On Monday April 12, 2010 at about 8:00 in the morning Pacific Time, Adobe will officially launch the latest version of its Creative Suite software, including many of the tools that are essential to modern web design and development.
Creative Suite 5 (CS5) includes just about everything one would need to produce web applications, make movies, manage an Internet radio station, or potentially land a rocket on the surface of Mars. For the web development community, key programs include Dreamweaver, Flash Professional, Flash Catalyst, Photoshop, and Illustrator, which collectively provide for projects from application development to SVG vector graphic creation.
Flash to iPhone Applications
Perhaps the most anticipated feature in CS5 will be a something called Packager which employs a custom version of the Low Level Virtual Machine compiler to programmatically convert Flash (ActionScript) into iPhone and iPad's native .ipa file format. This feature could mean that developers may create a shopping application in Flash and, with the click of a button, also output a native iPad or iPhone application.
Adobe had planned to preview this feature during its normal public beta testing process, but Packager attracted so much attention that the company decided to forego the public beta.
“Since the original announcement, we have seen a ton of interest in Flash Professional CS5 and the included Packager for iPhone,” wrote Adrian Ludwig on the official Adobe Flash Platform Blog in December of last year. “Developers in the pre-release program continue to provide great feedback and take advantage of the new features. We've also seen a number of new applications built using ActionScript 3 and delivered to the App Store.
“We are changing our plans in reaction to this strong positive feedback. We want to make sure that we can provide the earliest possible delivery of the final software to the large number of designers and developers interested in Flash Professional CS5 and the included Packager for iPhone."
Paste Vector Graphics into Dreamweaver for HTML5 Canvas Effect
CS5 will also reportedly have a feature that allows web developers to create complex and scalable vector graphics in Illustrator and then paste those graphics into Dreamweaver as an HTML5 Canvas.
Canvas is an Apple invention that allows for rendering two-dimensional vector graphics with JavaScript. The Canvas element has been included in HTML5 and promises to be one of the standard's most significant contributions. Canvas can provide for stunning online experiences, and may make it possible to create amazing new ecommerce applications similar to Zugara's augmented reality dressing room, "Webcam Shopper Social,"—which can be seen on Tobi.com—without having to use Flash and without having to worry about how the effect will look on much larger monitors or even on ecommerce kiosks.
Attend the Official Launch
Adobe has invited the development and creative communities to attend a 30-minute, web-based launch announcement on Monday morning.
You can register for the event and learn for yourself it is time to upgrade.
