By Chere' Martin
Special to Newspapers & Technology

Adobe Systems Inc.’s release of Creative Suite 3 not only fine-tuned the well-regarded software, but brought with it the first Adobe-authored upgrade of Dreamweaver, Flash, Fireworks and Contribute, software Adobe acquired when it purchased Macromedia Inc. in 2005.

Whenever one company buys out another, customers worry whether the lack of competition will thwart the growth of a favorite product. Longtime Adobe users, however, recognize the company’s ability to bring companion programs together in a manner that creates a comfortable, intuitive workflow.

With the merging of the Macromedia apps into CS, we hoped for the best, and, in CS3, we are not disappointed.

Adobe is also well known for another of its marketing tactics: to distribute software bundles that include additional programs buyers may not have bought on their own.

Remember feeling like you got InDesign for free when you upgraded Photoshop and Illustrator a few years ago?

This time around, Adobe created a CS3 Design Premium bundle that includes Dreamweaver CS3 and Flash CS3 Professional. And Web designers aren’t left out of the candy parade. They receive, in addition to the Web programs one might expect, Photoshop CS3 Extended, Illustrator CS3 and Acrobat 8 Professional.

Can you feel the cross-program love?

Dreamweaver

Since one of my most favorite things is Cascading Style Sheets, I find myself fascinated with how Adobe has gone about quietly teaching CSS in Dreamweaver CS3.

What’s interesting isn’t just that there are so many templates (including one-, two- and three-column layouts with, or without headers and footers, elastic or absolute positioning) but the extensive  commenting within these existing documents. The commenting is a little overwhelming at first, but for someone with a little knowledge and some gumption, it can be a great learning tool or a check for good Web practices.

Dreamweaver CS3 comes with a multitude of preformatted templates.

These templates also come with pre-defined basic styles that are, of course, inline only. This still allows a user to utilize the styles and still build or attach custom CSS.

Other CS3 improvements include the “current” and “all” tabs in the CSS menu. “All” equates to CS2’s CSS default pallet display whereas “current” automatically displays and makes property changes available to a current selected item — be it in the design view or code view. This makes adjustments to CSS rules much faster.

There’s even an “about” area on the panel that offers greater description of a selected property, along with a “rules” option that shows the cascade rules affecting a particular tag. Like other workspace improvements, the “about” and “rules” visibility can be minimized within the docked panel.

Test your styling in CSS using CSS Advisor. It links directly from your browser checker to a site area devoted to allowing both Adobe and the Web community at large to contribute solutions to Web development problems.

Spry Widgets

Aside from the fun name, Spry Widgets attempt to offer quick and easy access to pre-assembled HTML code using JavaScript to manage the behavior of the Widget and CSS for styling. Widgets are found in a new   tab within the insert menu and include frequently used items like menu bar, tabbed panels, accordion menus and text validation fields.

Widget controls can be accessed via the properties pallet to make their usage easy within the design view.

A Dreamweaver template with a menu Spry Widget dropped in
and ready for customizing.

Fireworks

Much of the improvements built into Fireworks CS3 seem to be focused on the ability to quickly create Web page prototypes.

One new feature is the improved Pages option. Here, you can create master pages that can be linked to other pages, allowing rapid creation of additional pages. Within each page, you can individually control the canvas size, color, image resolution and guides.

Another handy tool for prototyping is the Common Library. This contains preset, common items such as calendars, radio buttons, check boxes, form containers, etc., that can be tedious to develop for a site while in the design stage. While these items are standard, each can be resized individually as necessary without changing the master item. Nine-slice scaling allows further control of item size adjustments without wrecking text and other effects already applied.

Once a design is ready for presentation, a user can export from the PNG file as HTML. From there, you can use Dreamweaver CS3 or Flash CS3 to add interactive elements to create a complete click-through mock-up.

Another leap in practicality is the addition of the Create Slideshow option. Within minutes you can take a template layout and create a photo slideshow that will play through or otherwise be controlled by the viewer.

Multiple albums allow topical organization. When exported, you end up with HTML and support files packaged and ready for posting online.

Flash

With Adobe’s first release of Flash came the task of making the working environment feel related to its other design products while at the same time, keeping the app comfortable for veteran users.

The visual changes aren’t as significant as one might imagine but Adobe engineered some subtle adjustments to make the panels dock like the other Adobe products and to offer more control over other aspects such as the height of the layers and frame width in the timeline.

One of the most hoped for and most likely improvements with Flash CS3 are the bolstered cross-application file format importing options.

Importing native Photoshop and Illustrator files is a reality as well as allowing users to maintain many layer options and resizing capabilities.

Primitive Drawing Tools is another new feature, although it’s debatable whether this capability was added to  aid in flexibility or to help newbies adapt to how shapes act and interact in Flash.

Once you click on the rectangle drawing tool, you can convert from typical drawing of shapes (where strokes are separate from a fill and knockouts are natural to overlapping elements) to the Object Drawing mode, which acts like a simple shape might in Illustrator: Stroke and fill are one and overlapping shapes doesn’t cause loss of parts.

Meantime, ActionScript 3 is introduced with the goal of helping developers address safety, simplicity, performance and compatibility. It also brings the software into compliance with the ECMAScript standard, a vendor-neutral authoring specification.

Can it continue?

All told, Adobe has appeared to empty the bases with its release of CS3. The package is robust and includes a variety of new features and upgrades that will appeal to a wide swath of the design community.

What remains to be seen is whether Adobe, now that it’s free of any consequential competition, will manage to keep up the innovation in subsequent releases.

Chere' Martin is Newspapers & Technology’s production manager. She can be reached at cmartin@newsandtech.com.

See Chere’s review of Adobe CS3 Design Premium in the June 2007 issue of Newspapers & Technology.