be able to scroll through the layers palette. having said that - these are updates that hsou've been in cs3. They made a killing with cs3 cos of all the customers they had wanting an intel mac version of their products. i find the whole cs3 usable only on my mac pro - anything else and it trips.
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Dale said 2:44PM on 5-27-2008
We're still only licensed for Dreamweaver 8 where I work, so I am coding in the dark ages. Just downloading the beta now to see if it'll be worth asking for an upgrade. I am particularly happy about the Webkit-based preview and Subversion features.
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Radioboy said 3:26PM on 5-27-2008
I love Fireworks, is better than Photoshop in all, except retouch big pictures for posters or print designs
for all the rest, FIREWORKS
(sorry for my english guys)
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SamW said 4:42PM on 5-27-2008
This is getting interesting.
I'm still using DW MX 2004 by choice. (I started with DW2) I do mostly hand-coding of snippets of web pages and JavaScript coding. I like having the code view, WYSIWYG or code view, CSS and local files for the site I'm working on all visible on one screen. I also like the ability to select an element by clicking one of the parent tags listed along the bottom of each page, and the colorizing of javascript code.
DW has had one bug that, well,has bugged me, since their first version that worked with OS X: you cannot copy and paste from the F10 code view into the replace box in the search and replace. Since MX has the minimum features I need and no future version has fixed that bug I have yet to upgrade.
FW and DW MX 2004 run really slow on the PowerMac I got in January so I keep looking for something to replace them.
I seriously considered CODA but didn't see how to set it up for the way I work. I'll be interested to see if CODA 2 can be set up more to my liking. Glad to hear it is coming soon.
I've also been looking at Pixelmator to replace Fireworks but so far it's still FW all the way. Love the optimization tools, they make it quick and easy.
From what I've read so far about them, these new versions may finally inspire me to upgrade, unless something else entices me first.
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TwisterMc said 7:55PM on 5-27-2008
J.Y., Dreamweaver is horribly slow too for me at times. Try hiding any other application windows behind Dreamweaver.
These betas sound nice, however, can I run both the CS3 and CS4 versions at the same time?
Eagerly awaiting TUAW's review.
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Ian Murray said 10:00PM on 5-27-2008
Too soon. TOO SOON!
That is all.
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