If you’ve ever needed and/or wanted to make quick, minor edits to the URLs embedded in your Flash presentations without firing up the increasingly-bloated Adobe Flash application, the open-source SWF Link Tool [SourceForge] may just be what you’re looking for. 

A quick, simple and free download, this app (for Linux, Mac & Windows) allows you to examine an SWF and do find/replace edits for any links you might have included.

Any other niche applications out there that you use to modify/tweak/examine your SWF or FLA files? Drop us a line in the comments.

Early this morning, the Adobe Labs team released preview versions of three Creative Suite 4 applications: Dreamweaver, Fireworks and Soundbooth.

(Personally, I thought that Adobe might actually phase Fireworks out now that the program is being produced by the same company that releases that other graphics program, Photoshop.  Guess I was wrong.)

The official announcement on the Adobe Labs site provides plenty of information on what the new versions bring, including a brand new interface, but does not, however, provide decent screenshots.  So, here are some captures from Adobe Dreamweaver CS4: (click on the image for the larger version)

(Dreamweaver CS4 main window)
(CSS options dialog after selecting font…should make for quick and easy CSS maintenance.)

(Adobe Extension Manager CS4)

  (Validation Checker)

Some of the notable new features for Dreamweaver include:

Live View - View your web pages under real-world browser conditions with the new Live View in Dreamweaver — while still retaining direct access to the code. The new rendering mode, which uses the open source rendering engine WebKit, displays your designs like a standards-based browser.

Photoshop Smart Objects - Photoshop and Dreamweaver integration has evolved to the next level of compatibility and functionality. Drag and drop an Adobe Photoshop® PSD file into a Dreamweaver page to create an image Smart Object.

Adobe® AIR™ authoring support - Create multiplatform desktop applications from your Dreamweaver HTML and JavaScript sites with new Adobe AIR™ authoring support.

Read more about the new releases over at Adobe Labs.  Or, download the betas and give them a spin yourself.  (Note: the trial period for beta testers is two measly days.  However, if you already own a copy of the respective program [or the CS3 suite], you can test it for a tad longer.)

Before we begin, Microsoft’s Silverlight, for those of you who don’t know, is a “cross-browser, cross-platform plug-in for delivering the next generation of Microsoft .NET–based media experiences and rich interactive applications for the Web.“  Silverlight is aimed squarely at competing with Adobe’s Flash player/application/framework and was a big hit at this year’s MIX07 conference.

If you are familiar with Silverlight, however, and are anxious to get started with it, Ian Moulster at his MSDN blog has an interesting video tutorial on streaming video using Silverlight technology.  In his own words, Ian developed the video for those who might find themselves in the following scenario:

“…you have a video file on your hard drive and you want to get it up on the web and streaming. You want a high bitrate, no advertising, no third party branding, and need to have the ability to scale to a large number of users. And of course you don’t want to incur big bandwidth charges from your ISP if your video is really popular.”

If this sounds intriguing and you have some useful and/or useless video there on your desktop, read the blog entry from Ian and then check out the video.  You can even create an account at silverlight.live.com and get 4GB to store your new streaming media.

By the way, in order to view Ian’s video, you need to have the Silverlight browser plug-in installed.  You honestly didn’t think you were going to get to view it without the plug-in did you?  Download it here: http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkID=86008.

Adobe Labs has released a new project on their “Labs” testing site.  Going by the name “Kuler,” the project “helps you explore, create and share color themes for your Web pages, design projects and other creative work.”

Based on Flash (requiring Flash Player 9,) the online application provides a way for designers to collaborate on various color themes.  You can view other users’ themes and download them (or your own) for use in the Creative Suite 2 applications.

Feedback is being taken via a forum which already has 55 users logged as I’m writing this.

There seems to be a new energy slowly creeping it’s way through the halls of Adobe since the Macromedia acquisition.  The company seems to be more open to beta testing new products and it appears as though they’ve become more receptive to using non-proprietary technology in some of their more recent online ventures.  It’s refreshing to say the least.

technorati tags:adobe, labs, kuler, Web, design, projects, creative, suite

According to Reuters India, Adobe will be releasing the latest version of Acrobat, version 8.0, sometime this November. This latest version features updated tools for making changes to and removing information from existing documents. (At long last, Standard and Professional users can now “Enable anyone using free Adobe® Reader® software (version 7.0 or 8.0) to participate in document reviews, fill and save electronic forms offline*, and digitally sign documents.”) An enhanced “Save as Word” option is also included, allowing a user to retain layout, fonts, formatting, tables, etc. when saving to the .doc format.

Along with the release, Adobe is also launching Acrobat Connect and Acrobat Connect Professional:

Adobe® Acrobat® Connect™ software enables professionals to communicate and collaborate instantly with small teams, colleagues, and customers through easy-to-use, easy-to-access online personal meeting rooms. Acrobat Connect brings real-world functionality to ad-hoc one-on-one meetings and small team collaboration, for an affordable flat price.

This will be the software maker’s first release since they acquired Macromedia in December of 2005.

Hop on over to Macromedia.com and the odds are pretty good that you’ll find something interesting…the Adobe logo in the upper left corner. The merger is complete and Adobe has already revealed new product Suites:

The Adobe Design Bundle including

• Adobe Photoshop CS2
• Adobe Illustrator CS2
• Adobe InDesign CS2
• Adobe GoLive CS2
• Adobe Acrobat 7.0 Professional
• Macromedia Flash Professional 8.0

The Adobe Web Bundle including

• Everything above and
• Macromedia Dreamweaver 8
• Fireworks 8
• Contribute 3
• FlashPaper 2

Everything you see here has already been released both in Adobe Creative Suite 2 back in May and Macromedia’s Studio 8 back in September. This is, however, the first official release from the Adobe/Macromedia merger. I’m still VERY anxious to see what new features will be applied to each and every one of these products for their next release.