Yes, very big. And by big, I mean bloated, with a terribly slow GUI.
The lack of competition left in the wake of the Adobe-Macromedia merger has resulted in a monopoly ruining the software we use to make a living. They continue to bloat their software, ruin the GUI (the CS3 GUI sucks and the CS4 one is worse – they don’t even run it past usability experts), and we have zero choice because they are the only company that makes the tools.
Love what they’re doing on the technology side ( Flex/AIR etc ) but my god they’re murdering their apps. They need to stop adding every new feature you can think of and make them a pleasure to use. And there is no excuse this time round for not having a damn near perfect inter-product workflow
Unfortunately, Adobe now owns our industry. This is the problem with monopolies. They know they are the only game in town. The CS4 GUI should have been codenamed Molasses. 🙁
Well, if you don’t like Flash GUI there are a bit more out there to build SWF files… you can make your own if you want as well, SWF file format is open, or you can use the Flex SDK, and what about Flash CS4 using some sort of XML file for saving the files? is it happening? if so that will open even more possibilities. Not to mention Silverlight and JavaFX…
I’ll be a happy man if able to copy a layer in Photoshop and paste it in Illustrator with the transparency intact. Hope that’s not asking too much for a 20-year-old application…other than that, feature-wise, the more the merrier.
Not totally accurate about Adobe having a monopoly as there are alternative apps although nothing as robust as Photoshop or Flash. I feel your pain though on bloated apps. All they need now is a pearl handle kick-starter! 😉
Will Adobe ever learn it?
I understand it that when a company wants to release a product (suite) they try everything to pimp it well. But meanwhile the dev cycles from earlier around 19 months and more are down to partially less than a year per product iteration, when i look at the new features list there are around 5-10 at most new features that one can really brand as such without taking some bashing; while more and more new bugs and inconsistencies get added and partially 10 year old bugs are still not fixed. Doesn´t bode well together with hype going to a degree where a contdown timer hype train is started for what isn´t even the actual release but a show to hype the upcoming stuff.
As always i will check out the new versions but come on, it gets harder and harder to get really excited when hype for stuff barely fits to the actual delivered stuff.
I wonder what they say this time regarding how much they improved the performance of flash. I imagine its probably 200% faster this time and therefore finally the fastest thing in the world when reviewing how much faster they said it got since flash 5…
Sorry man, we won´t get a deal going there since i have every flash version from 3-8 🙂
(CS3 was the first i got download only).
As i said i´ll also give CS4 a try, let´s see, ideally i´ll be pleasently surprised 🙂
im a bit confused why steven hates the cs3 gui so much. It could be because I am a developer and don’t spend a ton of time in there, but i have to prep assets and draw things and setup things on the time line, etc and I don’t feel like it’s a miserable experience. I am on a mac and i know flash doesn’t run as good on a mac, but it’s still easy enough to work with and I would say a large library is the only thing that constantly bugs me. At the end of the day you can’t expect the release to be perfect. There will always be a negative as adobe won’t ever please everyone, but in this case it seems like the positives out weight the negatives enough that we should stop whining and say thank you to adobe for keeping the IDE at the top of the line and keeping a number of people employed outside of their company. I wouldn’t have the freedom I have today in my life without adobe.
no win situation keeping the fussy happy. you add a couple things or nothing people will cry it’s too much the same. you add heaps of cool new things for people to play with and people say is bloated and awful.
i just enjoy making cool/interesting flash work. anything that added to help me is great! and if i don’t like it, i just won’t use it… easy!
Look, I think hating the GUI isn’t hating the company. I too feel that CS3 was a major failure when it comes to an application (and as Steven suggests – looks like CS4 is headed the same way), but as far as the technology goes, which Adobe is wholly responsible for, I love it. I think their open-source initiatives are incredible and where the player has gone now is really fantastic. Personally however, I could never stand CS3 for coding – it’s quite ridiculous. The alternatives for straight-up AS3-ing are just waaayyy superior, and make you wonder why they screw up so badly in their own code editor. But, you know, I’m not one for the timeline and the other drawing tools (pure code for me), so I obviously don’t need all the stuff in the GUI and therefore focus my attentions on the code editor. Perhaps if I used those things more, I’d appreciate it more.
for the record, there’s a lot of things I hate about Flash CS3. It frustrates the hell out of me every time I use it and I try hard to avoid using it. I’ll say more about CS4 next week after the announcement by Adobe.
That’s a great idea! Learn to use CorelDRAW and photo-paint and that (plus much more) will happen for you!
On September 16th, 2008, lunetta said:
I’ll be a happy man if able to copy a layer in Photoshop and paste it in Illustrator with the transparency intact. Hope that’s not asking too much for a 20-year-old application…other than that, feature-wise, the more the merrier.
