Creative Toolbox

Adobe has posted free public betas of Fireworks, Dreamweaver, and Soundbooth on Adobe Labs. All three betas sport new user interfaces that appear like the next evolution of the Creative Suite UI from CS3. These betas will work for up to two days if you don’t have a valid CS3 serial number. Otherwise they will work until the next versions are available for purchase.

Notable features of the Dreamweaver beta:

• Live View — View your web pages under real-world browser conditions with the new Live View in Dreamweaver — while still retaining direct access to the code. The new rendering mode, which uses the open source rendering engine WebKit, displays your designs like a standards-based browser.

- Photoshop Smart Objects — Drag and drop an Adobe Photoshop® PSD file into a Dreamweaver page to create an image Smart Object. Those still mourning the loss of GoLive will definitely appreciate this feature.

• Subversion integration - Dreamweaver integrates Subversion software for a more robust check-in/check-out experience with file versioning, rollback, and more.

Notable features of the Fireworks beta: - CSS and Images Export - Design complete web pages in Fireworks’ robust graphic environment, and then export web standards–compliant, CSS-based layouts, complete with external style sheets in one step.

• PDF Export - Generate high-fidelity, interactive, secure PDF documents from your Fireworks design comps for enhanced client communication

• Adobe Type Engine - Produce superior type designs with the enhanced typesetting capabilities of Adobe Type Engine, familiar to users of Photoshop and Illustrator and now available in Fireworks. Import or copy and paste double-byte characters from Adobe Illustrator or Photoshop without loss of fidelity. Float text inside a path for high impact text logos.