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Web Design & Productivity
Review: Adobe Creative Suite 3 Web Premium
5/29/2007
Anyway, there you have the nuts and bolts with Fireworks CS3. As is the case with Dreamweaver, Fireworks CS3 represents a lost opportunity more than anything else. Fireworks was long overdue for an overhaul, most notably with the interface, and this version was the time to do it--not another version down the line that end users will be expected to pay for (again). First impressions are important, and Fireworks' interface is so dated and so unlike other CS3 offerings that new users to the former Macromedia product may get quickly frustrated with the almost alien presentation and not give Fireworks a fair chance. There is still a lot of power under the hood, and Fireworks overall is still a very nice product that does its job very well, but if Adobe wants to shove Fireworks into Director and Authorware territory by seemingly not caring about modernizing the software, then Fireworks' days may be numbered (at least with respect to anyone using it for serious production). In any event, the lack of new and compelling features coupled with the apparently blasé attitude about truly bringing Fireworks into the fold all add up to something of a bitter pill to swallow.
Contribute CS3
If you have to hand your Dreamweaver-made creations over to those notorious "others" for updating and maintenance, chances are that Contribute has made its way into your workflow at some point. Contribute CS3 continues as something of a hybrid product these days, combining the WYSIWYG editing features of the PageMills of yore (updated with CSS support and the like for today's Web development) with those of a dedicated blogging client. And like the CS3 incarnations of Dreamweaver and Fireworks, Contribute CS3 is essentially an "as you were" product, adding only a few minor features and updates, which we'll blow through presently in the interest of getting you out of here before dinner.
(Click for larger image.)
Adobe has seen which way the wind is blowing, so many of the enhancements have to do with blogging:
- Connecting to a Blogger site is as simple as entering your Google name and password;
- When connected to a blog, Contribute now presents a list of previous entries in a pulldown menu;
- Blog entries can now be previewed before publishing;
- Entries can be assigned multiple categories and/or trackbacks;
- The Roller system is now supported; and
- Contribute will attempt to auto-discover blog connection details using only the URL of the blog.
Now, for you Office users out there, there are a few tweaks for you. In the interest of full disclosure, I don't own or use Office, so I wasn't able to test these Windows-specific features, but am listing them for the sake of completeness:
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