The Flash CS4 is definitely slower than acceptable from such a big company. On my brand new dual core 4gb laptop, the code window lags when you type! Yes, that’s right, the code window. I used to be able to throw 100-liners together to test a simple concept, but now I can’t use it whatsoever. I have never had any problems with Flash CS3. I quite liked it from the beginning. Flash CS4, however, has let me down greatly. Processor speed is not a legitimate excuse for unnecessary software bloat. Not only is their custom text editor widget ridiculously slow, it’s no longer allowed to pop up from the bottom and overlap the timeline. I can’t find a CS4 alternative to the layout I’ve used since MX. In fact, I can’t find a decent CS4 widget layout at all. I feel like I’m constantly compromising. The properties being forced in to the panel was a bad move in my opinion as well, but that is arguable (as is most layout problems besides lag). I love the new features, both design and in actionscript ( Vectors :D!!!! ), but the interface makes me cry inside. I mean, the code editor lagging?, come on…
Besides the SWEET animated scrolling canvas in Photoshop – the CS4 upgrade was a welcomed change.. Or so I thought. That was until I had a time crunch on a Flash project.
What the hell was Adobe doing releasing this junkware… The new animation editor is awesome. But the tradeoff of quirky GUI “enhancements” puts my productivity down 25%. I’m assuming they really did not give this any real world testing before releasing it.
Importing single or multiple layers of a photoshop file is a big FAIL in CS4. Horrible quality. Bad alpha channel interpolation. I choose when and were on the timeline I want an import and it puts it in a new layer on frame one. Uhhh WTF.
Adobe took the whole tabbed tool menu thing too far. The <> buttons should be able to be turned on and off. No one edits their workspace this often or is this anal about conserving screen space. Floating tool boxes, snapping toolboxes, mini button toolboxes, expand to panels, collapse to icons, tabbed windows… ALL NOT NECESSARY. Learn from the Apple Pro software (like Logic) and keep it simple.
Also, why the hell can’t we animate text objects without creating movieclips or tweens out of them?
Yes, very big. And by big, I mean bloated, with a terribly slow GUI.
The lack of competition left in the wake of the Adobe-Macromedia merger has resulted in a monopoly ruining the software we use to make a living. They continue to bloat their software, ruin the GUI (the CS3 GUI sucks and the CS4 one is worse – they don’t even run it past usability experts), and we have zero choice because they are the only company that makes the tools.
The merger has been worse for us, not better.
Amen to that.
Love what they’re doing on the technology side ( Flex/AIR etc ) but my god they’re murdering their apps. They need to stop adding every new feature you can think of and make them a pleasure to use. And there is no excuse this time round for not having a damn near perfect inter-product workflow
Personally, CS4 seems like it is taking a lot of steps in the right direction. Steven, careful of your NDA.
Unfortunately, Adobe now owns our industry. This is the problem with monopolies. They know they are the only game in town. The CS4 GUI should have been codenamed Molasses. 🙁
WOW! Harsh words! I guess we all just have to wait and see!
Well, if you don’t like Flash GUI there are a bit more out there to build SWF files… you can make your own if you want as well, SWF file format is open, or you can use the Flex SDK, and what about Flash CS4 using some sort of XML file for saving the files? is it happening? if so that will open even more possibilities. Not to mention Silverlight and JavaFX…
Not trying to sound harsh.
I’ll be a happy man if able to copy a layer in Photoshop and paste it in Illustrator with the transparency intact. Hope that’s not asking too much for a 20-year-old application…other than that, feature-wise, the more the merrier.
@Steven
Not totally accurate about Adobe having a monopoly as there are alternative apps although nothing as robust as Photoshop or Flash. I feel your pain though on bloated apps. All they need now is a pearl handle kick-starter! 😉
btw…Gaia rockz! Thank you!
Will Adobe ever learn it?
I understand it that when a company wants to release a product (suite) they try everything to pimp it well. But meanwhile the dev cycles from earlier around 19 months and more are down to partially less than a year per product iteration, when i look at the new features list there are around 5-10 at most new features that one can really brand as such without taking some bashing; while more and more new bugs and inconsistencies get added and partially 10 year old bugs are still not fixed. Doesn´t bode well together with hype going to a degree where a contdown timer hype train is started for what isn´t even the actual release but a show to hype the upcoming stuff.
As always i will check out the new versions but come on, it gets harder and harder to get really excited when hype for stuff barely fits to the actual delivered stuff.
I wonder what they say this time regarding how much they improved the performance of flash. I imagine its probably 200% faster this time and therefore finally the fastest thing in the world when reviewing how much faster they said it got since flash 5…
If you really hate CS4 that much when it comes out, send it my way. I still have some old Flash 4 and 5 CDs floating around. I’ll gladly trade you.
