Adobe Launches Creative Suite 5.5

Adobe has just announced its Creative Suite 5.5. This is a “mid-cycle release” that brings improvements and addresses a number of customers requests before the next major release (supposedly 6.0) comes out, next year (or so). Clearly, the Creative suite is quite big, and there are *a lot* of changes. Here are the few areas that I think you should not miss:

1/ Mobile development: Adobe has improved the “develop once, target many platform” process in Flash. It is now easier to integrate multiple bitmap resolution within a same project for example. Adobe is also releasing a Photoshop SDK that allows developers to create Tablet applications that can access a Photoshop running on PC/Mac. This could be used to turn your tablet into an extension of the computer to display fancy interfaces, but anything is fair game.

2/ Web: JQuery is now supported. It is a popular JavaScript library that developers can use to create interactive user interfaces. Adobe has also made the in-app browser preview better, and reminded us that the company is very much committed to HTML5 and CSS3.

3/ Subscription pricing: from now on, if you “rent” CS apps if you want to. For example, Photoshop CS would cost $35/month. You can use it on two computers at any given time. All you need is to install the software and login with your Adobe ID. To be clear: this is *not* a web-based Photoshop. However, it would be possible to install it on a friend's computer and use it with your password – this could be handy. I would love it if they could extend this licensing check to all their software. I have 3 computers, and the machine-based licensing is a pain in the neck.

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