by Joel Howe
5-October-2009
OK, I hadn't expected to get too excited about what was going on in content creation software in terms of upcoming releases. Things have been busy here, so I haven't had much time to play with new tools, and to be honest, the current tools are working pretty well. Plus, with budgets being tight and with so much innovation (new features and workflows) in Adobe's Creative Suite 4, I didn't expect to see too much "must have" new features in CS5. However, things look to be heating up for Spring 2010, especially after seeing the list:
http://labs.adobe.com/technologies/flashcs5/
I have to say I am intrigued. I am not on the edge of my seat excited (yet) but I am very interested in how this early announcement shakes up rich media development. In terms of Flash, the most obvious surprise is the ability to publish Apps for iPhone and using Flash Builder (Flex) as your ActionScript editor. Even if I don't go that route, just seeing the improved ActionScript editor with custom class code hinting will be a great thing to have! What is most important for Flash CS5 is a high level of polish and performance improvements right out of the box, and then any new features will be worthy additions!
Exciting Times
The recent announcements from Adobe, like RIM joining the Open Screen Project are shaking things up. Just when every new article talks about how Flash's very existence is being threatened (Silverlight, HTML 5, AJAX, etc.) it appears that the opposite may be happening. With RIM, Palm, Google, and basically everybody but Apple signing on to have FlashPlayer 10.1 on their phone OS, Flash very well may be the rich media tool of choice for the forseeable future. With Flash CS5 supporting direct publishing of iPhone apps, there is now the potential for one cost effective development tool that can be deployed across various platforms. How long before our banner ads are tweaked to match the resolution of an iPhone or Blackberry?
I think that next year, Adobe may have a watershed moment in terms of bringing application developers a true write once, run anywhere solution with Flash CS5. If they can pull it off, this is very, very exciting stuff. Let's just hope that they can deliver these new tools and features in production-ready form right from the start!
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