I swear that Adobe has taken a leaf from IBM and has fortified its Adobe Labs to be like IBMs Developers Works, the place to be about all things new Adobe and more broadly in graphics software usage and development. And I am not the only one noting this. Graphic designers can find the latest beta of Photoshop CS3, Lightroom, Kuler and Color Management there. RIA developers can find the Spry AJAX framework, JSEclipse and all sorts of Flex2 utilities and all in at the same location. The following screenshot shows whats up:
If you look down the column at the right you will see all the major new software available from the Labs – some pretty nifty developments. But even, better, there is a mix of graphic and developers stuff. I think one of the problems with Acrobat, Dreamweaver, and especially Flash has been the fact that the designer and developer communities have been artificially separated. Not any more at Adobe Labs – this is the place to go for both communities to say the latest in Adobe works. Both groups will find a lot of mutual interest and then some projects of pitched pretty close to their specific needs and interests. This is one the great takeaways from the IBM Developers Works where mainframe, AIX, Linux, XML, and design tools among other things were mixed together. One got to see the big picture of the next wave from IBM fairly easily. But Adobe has taken the Labs idea one step further:
Posted at the bottom of every major topic are the following tabs which really help people to get started very quickly with the new software and all the resources including forum and other support details. Great – it is almost a template for the product support web pages that will appear later if and when the product goes commercial. Kudos to the Adobe web designers for making their Labs one of the easiest places to find “stuff” at. And just another sign that Adobe is gearing up to be a power to be reckoned in the Time Magazine Person of the Year world of “You”.
(c)JBSurveyer 2006
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