Adobe coughs up CS4 public betas

Adobe Systems is today releasing public beta versions of its Dreamweaver, Fireworks and Soundbooth apps. The betas have been spat out by Adobe ahead of the company’s upcoming Creative Suite 4 release that will come bundled with the web design, web prototyping and audio editing tools. The firm said the betas are available to …

[Bob McAndrew]

adobe = firefox killer

how interesting (not!) whenever I try to go to www.adobe.com it kills my firefox session - like totally - instantly disappears

[Daniel]

@bob

may want to reinstall your flash plugin as it works fine on three of my machines?

[Liam]

HMMMM

works for me too... adobe wont be IE focussed as its primarily an apple loving company

since i have just purchased the master collection in the last couple of months i wonder if i will be allowed to upgrade for free... seems a short space of time to bring out the new version... i havent even looked at all the s/w on this 9 dvd extravaganza

[sleepy]

@Liam

" adobe wont be IE focussed as its primarily an apple loving company "

You're dead wrong there. It's just Adobe's customers who are frequently still Apple lovers. Adobe principally loves Microsoft, but tries to maintain some independence. Seven years after the launch of Mac OS X, Adobe's products are still not proper OS X applications, which is why they aren't yet 64 bit on OS X. Adobe and Postscript may have been nourished into existence by the 1985 Apple Laserwriter 1 and PageMaker for Mac, but Apple loving went out when Bruce Chizen came in and re-created Adobe in the image of Microsoft. Several important Adobe applications are either no longer available, or are incomplete versions on Macintosh. (Framemaker, Acrobat)

[Anonymous Coward]

in general...

... I have seen the CS4 applications and they look pretty good. the move to have the UI being powered by the Flex and Air technologies helps to unify things and makes most applications at least not look out of place from each-other

@ sleepy

as an "insider" I can safely say that Mac 10.5 is being supported by CS4 much better than Vista. And from what I can see all software (both Adobe and old Macromedia software) is being made for both platforms.

Infact, there are one or two apps that are enhanced for Mac 10.5 0 just in the same way that Acrobat 6 and 7 had extra features on the Mac - if you knew where to find them.

It really does depend on which application you want to use as to if it is supported on Win, Mac or Linux...

With regards to Framemaker - it is a very old application. InDesign is the application created to be used instead of Framemaker and Pagemaker.

But it has taken a long time for the DTP specialists out there to adjust, or convince their managers to purchase it...

[The Avangelist]

I've been trying to update lightroom for 3 months

the page always spits a load of Japanese at me and says come back later.

I think it is a bloody cheek to release DreamweaverCS4 why not just patch up what they missed out the last time. IE link checking for the most commonly used functions since CS1 was released?

They are really starting to take the mickey

[Steven]

Dreamweaver 8

CS3, the bloated, over complex and over priced piece of crapware is sat languishing on one of my development machines. Unless CS4 is a VAST improvement then I'll still be sticking to Dreamweaver 8 and 3rd party extensions.

[Anonymous Coward]

Oh God No

Another new release? How much is this one going to cost? This just means that we in the printing/graphic arts industries will have to go through another round of expensive upgrades and extensive testing so that we can support yet another version that our clients will run out and buy immediately for no good reason.

Anonymous 'cause there may be clients lurking.

[tardigrade]

@Steven

Your right. Dreamweaver CS3 is "a bloated, over complex and over priced piece of crapware".

It's still the finest all round WYSIWYG web editor available though. Which is why I still use it and love it above anything else. But I do wish someone else out there could provide a non bloat alternative that has Zend Studios PHP / MySQL handling capabilities to boot.

Dreamweaver is still the ticket but even if you run it day in day out it's too damn heavy man! Why? Lets see what CS4 can do.

Oh and can I have a Linux version please? Ta.

[Martyn Pot]

Lifecycle?

What a load of bull nads. I've only just gotten approval on the thousands of dollars it will cost our company to upgrade to CS3 and now they want us to fork out again. How about spending some of our hard earned on actually fixing bugs and reliability in After Effects CS3?

Are Adobe to 2D what Autodesk is to 3D? A giant hulking monopoly that owns everything and charges what it wants for half-assed software?

[Liam]

hmmm

@ sleepy - i was under the impressions that s/w is written for the apple then ported over to the pc.

and thank heavens that pagemaker is dead - long live inDesign :)

i was somewhat annoyed to find out that cs3 was cheaper in dollars than in £!! when i contacted tham i was told this was due to the international language pack. to which i told them you still use american spelling everywhere i can see so why am i paying more (fair enough to translate into norwegian etc!)

[fred]

none

GIMP.

[Justin Case]

WYSIWYG?

WYSIWHAT!

A plague be on your houses you Dreamweaving, GoLive-ing pretenders. I spit upon your websites. I empty the contents of my nose in the general direction of your pathetic, bloated, standards busting bilge...

Use notepad and code websites like real men

[Vince]

@Martyn Pot

------------

What a load of bull nads. I've only just gotten approval on the thousands of dollars it will cost our company to upgrade to CS3 and now they want us to fork out again. How about spending some of our hard earned on actually fixing bugs and reliability in After Effects CS3?

Are Adobe to 2D what Autodesk is to 3D? A giant hulking monopoly that owns everything and charges what it wants for half-assed software?

------------

So wait up and just move straight to CS4?

And yes, of course Adobe are like Autodesk. Similarly "de facto". Just like Microsoft. It's the "big player" advantage (for them).

[tim chubb]

@Dreamweaver 8

i agree, although cs3 does seem to have a more reliable built in ftp

to be honest though i only really use dw for the built in ftp

notepad++, with fire bug does all and more than dw

and its CSS editor is a real pain in the arse

what i would like to see would be the ability to export from photoshop into html, e.g. create divs and z-index them properly, instead of having to fuck about with that peice of shit called fire works

sod it, just use notepad++, firebug and paintshop pro 9 (b4 corel buggered it in two) and save urself from adobe bloatware