Adobe Flash CS 5.5 Review

Posted on April 27, 2011 by AGI

Our review of Flash CS5.5 found that they’ve added more new features to Flash CS 5.5 than most of the other CS 5.5 products, but nothing worthy of a paid upgrade. For example, Adobe added auto-save capabilities to Flash CS 5.5. This is something that’s been available in much older print publishing software like QuarkXPress for 15 years – and Adobe is just now delivering this “feature” to their supposedly cutting-edge application?  And Adobe wants customers to pay for the ability to recover from bugs in their software that cause crashes? It’s not that Flash CS 5.5 is without other new capabilities, though. They’ve added the ability to export to the latest AIR versions – which would be great if anyone actually used AIR. The ability to copy and paste layers is a nice addition, as is the ability to share symbols across files – but it’s ridiculous that you couldn’t do this previously. Adobe has also added some code snippets and the ability to preview the snippets, and made some changes to the Publish settings window.
The really crazy thing is that Adobe is still thinking that developers will use their Flash program to develop for mobile and then put apps through their meat-grinder to deliver to other platforms like iOS. They are also thinking that developers will create Flash apps targeting mobile – which isn’t going to happen. Our developer customers continue to reject this approach in favor of native development to target a specific platform. We believe this approach should continue, as Flash and AIR simply add an artificial layer between the device’s operating system and the user. Our verdict for Flash users: don’t bother upgrading to CS 5.5 unless you are using Flash CS 3 or earlier.

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Dreamweaver CS 5.5 Review

Posted on April 26, 2011 by AGI

Dreamweaver CS 5.5 LiveView and Design View are updated to provide more accurate previews. While it is good to see this enhancement, we think this should have been a free patch update to CS 5. Live preview is needed to remain competitive with other available web design tools like Microsoft’s Expression Web which includes SuperPreview to get a better understanding of what a website will look like on multiple devices. Dreamweaver also improved their JavaScript support, especially around jQuery. As most of our customers that use the Adobe Creative Suite are designers and not developers, we don’t see this as being so significant to warrant our customers to purchase or deploy The Creative Suite 5.5 version of Dreamweaver. Adobe is indicating that bugs have been fixed – while this is great, it’s absurd they would charge for this. Our verdict after reviewing Dreamweaver CS 5.5: Most users shouldn’t bother upgrading to Dreamweaver CS 5.5.

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Adobe (NASDAQ: ADBE) Creative Suite 5.5 Review – AGI’s expert evaluation of Adobe CS 5.5

Posted on April 25, 2011 by AGI

Soon Adobe Systems will start shipping Adobe Creative Suite 5.5, and we’ve been taking an early look at this group of Adobe CS products to review them and help AGI clients decide whether they should upgrade. Our conclusion after reviewing Adobe CS 5.5: most customers should take a pass on CS 5.5 and wait another 12 months until Adobe releases CS 6. The release of CS 5.5 is more of a business move by Adobe as they shift to a 12-month release cycle and now offer $1,200 per year annual subscription packages. But users that have already upgraded to CS 5 won’t find much value in this new version. Many of the products in the Adobe Creative Suite were not upgraded at all from Creative Suite 5, and only their name is changing. A few products received only minor updates, and only one product, InDesign, received updates that we feel are really valuable – and only for users that create electronic books using the ePub format. We feel this update should have been issued as CS 5.1 and as a free upgrade. Adobe may argue that they are now providing Acrobat X with the Creative Suite, but creating PDF files is already an integrated part of all the Adobe tools, and Acrobat version 9 is more than suitable for the needs of most creative users. With CS 5 we were already recommending that users of Creative Suite 3 and earlier upgrade to the current version, and we continue with that recommendation, but if you have CS5, you shouldn’t bother with this mid-cycle upgrade. The CS 5.5 upgrade isn’t worth the time, effort, and expense. Over the course of this week we’ll be issuing a new product review of each of the key Adobe Creative Suite 5.5 products every day, so check back each day for CS 5.5 reviews of Dreamweaver CS 5.5, Flash CS 5.5, InDesign CS 5.5 and reviews of the other Adobe Creative Suite 5.5 products, or subscribe to the RSS feed of the AGI Training blog.

