Adobe has really opened up its development process by releasing public prereleases of its applications -- beta versions posted as free downloads for you to try out.
The Adobe Labs site provides early access to evaluate new and emerging Adobe technologies and products.
Adobe has now posted early looks at some of the new upgrades to its Create Suite 3 collection of professional for print, web, interactive, mobile, video, and film design.
- For video editors, check out the new Adobe Soundbooth for intuitive audio creation and enhancement, with multitrack support and enhanced editing workflow.
- For Web designers, there are betas of Adobe Dreamweaver for web design and Adobe Fireworks to prototype interactive designs. These integrate the common Adobe CS interface with tighter integration among the suite, provide deeper support for standards including CSS, and support Adobe AIR to author multiplatform desktop applications.
- And for all of us, there's a prerelease of Adobe Flash Player 10, with 3D animation, deeper support from Adobe effects and text technology, and enhanced performance.
So go ahead and try these out -- for a limited time until they expire.
See my Video Editing Software Gallery for information and links to video editing tools.
Find Adobe CS3 Production Premium on Amazon.com
Find Adobe CS3 Master Collection on Amazon.com
Details on new features below
Adobe Soundbooth
-- Edit and create audio with fast, intuitive tools
New features (see current product):
- Multitrack support
- Match volume levels across one or more files
- Preview MP3 compression settings before saving
- Enhanced Soundbooth Score workflow
- New Adobe Sound Document file format - take “snapshots” of your work-in-progress and undo changes made to your audio assets
Adobe Dreamweaver -- Design, develop, and maintain standards-based websites and applications
New features (see current product):
- Live View - View web pages like a standards-based browser
- Related Files - Bar to manage associated files -- CSS, JavaScript, PHP, XML
- Code Navigator - Pop-up shows all the code sources that affect your current selection
- CSS best practices - New tab shows styles for current selection, and all applicable CSS rules
- Code hinting for Ajax and JavaScript frameworks
- HTML data sets - Dynamic tables with sortable columns, master-detail layout, other sophisticated displays
- Photoshop Smart Objects - Drag and drop Photoshop PSD files as image Smart Object.
- Subversion integration - Version control
- Adobe AIR authoring support - Create multiplatform desktop applications from HTML and JavaScript sites
- New user interface - Adobe Creative Suite integration and common user interface elements
Adobe Fireworks
-- Rapidly prototype and design for the web
New features (see current product):
- New user interface - Adobe Creative Suite integration
- CSS and Images Export - Standards–compliant, with external style sheets
- PDF export - High-fidelity, interactive, secure PDF documents
- Live Style improvements - Apply to all elements with the style, or individual instances
- Adobe type engine - Enhanced typesetting capabilities familiar from Photoshop and Illustrator
- AIR authoring - Prototype and deploy to HTML and CSS, Flex, or Flash
New features (see current product):
- 3D Effects - Easily transform and animate objects through 3D space
- Custom Filters and Effects - Using Adobe Pixel Bender, the same technology used for many After Effects CS3 filters
- Advanced Text Layout - New flexible text layout engine provides low-level access to text layout and typographic elements like ligatures
- Enhanced Drawing Interface - Re-styleable properties, sophisticated shapes
- Visual Performance Improvements - Runs smoother and faster with expanded hardware acceleration
- Dynamic Streaming - Dynamically change bitrate to adjust to network conditions