Day 2: a designer's point of view
Day 2 was geared for the designers, or maybe former Adobe people in the room, which made me very happy. The line up started with Dreamweaver and went to Photoshop, Illustrator, Apollo and then FlexBuilder 2.
Dreamweaver: We are still under NDA, so once again I am not able to say as much as I'd like. What I can tell you is they really took their time with Dreamweaver and listened carefully to what the hard core developers asked for. The one theme I kept seeing throughout the day was that all the apps seemed to have more tools for the newbies. That being said, I wish there was more on all the apps for the hardcore developers.
(I'm sitting here watching Ryan edit pictures in some hideous "Windoz" program and I can hardly contain myself. Sorry for the distraction)
Anyway, there will be some really amazing CSS improvements. Can't say what, but I was super impressed in what we will be able to do with Dreamweaver 9.
Photoshop: Well, if I was impressed with Dreamweaver, I was literally blown away with the new Photoshop features. So many in fact that it will change a few things in how the product is packaged. As a trainer I could only think of taking the test for this version. Yikes!
Illustrator: Not impressed with the speakers. It was so slow that no one clapped when they were finished showing a new feature. You could almost hear a pin drop. A room full of mostly developers who could care less about Illustrator I guess. Too bad. Illustrator is an underdog program because it isn't utilized as much as it should. As a trainer, I see people using Photoshop (alot) when they should be using Illustrator, but just don't know how, or don't know the features exist.
So what did I think of the new features? I honestly don't think much of what they showed, but I think if someone else had showed the newer features, it would have been a more impressive demo. Maybe. I still think the Illustrator team is located on a deserted island with no phones or internet. The palattes are all the same across the board of CS3, but it still seems the other programs work together better.
Ryan will talk more about Apollo, but very cool. And to quote Forest Gump, that's all I'll say about that.
Dee
