Adobe CS5 Release

The details of Adobe Creative Suite 5 was announced today via a webcast on Adobe TV today... Watch the Launch Video

Apart from some really great new tricks in Photoshop and After Effects, I was a bit underwhelmed with the announcement. Overall, it appears that the entire suite is putting more emphasis on the Flash platform which I think is the opposite direction that the industry is moving in. With the release of the HTML5 definition, the need for the Flash plugin is greatly diminished. Couple that with Apple's refusal to add Flash to the iPad / iPhone and I believe many developers are turning their focus away from Flash. Even though Flash is touting that you can export Apps into an iPhone format, these apps still have to make it through the AppStore approval process.

Candidly, I had really hoped to see more focus on the Spry (AJAX) Framework within Dreamweaver. AJAX (Asynchronous Javascript And XML) is definitely the way of the future when it comes to Dynamic Web Applications. From that perspective, I think Adobe missed the mark. Even so, I believe that the price is ok if you can get in on the Education Pricing. Otherwise, I really don't see need to upgrade from CS4. Moving from CS3 would worth it.

Lastly, the BrowserLab service that is part of CS Live is a really great tool for Web Designers, especially those of us working on Macs and needing to test on IE7 / IE8. This is definitely something I will be looking into.

Overall, I think CS5 is a solid release. You can definitely live without it, but if you have the extra cash...