Adobe Releases Initial CS4 Betas: Dreamweaver, Fireworks and Soundbooth

It’s hard to believe that Adobe’s CS3 suite has been out for well over a year, but it has. What’s that mean? CS4 has to be right around the corner. As is usual these days, Adobe has released three brand-new betas for upcoming CS4 software, including Dreamweaver, Fireworks and Soundbooth. Interestingly, Photoshop is not yet available, but being their pride and joy, it’s no surprise.

The only application I use of the three on a regular basis is Dreamweaver, and I gave the latest version a quick go. The biggest difference you’ll notice right off the bat is the much cleaner interface, and I’m already a big fan. CS3 wasn’t great-looking with Vista, but CS4 changes that entirely. Also new is a Live View that allows you to view your pages in real-world conditions, an improved code navigator, a CSS inspector, much improved Photoshop integration and more.

On the Fireworks side, it also has been treated to a new UI, but also includes the ability to create entire webpages in the application then export in a CSS standard layout for further editing in Dreamweaver, PDF export and AIR authoring. Not too much information is given about what’s new with Soundbooth, nor would I notice the difference if I looked, but music authors may want to have a look.

All the betas are free and run alongside your current installations. Check them out at Adobe Labs.

Adobe Systems Incorporated (Nasdaq:ADBE) today gave a sneak peek at three applications from the next release of Adobe Creative Suite, its award-winning collection of graphic design, Web development and video editing applications. The company released public beta of new versions of Adobe Dreamweaver, Adobe Fireworks and Adobe Soundbooth as free downloads on Adobe labs.