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!

Here's a quickie update notice: Adobe recently updated both Premiere Pro and Soundbooth for complete Leopard compatibility.

Premiere Pro 3.1.1, a 54MB update, also includes "important bug fixes" (but what they are, is anyone's guess), and is available from Adobe's website, in addition to the 4.1MB Soundbooth fix.

Happy video/sound editing in Leopard!

Some corners of the Mac web aren't too happy about Adobe's choice to not support the PowerPC chip with their latest beta offering, Soundbooth. We've received a few comments on our original post, and Macintouch has a few posts from readers who are, let's say, 'somewhat upset.' To help bring some sense to the table, Adobe's John Nack (the product manager of Photoshop, mind you) has stepped in to lay down the company's decision on his blog. Long story short, John explains that support isn't being 'removed' from the product - while it's been dubbed as 'Audition Elements' by some, it's a brand new baby for both Mac OS X and Windows. In this context, Adobe made the choice of streamlining development (supporting one chipset) which favors focusing on things like features and performance, rather than trying to get a team of audio engineers who are used to working with Intel-based chips to start jugging a second architecture (PowerPC) which Adobe believes Apple is treating as "dead to us."

I think this is a really difficult position for Adobe to be in, and given the circumstances, I understand their decision. While the PowerPC architecture is by no means 'dead' just yet, it's getting up from the dinner table and making its way for the coat closet (don't forget, there's plenty of conversation and lingering while putting one's coat on and rounding up all the kids). Readers at Macintouch have cited that a fair portion of the Mac audio industry are still using PowerPC based rigs and probably will for quite some time, and I think that might also have been a significant factor in the decision: Soundbooth isn't competing with Pro Tools and professional workflows, it's a mid-range app (at least from what I understand). I am certainly no software engineer, and I know equally little about the intricacies of audio software, but if a company with Adobe's girth says that now is a bad time to start building PowerPC support into a brand new product - I'll listen. From the non-developer sidelines, it sounds like it's a lot easier for code ninjas who already had a PowerPC app to unite forces with Intel support (thanks in part to Apple's UB efforts), as opposed to getting Intel backgrounds (remember: Adobe's audio guys are coming over from Windows development on this one) to shake hands with PowerPC.

In the grander scheme of Adobe matters, however, they haven't shown this "abandoning" attitude in any of their other existing products, such as the entire Creative Suite (in fact Nack reminds us PPC hasn't gone anywhere in CS3), and even Lightroom Photoshop Lightroom, another recent beta offering for the pro photography crowd, is in fact a Universal Binary. I think Soundbooth was simply caught in the crossfire of this chip architecture migration, and Adobe had to make a hard decision that was ultimately tipped by looking ahead at the Mac platform, and realizing exactly where Soundbooth is going to sit on the ladder of Mac OS X-based audio editing.

Leo Laporte, podcaster extraordinare and the web's general tech-guru-on-steroids, has blogged that the Soundbooth beta Adobe announced today just might let him jump ship to the Mac entirely. Since the first days of his podcasting adventures, Leo's been using Adobe's Audition for all his podcast recording and editing, but it's Windows only. While Soundbooth isn't entirely a Mac counterpart (Leo's initial impressions are that it's an "Audition Elements"), his "So Long Suckah" post title sounds like he's optimistic.

Still, I agree with Leo and I'm a little disappointed in the offering. Soundbooth's biggest ding right now is that it only does single track recording and editing. For Adobe's girth as a company, I'm a bit surprised this feature is missing. Here's hoping the term 'beta' is applied for every ounce it's worth right now.

Either way, it's nice to hear Leo might be able to make the jump entirely. One less workflow intrusion is a good thing.

There are a few new things from Adobe Labs this week at the Adobe MAX show in Las Vegas. Yesterday they announced Flex Builder 2 for Macintosh which "allows developers to productively build and test Flex 2 applications on the Macintosh platform using either the PowerPC or Intel chip." I've never coded in Flex and honestly wouldn't even know it if I saw it, but if it's your area of expertise, this sounds like it might be a Good Thing™.

Today they are touting Soundbooth which is "a brand new application built in the spirit of Sound Edit 16 and Cool Edit that provides the tools video editors, designers, and others who do not specialize in audio need to accomplish their everyday work." Soundbooth is designed to compliment your existing workflows in Premiere Pro, After Effects, Flash and other creative tools. So far it sounds very Garageband-ish but I'm having trouble downloading it right now to check it out.

Flex Builder 2 for Macintosh will be available for purchase in early 2007 and Soundbooth is shotting for the middle of 2007.

Here's the catch with Soundbooth - it's Intel-only (Mac OS X 10.4.3 or later) and won't run on PowerPC. C'mon Adobe... why is this Universal Binary thing so hard for you? Also, Adobe says that "due to licensing restrictions the beta does not support all of the formats that the final release will, including MP3, MPEG-2, H.264, and FLV."

If you happen to be in Vegas today, stop by The Venetian Hotel to check these and other Adobe products out in person.