Is it just me or are those guys on the adobe launch programme really boring?

It’s probably me. I got involved with CS5 way back when Flash was called FutureSplash – those were exciting days. Flash hasn’t really moved on from there in all that time. Well not the Flash that I use – it’s a brilliant drawing tool and the drawing tools have hardly been touched in years. If anything, some tools have got worse. Illustrator just doesn’t have that intuitive drawing feel to it.

Flash has become a tool for programmers and developers. What’s needed is a something like Flash that is just a drawing tool that can then be imported into Flash for the geeks to play with. (No, not Illustrator)

I also use Photoshop and inDesign and occasionally Dreamweaver, but only to cut and paste simple code.

I have to admit that Photoshop’s new Content Aware eraser is eye-poppingly incredible as is the Puppet tool. Do not believe a single thing you see from now on! But somehow, I’m uderwhelmed by that too. It’s almost as if I’ve become so jaded that I feel “well, it’s about time, what took them so long?” Once, everything new in software was mind-blowing
now it’s just – great.

What I was really interested to see was the Flash export to iPhone and iPad. But when you look at it, this promise is hedged about with disclaimers. There is a massive grudge match going on between Adobe and Apple and I don’t want to get mashed up in the middle, so all the ideas I’ve been having recently based on the rumours and sneak peaks of CS5 can go into the bottom draw and I can get on with trying to make a living in the real world. That will save me a bit.

All this digital developing business has got so out of hand. It ain’t fun anymore. The geeks and the bean-counters have taken over and spoiled it all for everyone – as usual. Bring back simple, hand-knitted html websites!

Oh yeah… the CS5 image and design suck. If that’s all they can do with the new tools…