Well, my friends, the countdown to CS4 has truly begun in earnest. I only needed to look at the SMS’s from friends and acquaintences to know that we surprised everyone with our “announcement announcement”. In fact, a really good friend put it more, um, succinctly… “WTF?! I finally feel at home with CS3 and… Oh well… Here we go again!” To which I responded, “join the club”.

You know, it’s funny that “we” somehow get forgotten in all the hoopla surrounding a new product announcement. By “we” I mean all of the evangelists, sales engineers, training partners, community experts, book authors and all the others out there that serve as your source of tips, tricks, and techniques that you rely on when learning our products. Just like you, we get frustrated by the perceived “quick” arrival of the next “greatest software release in the history of the company”. But even more frustrating is the fact that we have a far shorter time to react and learn than you.

You see, while all of you were happily impressing friends and colleagues as you discovered the Auto Align command in Photoshop or the added productivity of Dreamweaver’s CSS starter layouts, those of us “in the know” were already “knowing” – and beginning to learn – even though CS3 was only in its infancy. And that is an even bigger challenge – being out on the road, demoing one version (with which you yourself are not even comfortable) while knowing that issues are already being addressed and new workflows invented. But such is our life…

In fact, unlike us – the Adobe faithful (read: slaves… er, um… faithful) – you even have the luxury of skipping a version – although as an Adobe stockholder I am obligated to inform you that doing so can cause headaches, dryness of the mouth, loss of hearing, nasal congestion and a temporary inability to complete any creative (suite) task. Should any of these symptoms last for longer than four hours, well, you know what to do… Buy the upgrade!!!

But my actual purpose in posting this was to draw your attention to those individuals in the community that you admire and learn from. There are a lot of them who have been spending countless hours working with and bug testing these new tools. And all of the great content you’ll be experiencing shortly on blogs, Adobe TV, tradeshows and elsewhere, was created and perfected using unstable and at times frustratingly irritating builds of the great software that you will soon be enjoying in their (hopefully) bug-free form.

So if you get the chance to meet one of these individuals that have created tutorials, written blogposts or authored a book for you to learn from, please take a sec and thank them. I know they’ll appreciate it – cause not only do I do these things myself (I’m writing this on my iPhone on the way to Dallas right now to film some upcoming Adobe TV shows), but I enjoy learning from my fellow Adobe enthusiasts as well.

Want to know more about Creative Suite 4? Then be sure to register for the live premiere – or visit Adobe TV following the announcement on Sept. 23rd.

Let us know what tips or tricks you’re interested in hearing about, and we’ll be happy to blog these tips.

On a personal note, I have to admit that I’ve had the pleasure of being able to spend these (unprecidented) 6 weeks with my kids and with Stephanie – so if you’ve missed my posts, thanks for your patience. Cheers!!!

Yes, you heard that right! We’ve finally gotten approval from the mothership to confirm that we are, in fact, not only working on Creative Suite 4, but we’re also about to unveil it. Now I’ve been lucky enough to have been able to sneak a bit of CS4 in a number of presentations around the world over the last several months – thanks to the public beta for Dreamweaver CS4 and Fireworks CS4. And after every presentation, the first (and most popular) question has been “when is CS4 coming?”. Well, now I can finally tell you that we will be officially announcing Adobe Creative Suite 4 on September 23rd, 2008. w00t!!!

It seems a bit strange to be “announcing an announcement” – but, my friends, there is a method to the madness. We’re letting you know now because we’re going to be broadcasting the announcement on the web – and you need to sign up to get into the event. And don’t worry if you’re not in the US, as we’ll be repeating the event a number of times to accomodate our worldwide users. To sign up, simply go to: http://www.adobe.com/go/somethingbrilliant/.

Anyone who has seen any of my presentations over the last year and half or so knows that I poke a bit of fun at our beloved Photoshop when it comes to both image optimization (Fireworks makes a smaller JPEG by default) and using Photoshop to prototype web layouts. I always make sure to point out that Photoshop is a fantastic tool – I mean, duh, we all use it. But a tool is just that – it should be used to accomplish the task that it was designed for. Unless you’re really desperate (or maybe you can’t find the hammer), you wouldn’t try to hammer a nail with a screwdriver. As professionals, we have a wide variety of tools at our desposal and it’s our job to select the right tool for the right job.

And therefore, I appreciated the fact that several web professionals took up this discussion for Digital Web Magazine. If you’re interested in this on-going debate, check it out. (And thanks to Stephanie for sending me the link.)