adobe web premium

ok, so I recently got my copy of pirated ‘adobe web premium cs3 ’ suite. When I started installing it, the monstrous size of the setup itself scared me. And considering all the junk my computer had, I was afraid my machine would not be able to handle its size.

But anyways the package was installed and all the cracks copied, time to go testing. The first thing that startled me was the enormous number of softwares included in the package (Later I learned that the adobe creative suite has even more softwares). Even the names of some were entirely new to me. Anyways, I haven't used adobe softwares before.

And as is the basic instinct of mine, 'to tread the unknown', I started a bit of R&D (ok... that's heavy!!!) on the net and here is a list of what-software-does-what in an adobe web premium suite. The following info has been compiled mainly from Wikipedia (it’s awesome) and also some other resources.

Firstly, all the softwares mentioned below have been made in C++. That’s the power of C++. Although, the source code is not freely available as adobe’s softwares are not open source, but still there are ways to extract software codes.

1. Adobe Acrobat This is pdf editing software. And what is a pdf? Pdf stands for ‘portable document format’. As the acronym makes it clear, it's a document format, which is portable and printable. This document format was created by adobe itself back in 1993. But every document format is printable and what does portable mean? Look, I’ll try to give you a rough idea. When you make a document in MS Word it has an extension .doc (.docx for latest versions). But suppose you want to open that file in another computer like in a café computer (to get it printed) only to find that the PC there lacks the correct version of MS Word. The format of the document gets all messy and it becomes a headache. There are other word processors too but they have different ways of handling the layout on the document. Plus there are other issues like whether the font that you have used in your document is also available on other systems. Pdf makes life easy by converting the document, as it is, into a sort of 2D image. So any document format can be converted to a pdf format and handled over different platforms without any loss of layout. Even business transactions these days handle documents in pdf format. It’s easy when you have a common standard…you know!!!! Adobe reader(earlier known as acrobat reader) is a software which just opens any pdf file. It usually does not provide a lot of editing functionalities but you can go through any pdf document and take a print out. Sort of READ-ONLY thing, no more tampering. Adobe acrobat on the other hand is a full fledged pdf editing software, where you can create, modify, join, cut, add bookmarks, add comments, highlight…. and do a hell lot of things with a pdf file and save the changes. Although, If you ask me, which pdf reader I use. I would never opt for adobe reader. It’s damn slow. Go for Foxit reader. It’s much faster. It also has a whole package for pdf creation and editing. There are hoards of other pdf oriented tools available like nitro pdf, but I haven’t used them.

2. Adobe photoshop Well, we all know that this ‘software celebrity’ is an image editing tool. Photoshop runs parallel to image processing both in industrial designing and among hobbyists. Here is some not-so-well-known facts. The software has been designed in C++(can you imaaaaggiiineee!!!). The version ‘adobe photoshop 8’ was renamed to ‘adobe photoshop CS’ (because now adobe was releasing it’s softwares not as stand alone apps but in bundles catering to a particular aspect of multimedia). CS4 is already out in the market (so this becomes the 11th version). This software was designed by a PhD student at the University of Michigan, Thomas knoll on a Macintosh computer. Later he gave a presentation at the silicon valley about his work and the Apple Inc. was more than happy to buy the rights to distribute this software under their name. That’s how Photoshop 1.0 came into being. And since then Apple and Adobe had been into a lot of collaborations (apart from having similar names!!!). Adobe started making Photoshop future versions to Apple systems and later also made it available for other platforms. Ironically, adobe and apple have been rivals in the multimedia segment but image processors for apple OS were made by Adobe. (cute love birds!!!!) Moving ON….

3. Adobe Illustrator This is a ‘vector graphics editor’. What?? Another graphics editor, but we already have Photoshop in our battalion, don’t we?? It’s not that simple my child…. let me explain…. What is vector graphics? It is the use of primitive geometrical elements like points, lines, shapes, polygons,…. to represent a computer graphic. And how is it otherwise done? The other way of interpreting a computer graphic is by breaking it into pixels. This is known as ‘raster graphics’. So we have ‘raster graphics’ and ‘vector graphics’…sounds easy…. So which one’s better? None actually. In come cases, vector approach is easy while pixels are used in other cases. To give you a better feel, do one thing. Try zooming into a normal gif or jpg picture. It gets blurred after a while. Now open any pdf document and now try zooming into the letters, try making it bigger and bigger and bigger. Magic!! It retains it’s clarity. So the later uses vector graphics. That was my perception. So plz tell me if I am wrong.!! Although here I am putting a official differentiating image to get a better idea.
An interesting fact is that adobe illustrator was released before photoshop got famous. So it was from where the journey began.

