Redefining Two Flagships - Adobe's 2015 Updates to Flash and Dreamweaver

Today Adobe released updates to their Creative Cloud apps, including stalwart web/interactive design apps Flash Professional CC 2015 and Dreamweaver CC 2015 - and the theme of the day is redefinition.  Let's take a quick peek.

Simplifying and Streamlining Dreamweaver

Adobe Dreamweaver has a long, storied history in the web space- from it’s roots as a straightforward, visual web development tool all the way to an all-in-one designer/developer app straddling a fine line between simplifying a web pro’s workflow and trying to keep the code underneath the hood reasonably concise and efficient.  Based on negative reactions from the web standards community in the early 2000s, subsequent releases of Dreamweaver focused heavily on shoring up the integrity of generated code to comply with web standards, and starting the shift from static, fixed desktop browser layouts to responsive experiences that hold up across devices and platforms. As a result Dreamweaver ended up generating better code and becoming more versatile, yet also becoming more cumbersome and cluttered.

In recent releases however, Dreamweaver’s taken a turn for the direct and efficient- removing old, inefficient, or outdated functionality with an eye towards simplifying the overall user experience within Dreamweaver, and making common workflows more straightforward.

In today's DW update you can now access your Creative Cloud libraries, an incredibly helpful update for managing media assets on projects both small and large.  The quick rundown: any graphics or assets you’ve created in other Adobe apps like Photoshop and Illustrator (as well as Adobe’s mobile creativity tools like Color and Capture) are now cleanly synced across your computers and mobile devices and available directly within Dreamweaver for use.  The Adobe Stock photo library is now available, too.  It's media management made truly simple.

The Bootstrap framework has long been one of the most popular ways to quickly code up a responsive web experience, and today Bootstrap enjoys native support within Dreamweaver.  To jumpstart you into the new workflow in Dreamweaver, David Powers just released a fantastic new Lynda.com course, Responsive Design with Bootstrap and Dreamweaver CC 2015, that will step you through the process of rapidly building a responsive layout.  I highly recommend checking it out. 

Flash Becomes Animate

Flash Professional’s big news today isn't new features, but the impending change of it’s name from Adobe Flash Professional to Adobe Animate. With Edge Animate no longer being developed, Flash’s assumption of the Animate monicker sends a strong message from Adobe as to the future of Flash. There’ll be a bit of a wait before the bits are ready for public consumption however, the first Adobe Animate release isn't expected until January 2016. 

Although the venerable SWF and AIR formats will continue to be supported as first-class citizens in Animate, the app’s focus going forward will be more multi-platform- outputting to standard formats like HTML5 Canvas and WebGL, and even more like SVG via it’s extensible architecture.

You can read (and watch) a bit more about what to expect in the January Animate release at the Adobe Flash team’s blog, and keep posted- you can bet we’ll be working feverishly on new and updated courses to cover the newly-reminted Adobe Animate once it's finalized.