Development tidbits, struggles, revelations, and still some Flash

I’ll admit, it’s been a while since I used Illustrator. I used to use it exclusively many years back, but I moved over to Fireworks for my Flash work and I never looked back. With CS3 coming soon and its better integration with Flash, I figured I’d dust off Illustrator. I think the second thing I tried to do was create a gradient that went from 100% opacity to 0%.. this is something I have been doing since I started with Fireworks. I can’t believe Illustrator doesn’t have this. I have to create an opacity mask? Crazy.

Someone needs to create a plugin for this…if they haven’t already.

I just happened to swing by the Dx3 conference page and saw this:

Due to unforseen circumstances, D×3 has been cancelled.

For further inquiries, please contact: registration@dx3conference.com

Wow! I had just gotten approval at work to attend this conference too. Maybe we’ll find out more in the next few days. I hope they re-schedule because the conference looked awesome and had all the right people and topics that mattered to me.

Get it while its hot. Apollo is now out in the wild.
http://labs.adobe.com/technologies/apollo/

Guess I know where my time will be spent tomorrow at work.

Our local Adobe Users Group is going to have a special CS3 Launch Event meeting at 7 PM on March 27th. If you’re in the LV area, you’ll want to be there. I know I will be.

http://www.vegasaug.org/

Please join other Las Vegas designers for this official CS3 Launch event!

If you work with any of the Adobe Creative Suite products, or the formerly Macromedia Studio products, this meeting is for you! Please be sure to forward this meeting announcement to all who you think may be interested.

This will be a special joint meeting of the Las Vegas Adobe Users Group (VegasAUG.org) and the Las Vegas Dreamweaver Users Group (LVDUG.com). The meeting will include presentations by Adobe executives, CS3 product demonstrations, and a chance to win one of the first copies of the new CS3 suite when it starts shipping!

Adobe has been providing demonstrations of the CS3 products for several months (including here in Las Vegas at MAX last fall). And Adobe has also provided a public beta of Photoshop CS3 at labs.adobe.com since December. Please join us to learn and discuss details of the official CS3 release!

A new era in creative expression is about to unfold, freeing us to color outside the lines, to think in multiple dimensions, to engage audiences like never before.

If you have further questions, please contact info@VegasAUG.org

I just saw this on MacCentral. Wow! And Encore is coming too. I like competition and this is a good thing, but its been a long time and Adobe has a lot of ground to make up. They’ll need to mend a lot of fences to get ex-Premiere users to swap back from FCP (or offer some really great competitive upgrades).

“Adobe will announce on Thursday that it will revive a Mac version of Premiere, the software maker’s video program aimed at professional editors. The new Mac version will only run on Intel-based Macs and will be part of a larger Adobe Production Studio suite that will include Adobe Encore DVD and Adobe Soundbooth.”

Other announcement links:

Mike Downey blog

Steve Kilisky’s AE blog

By the way, in case it’s not clear, I’m very excited about this news.Â