May 27 2008
Adobe announces public betas of CS4 apps Dreamweaver, Fireworks and Soundbooth
Adobe is giving a sneak peek at three applications from the next release of Adobe Creative Suite. The company released public beta of new versions of Adobe Dreamweaver, Adobe Fireworks and Adobe Soundbooth as free downloads on Adobe labs. Once downloaded and launched, the betas will be active for 48 hours after which time only Creative Suite 3 customers will have an extended ability to use the betas until the next release of Creative Suite becomes available.
The Dreamweaver beta for web design and development, the Fireworks beta for “prototyping”, and the Soundbooth beta for audio creating and editing, demonstrate the direction that Adobe Creative Suite is taking with features and technologies that will aid design and development workflows across all media. The betas also offer users the opportunity to give Adobe feedback for further product development.
The Dreamweaver public beta includes a new Related Files Toolbar and Code Navigator feature that allows users to dive deeply into complex pages that include HTML files, links to JavaScript documents and integrated XML data. Users can see related files in the Related Files Toolbar and with Code Navigator make changes to code that appears in various parts of a document with one update. The update to Dreamweaver also features a new Live View Mode, which is based on the open source rendering engine Webkit. It enables users to see content in real-world, real-time environments without having to leave Dreamweaver to preview in a browser. This feature also gives users the ability to freeze JavaScript language to debug interactive pages as well as view and interact with Flash content.
New features in Fireworks beta include a new user interface that is now consistent with other applications within the Creative Suite making it easier for users to switch between applications that now have a universal look and feel. In addition, Fireworks beta now allows users to export design comps as high fidelity, interactive, and secure Adobe PDF documents for enhanced client communication. Fireworks beta is also now compatible with Adobe AIR, HTML, Adobe Flash and Adobe Flex Builder so users can create their design once and deploy to whichever application platform is required by clients.
The Soundbooth beta showcases a host of new features for creative professionals to complete their audio production tasks more efficiently, including the new multiple track support which allows users to edit multiple audio clips on a number of tracks, and the new ability for users to match volume levels across audio files. Also included is the capability to preview MP3 compression settings before saving them and a new speech recognition technology that lets users create transcripts of dialogue tracks quickly and search them for words and phrases within a timeline.
Dreamweaver and Fireworks betas run on multiple operating systems, including Microsoft Windows XP with Service Pack 2, Windows Vista and Mac OS X version 10.4.11 or later on PowerPC G5 or Intel-based Macintosh systems. The Soundbooth beta runs on all those systems except for PowerPC-based Macintosh systems.
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