Adobe Creative Suite 3 has been released for about a week now and everyone has had a chance to try it out and see what kinds of new things it can do or what new features it has. So far everything that we know and love about the products is mostly there. Although the new palettes in illustrator CS3, InDesign CS3 and Photoshop CS3 are similar to InDesign CS2 as in they stay mostly out of the way unless you need them. Which is a huge benefit for saving screen real estate and possibly one of the most useful features so far. There are of course more functional features that are useful but some of the best features are organizational.Dreamweaver CS3 has now includes multiple different tabs within the software for various different aspects of the web design experience. One of those is the incorporation of the Spry framework, which should help to boost the AJAX via the Spry framework into the mainstream even further then it already is right now. I have been personally toying with the idea of incorporating some major AJAX into the web site but I am still leery of how I use it and how the search engines will respond.

The Spry framework/AJAX integration is pretty seamless a long with various other specific options that the new top toolbox gives you. You can even have a customizable toolbar that you specify which tools you want in based of course on which tools you use most frequently. Another organizational improvement for the design software. I am not sure that these are necessarily beneficial to beginners more as to seasoned designers that have a good idea of how the software already works.

One of those toolbars with limited functionality out of the box is a PHP toolbar that has some basic PHP markups available on it. These buttons can of course be modified to include more advanced PHP technique depending on what you as the designer use more when developing your PHP code for your projects.

One surprise that a lot of people discovered was that Adobe did not in fact keep the Macromedia name on Flash, Fireworks and Dreamweaver. They are now Adobe Fireworks CS3, Adobe Dreamweaver CS3 and Adobe Flash Pro CS3. There was a lot of speculation amongst various blogs that Macromedia would remain apart of the software titles.

I myself like most of the new layouts but I have heard some opinions to the contrary about the new layouts, some of my fellow designers wish the layout wasn’t changed in some of the ways it was. I have so far not found anything that is counterproductive however and every issue they have had is easily altered. At any rate it is worth it to upgrade to Adobe Creative Suite CS3 if you would like to free up some extra screen real estate. The jury is still out on added functionality overall, it seems to run a little smoother on my Mac and PC both.

I still have the Adobe CS3 editions table available for those curious about the various versions of Adobe Creative Suite 3. I personally upgraded to the Adobe Creative Suite CS3 Web Premium. Let me know your opinions of the software and whether you think it is worth the upgrade based on your experience or feelings in the comments section.

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