The film is not so exciting, but the new software surely is. If you’ve ever had to manage tons of projects with tons of different fonts, then you should definitely check out Suitcase. If you don’t, I’d leave it alone. Font management can be a scary task!
Check out the video…
I recently ran across a little bonus from TimeWarner called SpeedBoost. If you are already a Turbo customer they have a new technology that, when its available, will allow you to hit downstream speeds of up to 28MB. That’s pretty smokin’ fast.
But then that creates some real usability issues for me when I’m developing and testing sites. Not everyone will be able to pull down a full res jpeg that I decided to use as a background image, or a 2.5MB flash file in a split second.
So I needed a way to throttle the connection speed. And I found it. First you need Java, (which you probably already have), then you need Sloppy.
Works like a charm, and brought me back to the good ol days of waiting 30 seconds for a site to load. Geesh, glad we got past that.
And now, I know that I have to add a preloader to that 2.6MB flash file. Nice.
This is pretty interesting. I’ve been staring at the Contribute icon in my applications folder for quite some time now. Contribute is an application from Adobe that allows anyone to edit web content from their computer, even if they don’t know html.
But I know html. Why is this cool for me? Well sometimes I get tired of looking through code and it would just be nice to have a simple text editor to edit html. So with a few snippets of code inserted into my html from Dreamweaver, I can use this nifty little app to edit sites.
But what is really cool in the CS3 version, is that I can connect to any blogging software and write a new post (like this one) and publish it to my blog. Neat. I’ve been looking at some other software that would let me edit posts offline and then publish them at a later date. Ecto, MarsEdit, and a few others, but maybe, just maybe Adobe will save the day.
Probably doesn’t make sense to go out and but Contribute just for blog editing, but the html/blog editing combo make this a nice little piece of software.
Final brandmark for bGreenR. Be on the lookout for the family of sites coming in the next few months.
I really don’t want this to be an all about Adobe blog, but since I’ve been super busy with projects I don’t have a ton to write about but I have been playing with the new Fireworks CS4 and I think they are finally pulling it together. So after two days of playing here is why I think so…
1. Improved Pages.
Pages in Fireworks is one of the reasons that I think this tool is far superior to photoshop when it comes to mocking up web pages for client approval. New to the CS4 we have ‘masters’. Much like InDesign for print we can set master page elements that will be present on all pages and then when it is time to make changes to those elements we can make it on on master sheet rather than have to make the changes to each page recursively. Sweet huh? So for things like navigation (which seems to never get nailed down) this is great because you can set it to the master and when there are additions to copy, or links names we can make it at one spot rather than 20.
2. Text wrapping.
There have been some improvements to the type engine that we are using in Fireworks. Now it is the same engine that both Photoshop and Illustrator employ. So we can now have improved control over how our type is set on a webpage. Which, for a print designer who is making a move to the web side this can be great news. One of the bigest frustrations that I have moving from Fireworks from Photoshop to mock up webpages was that Fireworks had limited control over copy. They have also added ‘text wrapping’ to CS4. Almost. Instead of it being automatic like Illustrator and InDesign you have to create a vector shape that you want the type to flow inside. Then you have to ‘attach to shape’ which will give the appearance of text flowing around a floated image. Nice. But one complaint. Illustrator and InDesign do it automatically where if you move an image into a text area the text will automatically wrap. Why not Fireworks? Is this not the same Adobe? Can the Fireworks team not borrow the secrets from the Illustrator team to make this automatic? My guess is that this will come in CS5 and they are holding out to make you think you will need that update just as much as you needed the CS4 update. Smart. I guess.
3. Improved User Interface.
Panels groupings are now closer to what you would expect form Adobe and also fits more inline with your Illustrator and Photoshop experience. And it looks a heck of a lot better.
4. Smart guides.
Another necessary improvement. Now Fireworks handles just like Illustrator and Photoshop when it comes time to line up objects on the canvas. Yep, keep it coming Adobe!
So over all I think they are making some real improvements and seems proof to me that they are not going to drop it out of the Suite. Or maybe they will? Who knows? But for now Fireworks is becoming one mean web comp machine.
Ok, you might think that a browser is a browser is a browser. The facts are that this is simply not true. So if you happen to just cruise along with Internet Explorer or FIrefox because someone told you to or because it just came on your computer then you might be missing out on some cool things.
Today, Opera released 9.5. It has a new interface design, which for me weighs in pretty heavy. I mean how can I look at beautiful websites through a horrific looking browser? Well to answer that, I can’t.
I’ve only browsed around with it for half a day or so now and here is what I’ve found:
1. Fast. Right up there with Safari and the Firefox 3 Release Candidate.
2. Nice looking. Several different skins if the out of the box doesn’t suit your pallette.
3. Speed-Dial is interesting.
4. Smart suggestions seem smarter than Firefoxes. (and prettier)
5. You could check your mail and stay connected through chat right in the browser if you wanted to. It has a built in email client. Not for me, I’m a fan of Apple Mail.
So I’ll play around with it for a few more days and see if it has what it takes to make it into my dock and not get thrown back in the apps folder to collect dust. But I think it has potential and you might want to check it out to see if it could be your new browsing buddy!
If you have a look at the home page of Adobe Labs you’ll find something very interesting. Or at least it was for me. Dreamweaver, Soundbooth, and Fireworks all have CS4 betas on the homepage. So, looks like next year around this time we will probably all be seeing the latest and greatest from Adobe.
I can be somewhat of an “update” nut. I love the newest, the fastest, the coolest tools out there to get my job done. Adobe just so happens to be 50% of that world for me. (Apple bringing up the other 50%). But Adobe Labs is just a good site to have on the radar anyways. Even if you don’t have use for the Suite or the other products, I’m sure there will be something there for you.
Here is my a list of things from Adobe that non-designers can use.
Buzzword Online word-processing. All in Flash!
PhotoShop Express Online web based photoshop. You can pull in your flickr photos and save them online. Neat stuff. I guess its useful if you don’t wanna shell out the cash for photoshop.
Adobe Media Player Pretty cool. I catch all my Adobe Creative Suite Podcasts here. You might find some use for it. Oh wait, TED streams here. And YOU SHOULD watch TED.
Adobe Air This one is amazing. Mac and even PC users can share apps and there are all sorts of neat little apps that you can use. Pownce, Twitter, eBay, kuler.
There are more, but this should get you going. Check out Adobe Labs, its a cool place for anyone with a computer. And obviously that is YOU.
So search engine optimization tells us that blogs are the key to Google. It likes them. So whether or not I have anything really valid to say at the time. Here is the DPD Blog. I’ll write some things, and post some projects and who knows what else you might find here in my efforts to be atop the big brother Google.
See ya in the page rankings!
