| Adobe announced CyberStudio 4.0, the first cross platform version of the web development authoring environment purchased from GoLive at the beginning of the year. At that time, Adobe announced it would be porting the product "at the speed of the Internet" and the company has proven true to its world. We spoke to Eric Cottrell, Product Manager for Cyberstudio at Adobe, and Jill Nakashima, public relations representative at Adobe, last week about Cyberstudio 4. We were asked to hold our story until after Adobe's announcement today.
Cyberstudio 4.0 will be the first cross platform version of the product though the Mac version will be released first. In fact, Mr. Cottrell went to great lengths to assure The Mac Observer that Adobe's primary concern is to take care of the installed Mac user base first. Even more importantly, the company's goal is to achieve feature parity on both platforms, but Adobe will not be dumbing CyberStudio down to make that happen. This had been our concern as Cyberstudio is so integrated with the Finder and the MacOS. According to Mr. Cottrell:
"Our goal is to achieve platform parity, but if we get there in the same way I would be surprised. We will not take features from the Mac version, we will not rob Peter to pay Paul."
Of course, Adobe is also seeking to make Cyberstudio integrate well with its existing product line though Mr. Cottrell told us that this release will not see a whole lot of progress in that direction. Future releases will, however, as Adobe has more time to deal with these issues. As a look at how important Cyberstudio is to Adobe, Mr. Cottrell told us that Cyberstudio is the linchpin to their entire product line. A stunning statement to be sure considering that Cyberstudio was just purchased a little more than a month ago.
In addition to being cross platform, Cyberstudio 4 will have several new features that will make users very happy.
- The product will now have a built-in QuickTime editor allowing users to edit video tracks as well as sprite tracks and handle all aspects of embedding QT files into a web page.
- XML will be supported via a Cyberstudio module.
- Web masters using Flash will be delighted that Flash files can now be worked with inside of Cyberstudio. Adobe has gone so far as to make it possible to change external links on Flash files from within Cyberstudio, a very important feature for web masters who incorporate Flash into their web sites. Mr. Cottrell told us that there will be some limitations on working with Flash inside of Cyberstudio but could not go into specifics.
- PDF files will also share this ability.
- Table editing will see many long asked for improvements, with multiple cell and noncontiguous cells editing as well as other improvements.
- Unspecified Site View enhancements (the Site View is where site maintenance is performed) will be made.
- Cyberobjects will now have the ability to be embedded within each other.
As an effort to reach out to the installed user base, Adobe will be including, free of charge, 13 3rd party Actions. These will include daily redirect actions, cookie-based actions, inline actions triggered as the browser parses the page (meaning that the web master can choose exactly when an action may load), as well as other Actions.
Adobe is keeping development in Germany and has gone to great lengths to get additional personnel to the German facility. Most of the developers Adobe has added to the team have been developers with porting experience to make the Windows port happen as quickly as possible. The impression The Mac Observer got from Mr. Cottrell and Ms. Nakashima is that no expenses are being spared to get the former GoLive team anything and everything they need to make version 4 a reality as soon as possible.
Pricing and availability: The Mac version will be shipping first, probably in March while the Windows version will be shipping sometime in the second quarter along with German, French and Japanese versions.
Pricing on Cyberstudio 4 will stay the same with new versions retailing for US$299, though upgrades will be priced slightly lower at US$99.
The Mac Observer Spin: We will make no secret of the fact that we were initially wary of the Adobe buyout of GoLive, but most of those worries were put to rest after our interview with the Adobe folks. Our biggest concern is that Adobe would remove features from the Mac version to make it compatible with the Windows version, but we were assured that this would not be the case. In fact, with Adobe's resources behind the products, it looks as if the Mac and Windows versions will receive enhancements at a far faster rate than the Mac version alone was receiving and that Adobe is currently putting the Mac version first. It also seems as if primary development will remain on the Mac. In other words, Adobe said everything right and we believe that they will in fact follow through like they said.
The speed at which Adobe is making version 4 happen is simply astounding. Mr. Cottrell told us that the entire team is in crunch mode and will likely remain that way for some time, but even still, achieving a full port to Windows in 6 months is simply phenomenal.
The new version, Adobe's resources, and the fact that the product will be cross platform will likely see CyberStudio 4 be a blockbuster success. This will be good for the Mac platform as a major portion of that success will be on the Mac side. This will be seen and reported by the press which will in turn be seen by customers who will hopefully view it as one more sign that the Mac platform is alive and healthy.
The only negative is that the Mac platform will no longer have the best site development environment (with a hat tipped to both Dreamweaver and Claris Home Page) as its sole domain. No doubt, the folks at NetObjects, who are no longer making Fusion for the Mac, are sweating bullets.
Adobe
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