Adobe launches CS5 as Apple shuts the App Store door on Flash

Published: 01/05/2010 | Last Revision: 24/05/2010

Adobe has launched its much-anticipated Creative Suite 5 (CS5), a major upgrade to its design tools product range. The suite comes in five editions offering varying combinations of Adobe’s Photoshop (bitmap graphics), InDesign (DTP), Illustrator (vector graphics), Dreamweaver (Web development), Premiere (video editing) and Flash authoring applications, plus supporting products. For Web developers, Dreamweaver CS5 features improved PHP support, real-time CSS editing and new integration with leading CMS systems. There’s no Web Standard edition of CS5, but CS4 Web Standard users can upgrade to Web Premium (including PhotoShop, Illustrator and Flash Professional) at no extra cost. For full details on Adobe CS5, see our review on page 26.

DreamWeaver CS5 includes integration with WordPress and other CMS systems

Unfortunately, Adobe’s launch celebrations were marred by a serious row with its one-time closest ally, Apple. At last October’s Adobe MAX developer conference Adobe demonstrated Flash Professional CS5’s Packager for iPhone, which generates iPhone apps from ActionScript projects, stressing that the resulting executables required no runtime so were compliant with App Store licensing terms. The Packager became one of CS5’s most anticipated features until, just three days before the suite’s launch, Apple announced a new rule that only code written in C, C++, or Objective-C was acceptable, thus barring Flash CS5-derived apps from the Store. After a short war of words Adobe announced that, although the iPhone Packager would still ship in CS5, it was ceasing development and concentrating on Google’s Android platform instead. With Flash already barred from the iPhone, and Adobe Platform Evangelist Lee Brimelow writing “Go screw yourself Apple” in his blog, friendly relations between the two companies look a distant prospect.