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E-books price pressure creates opportunity for publishers

Posted on April 25, 2011 by Christopher Smith

The .99 cent songs exploded in popularity on iTunes, and a recent analysis of the best-selling e-book titles on Amazon.com by the Wall Street Journal shows that 15 of the top 50 titles are priced under $5. This leaves book publishers to consider whether they need to adopt a lower price point per unit with their e-book titles. While Amazon.com lets self-published titles share virtual shelf-space with big-name publishers, the real story for publishers shouldn’t be competition. Publishers
AGI publishes the Digital Classroom series of books with our partner Wiley. I’m seeing e-books as a chance to reach readers who might not need an entire book, and may prefer only some of our content – maybe they want some parts of our Photoshop books or pieces from our Dreamweaver books. E-books are allowing us to break-down larger books into smaller pieces with lower price-points, so users who don’t want an entire Microsoft Office 2010 book can simply buy the chapter on Excel 2010 or Word 2010. E-books let publishers create new products and if they are seeking higher prices and margins, they can create unique items, like enhanced e-books that include multimedia elements or extra content that couldn’t make it into the print version. The publishers that will thrive are those that leverage the digital platform, creating new and unique products that add value for readers.

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E-reader and tablet sales continue to skyrocket

Posted on April 22, 2011 by Christopher Smith

Readers are continuing to adopt e-reading devices. This week e-reader company Kobo indicated that they have 3.2 million users, adding 1 million new users in the past 90 days. They announced this number as they indicated that they have received an additional $50 million in funding. Separately, Apple announced that in the past quarter they sold 4.69 million iPads, a number which many analysts believe would have been higher if Apple didn’t have supply constraints.

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Mac OSX video tutorial posted

Posted on April 12, 2011 by AGI

Just posted #Mac #OSX video tutorial http://bit.ly/gehs7o from @agitraining @digitalclassrm team

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Jennifer Smith awarded Microsoft MVP award

Posted on April 11, 2011 by AGI

Congratulations to Jennifer Smith for receiving the Microsoft MVP award. She has been working extensively in mobile design, application design, and pushing the effective use of design tools including Expression Blend for creating great user experiences. She is one of the founders of AGI. Her blog post about the MVP award is here: http://www.jennifersmith.com/2011/04/i-was-awarded-the-2011-mvp-award-from-microsoft/

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Windows Phone a bold bet for Nokia

Posted on April 8, 2011 by AGI

Nokia has bet the bank on the Windows Phone platform. It’s a bold move and we think it’s a good business move for them. Android is everywhere, and Apple isn’t going to give up the iOS. Nokia needs to regain traction and differentiation in the mobile smart phone category, and their own OS wasn’t on par with anything coming from Google, Microsoft, or Apple. We have several Windows Phone devices and have been really impressed with them. They don’t outnumber the iPhones in our office yet, but everyone who is using them is impressed, and several Android users at AGI are saying they should have gone with Windows Phone as they compare the two. This was a bold bet by Nokia CEO Stephen Elop. Adobe lost out a few years ago when they failed to name Elop as CEO, and it will be good for all consumers if he’s able to rebuild Nokia and turn the smartphone category into a three horse race between Windows Phone, Android, and Apple. Time magazine has a good story covering the Nokia / Windows Phone decision here: http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,2062416,00.html and we’re looking forward to learning more about Microsoft’s plans for Windows Phone design and development at Mix 11 next week.

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Mobile app developers frustrated by Android platform

Posted on April 7, 2011 by AGI

Mobile application developers are feeling frustrated by the Android platform: http://bit.ly/fPJ3JG – this leaves room for Nokia and others on the Windows Phone platform to bring more developers under the Windows Phone tent.

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Cloud-based picnik offers great photo editing

Posted on March 5, 2010 by Christopher Smith

I’ve been playing with a fun on-line photo editing service, picnik.com, and am impressed with the speed, options, and capabilities. Apparently Google was impressed, too, as they just bought the company.

Picnik is an on-line image editing tool you can use to manipulate images that you’ve put on sites like flickr or facebook. Instead of loading software on your computer, like Photoshop, Picnik is cloud-based, so you don’t load any software. You either upload photos from your computer or grab images from sites where you’ve already posted them – like flickr.

After locating images, you can easily edit, crop, remove red-eye, or add simple effects like combining images or placing a border around the edges. The process works so smoothly and quickly you don’t even notice that you’re working over the Internet. Companies that want to create cloud-based systems should look at picnik as a model for a good user experience.

For simple photo edits, picnik is a great option. They make money from advertising on the site for free accounts, or by selling additional effects and editing features (and an ad-free experience) which can be purchased for a reasonable $25 for the year.

I’m a big Photoshop user – and I’m not dumping it anytime soon, but I’ve found, picnik.com, a great online service that lets me get a photo edited and posted long before Photoshop finishes starting-up. High-end photographers and creative professionals will be sticking with Photoshop for serious image editing, the fun and ease-of-use of picnik makes it appealing to all types of users who are sharing images online.

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