Ok it took me long enough to upgrade myself to Adobe CS4, but I am so happy i did – Talk about an intuitive workspace!! Every time Adobe comes out with a new version of their software their interface improves a whole hell of alot!

Cs3 was great compared to Cs2 as Adobe had made many changes in the Interface. One change that i liked back then was the fact that when you dragged Photoshop (CS3) onto your other monitor all your open files dragged with the window. This was not true for CS2 at the time it was out, and you had to drag all the windows one by one or switch to your default workspace.

As for CS4 there are many great features, but the one i liked the most (i’m still tinkering with it!) was the fact that on the top-right hand side you can easily switch to the GROUP of panels you want to work with. So if you want to the analysis panel and its children to dock on the right all you have to do was click the group that you wanted. This is a time saver and really helped me with my workflow and organization.

It amazes me how the Engineers at Adobe progress their software with each new version. I mean it isnt easy to continuously outdo yourself time and time again + make vast improvements to the User Interface (thats prob why interface and usability experts are so well paid and in demand.)

I could take a gander and guess that the most of the code stays the same, but all their efforts go into UI and Usability Design. Well done Adobe and Engineers, you guys are the best and brightest!!!

On the 15th of May Adobe released the beta version of the Flash Player 10 code named “Astro”. I’m excited about this release as it offers many new and improved features. You can download it here.

Screenshots of some of the new features added and improvements of older features. The features i liked where the support for (a) support for ligatures (b) vertical text and (c) easy integration of 3D capabilities.

Other features to note is advanced support for text since the Flash Adobe Player team and Product manager Justin Everett-Church have built up the text engine from ground up. You can take a device font and style it while adding filters to it as well. The features i liked the best was multi column support for text fields and especially the fact that you can create custom components extending the already built in ones.

Another awesome feature is support for RTMFP and P2P.

There has been a lot of great excitement around RTMFP (Real Time Media Flow Protocol), especially because of the peer to peer (P2P) communication that is enabled in Flash Player 10 beta. This is a natural time to speculate about what cool applications you will build with new technology, so I’d like to give you some more information for you to work with.

Since I have been frequently been asked about details on this, a frequently asked questions format somehow seemed appropriate . For those that want to start working with RTMFP, make sure to read to the end, there is a goody for you!

You may read more about it here on Justin’s blog, or watch some of the video demos listed below:

• Watch Justin Everett-Church, Sr. Product Manager for Flash Player, demonstrate 3D effects
• Watch Justin Everett-Church demonstrate custom filters and effects
• Watch Justin Everett-Church demonstrate advanced text layout
• Watch Justin Everett-Church talk about the enhanced Drawing API
• Watch Justin Everett-Church talk about the visual performance improvements
• Watch Lee Brimelow explain how to start creating content for Flash Player 10
• Learn how to take ordinary display objects into the third dimension
• Learn how to dynamically create sounds
• Learn how to read and write local files using File Reference runtime access
• Launch the Adobe Pixel Bender filter demo