Sorry man, we won´t get a deal going there since i have every flash version from 3-8 🙂
(CS3 was the first i got download only).
As i said i´ll also give CS4 a try, let´s see, ideally i´ll be pleasently surprised 🙂
I meant i have every version from 3-8 as boxed copy, just to go clear 🙂
im a bit confused why steven hates the cs3 gui so much. It could be because I am a developer and don’t spend a ton of time in there, but i have to prep assets and draw things and setup things on the time line, etc and I don’t feel like it’s a miserable experience. I am on a mac and i know flash doesn’t run as good on a mac, but it’s still easy enough to work with and I would say a large library is the only thing that constantly bugs me. At the end of the day you can’t expect the release to be perfect. There will always be a negative as adobe won’t ever please everyone, but in this case it seems like the positives out weight the negatives enough that we should stop whining and say thank you to adobe for keeping the IDE at the top of the line and keeping a number of people employed outside of their company. I wouldn’t have the freedom I have today in my life without adobe.
no win situation keeping the fussy happy. you add a couple things or nothing people will cry it’s too much the same. you add heaps of cool new things for people to play with and people say is bloated and awful.
i just enjoy making cool/interesting flash work. anything that added to help me is great! and if i don’t like it, i just won’t use it… easy!
that’s my 2 cents 🙂
Look, I think hating the GUI isn’t hating the company. I too feel that CS3 was a major failure when it comes to an application (and as Steven suggests – looks like CS4 is headed the same way), but as far as the technology goes, which Adobe is wholly responsible for, I love it. I think their open-source initiatives are incredible and where the player has gone now is really fantastic. Personally however, I could never stand CS3 for coding – it’s quite ridiculous. The alternatives for straight-up AS3-ing are just waaayyy superior, and make you wonder why they screw up so badly in their own code editor. But, you know, I’m not one for the timeline and the other drawing tools (pure code for me), so I obviously don’t need all the stuff in the GUI and therefore focus my attentions on the code editor. Perhaps if I used those things more, I’d appreciate it more.
jkaris, well put. 🙂
for the record, there’s a lot of things I hate about Flash CS3. It frustrates the hell out of me every time I use it and I try hard to avoid using it. I’ll say more about CS4 next week after the announcement by Adobe.
That’s a great idea! Learn to use CorelDRAW and photo-paint and that (plus much more) will happen for you!
On September 16th, 2008, lunetta said:
I’ll be a happy man if able to copy a layer in Photoshop and paste it in Illustrator with the transparency intact. Hope that’s not asking too much for a 20-year-old application…other than that, feature-wise, the more the merrier.
The Flash CS4 is definitely slower than acceptable from such a big company. On my brand new dual core 4gb laptop, the code window lags when you type! Yes, that’s right, the code window. I used to be able to throw 100-liners together to test a simple concept, but now I can’t use it whatsoever. I have never had any problems with Flash CS3. I quite liked it from the beginning. Flash CS4, however, has let me down greatly. Processor speed is not a legitimate excuse for unnecessary software bloat. Not only is their custom text editor widget ridiculously slow, it’s no longer allowed to pop up from the bottom and overlap the timeline. I can’t find a CS4 alternative to the layout I’ve used since MX. In fact, I can’t find a decent CS4 widget layout at all. I feel like I’m constantly compromising. The properties being forced in to the panel was a bad move in my opinion as well, but that is arguable (as is most layout problems besides lag). I love the new features, both design and in actionscript ( Vectors :D!!!! ), but the interface makes me cry inside. I mean, the code editor lagging?, come on…
Besides the SWEET animated scrolling canvas in Photoshop – the CS4 upgrade was a welcomed change.. Or so I thought. That was until I had a time crunch on a Flash project.
What the hell was Adobe doing releasing this junkware… The new animation editor is awesome. But the tradeoff of quirky GUI “enhancements” puts my productivity down 25%. I’m assuming they really did not give this any real world testing before releasing it.
Importing single or multiple layers of a photoshop file is a big FAIL in CS4. Horrible quality. Bad alpha channel interpolation. I choose when and were on the timeline I want an import and it puts it in a new layer on frame one. Uhhh WTF.
Adobe took the whole tabbed tool menu thing too far. The <> buttons should be able to be turned on and off. No one edits their workspace this often or is this anal about conserving screen space. Floating tool boxes, snapping toolboxes, mini button toolboxes, expand to panels, collapse to icons, tabbed windows… ALL NOT NECESSARY. Learn from the Apple Pro software (like Logic) and keep it simple.
Also, why the hell can’t we animate text objects without creating movieclips or tweens out of them?