4. Adobe Fireworks Written in C++, it is also a vector graphics editor.(how mannyyy!!) . But hey, adobe people are not freakos…..are they?? Fireworks has its own cachet. Fireworks or Fw was actually a macromedia product. Macromedia was originally a rival company. In 2005, adobe took over macromedia (and it’s products). So it’s like the modified version of macromedia’s original software. So obviously, it had to be separate. Moreover, it is targeted especially for web designing. Adobe web-designing tools such as Dreamweaver and Flash bond well with fireworks. Although Fw emphasizes on vector graphics, it also provides editing options for bitmap (pixel based) images. Its interface is strikingly similar to Photoshop. Fire works is entirely devoted to web designing needs. It even employs object oriented approach into web designing. No wonder, it is quite famous among the web-tech community around the world.

5. Adobe Dreamweaver Well, this is THE web designing software. Earlier known as macromedia Dreamweaver, its user interface can be described by what is termed as WYSIWYG (What You See Is What You Get). This means, you don’t need to know all the HTML codes. Just put a heading, insert a pic on the left and scribble some text on the right and BANG!!! You just made a website.(blah blah blah, Ok it’s not a website..but a very basic HTML document). Things can be worked out like an ordinary word processor. You can also work in the traditional HTML code environment. Well there is a mammoth of web technologies involved before you can create a website, but still, Dreamweaver makes life simple. I remember using MS Frontpage long time back, which did just the same (gud ‘ol days…!!!). Dreamweaver allows the HTML document to be viewed on locally installed web browsers. It also incorporates ftp clients to transfer files on the server and supports many web languages like AJAX, Action Script, ASP (Active Server Pages)and the list goes on. Such softwares are basically called IDEs (Integrated Development Environment). Although the HTML code can be written in any text editor and can be viewed by web browsers, an IDE provides a support environment which makes writing long and complex code easy by giving preview, detecting errors, debugging, etc.

6. Adobe flash Adobe flash was previously known as macromedia flash. This software is used to add animation and interactivity to web pages. Some common applications are: making ads, animated content, adding videos on web pages….blah, blah, blah This reminds me of a problem with Google chrome. This browser which otherwise looks awesome, has a bug. Recently when I tried to view videos on it, it said it lacks adobe flash. When I went to adobe’s website, the flash versions were available only for IE, Firefox, Opera and Safari browsers. May be there is another way to add flash in chrome, but I am yet to find it out. The scripting language used for flash is known as Action Script. You can manipulate both raster and vector graphics with streaming of audio and video. And flash players are required to play a flash file (or read Action Script). That’s why we need flash player plug-in in browsers to play videos on it. Flash movies or flash games usually have the ‘.swf’ extension which stands for shock wave flash. The .flv video files which most of us have encountered, while downloading videos from YouTube, represent flash video files format. Another ‘kewl’ product from the adobe labs has been ‘Adobe AIR’. It stands for Adobe Integrated Runtime. It is a cross-platform runtime environment through which one can develop rich internet applications (RIA). Now what are these ‘rich internet applications’? They are applications on the web which have most of the features of a desktop application. Like the Google document, which is a web application, has many features of a full fledged desktop application like MS Word. Now there are things known as RIA frameworks. These are things which need to be in your system, if you want to run a RIA. Some of these frameworks are: Curl Adobe flash/adobe flex/adobe AIR Microsoft Silverlight You see, that’s what MS Silverlight is. When I first stumbled upon its name, I thought it was something related to C++ development platform.

7. Adobe Contribute Is also a web content management tool designed to integrate with Adobe Dreamweaver. I don’t know why Adobe has this habit of making different softwares to carry out different tasks on the same work field. Why can’t they just integrate all the functionalities into a single software? Here’s what Contribute can do which Dreamweaver cannot. 1. In browser plug-in: It comes with an browser plug-in. So after installing it, when I started Internet Explorer, I saw a small option on the upper right corner saying ‘edit with Ct’. 2. Workflow management feature: I don’t know what that means!!! 3. Publishing Server: I don’t know what that means either!!!!! That’s a bit confusing. But the real difference could only be found by using it. So more of it to come later, when I use it.

8. Adobe Bridge Yeah, so our Adobe suite was a hell lot of confusion. We have different softwares to develop different components that lead up to an awesome web experience. Adobe bridge helps linking all these data. It’s an organizational program. It does have some cool features of it’s own. After all, that’s why the Adobe people decided to make entirely separate software just for joining different Adobe components. Again, the above was to just get me started with Adobe. If you already use it, do share your expertise (or whatever…!!!), with me.