Sydney FX started with web design back in 2004 but these days I spend more time studying new web technologies like ruby on rails, flex and the new AIR from Adobe and sometimes you need costly editors to assist you in speeding up your development time.

Well now there is an IDE that is multi platform so no matter if your working on Windows, Apple, or Linux, there is a release just for you.

Now I haven’t been using Aptana for very long but I have now installed it on both my Windows and Linux platforms mainly for Rails development because there are very few good editors that meet the needs of rails programmers straight out of the box. Most mac users including myself use the Textmate however Aptana is great if you can’t spare the money for a mac or need an alternative editor when you don’t have a mac handy or don’t want a mac altogether.

I’ve seen a number of custom setups for text editors on linux which look great however you’ll need to know how to get the editor to suit your needs. If you don’t have that knowledge then check out Aptana. It’s really cool, and can be used for all the latest web technology programming like Ajax, HTML, AIR, and even iPhone.

Aptana is an open source project founded by Paul Colton who has been involved in a number of successful technologies in previous ventures. Check out more of Aptana at the official website.

Adobe – Creative Suite 3, Web Site Design, Graphic Design, Video Editing, Photo Editing Software

Well it’s not exactly the latest news but it is definately worthy of a mention that what used to be Macromedia products and now interwoven into the Adobe range of products so we have a whole new range of Creative Suites with packages for the print designer, web designer & developer, production studio or if you want to have it all, you can buy the lot with the Master Suite of the best of the best from Adobe.

I haven’t yet had the opportunity to get my hands on these latest releases of CS3 however after spending alot of time on the Adobe site, I decided to preorder and upgrade my Studio 8 suite to the Web Design Premium package which has everything I need right now although I would have liked to have some of the software from the Production Suite but maybe next time.

From what I have seen from the information on the Adobe website, most of the new features seem to work on product cross over integration where it will now be easier than ever to work across multiple applications and importing graphics seems like a life saver solving many issues today working from Adobe products and Macromedia products.

I also like the improved CSS support and updated features particulary now in Dreamweaver that you can move the CSS rules around the CSS panel. Also the Ajax integration in Dreamweaver is another nice extra using the Adobe’s own Spry framework. There are quite a few extra features in both Photoshop, Illustrator, & Fireworks but currently I’m very curious to see if Dreamweaver has some better dynamic validation options for database driven sites as Dreamweaver 8 didn’t have any built in behaviours to fast track the process. Late last year in Sep 06 Adobe aquired the company Interakt who built some nice validation plugins for Dreamweaver so it will be interesting to see if Adobe has integrated some of this into Dreamweaver CS3.

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