The new Fireworks CS4 beta produces a user interface that looks thoroughly custom and unlike anything offered by any Adobe application I’ve seen going back the entire CS era, including Lightroom — sorry, Adobe Photoshop Illustrator Soundbooth Lightroom. ™.
This kind of stuff intrigues me and deserves a deeper look before I pose any sort of opinion. But among my first reflections is this idea: what if Adobe is entirely bulldozing their UI problem? Adobe’s problem right now is that they have Mac products that look like Mac products, except for those weird Adobe deviations which also vary from product to product, as anyone who has witnessed the steppers-who-look-like-popup-buttons in Illustrator can confirm. (Technically, they also have Windows products that don’t entirely look like Windows products, but very few Windows products do these days, including most of the ones bundled with Windows.)
By switching from what already has to be pretty custom UI to entirely custom UI, and providing platform-specific skews of this custom UI, Adobe could come out looking better. From “they can’t even get a standard modern Mac interface going” to “they have a custom interface that still works like a Mac app!”.
No comments yet.
Sorry, the comment form is closed at this time.