This post is a consequence of a number of things I have been thinking about since Adobe Refresh last week. It came together while I was posting about using Illustrator to create Flex symbols. I was thinking about how little use I have for the Flash IDE at the moment. I had been using it to create an assets.swf with static skin elements. But I realise now that it is easier to use Illustrator for this.

At the moment Flex developers are disadvantaged by Adobe's packaging options. If we buy CS3 Web Premium we still need to go out and buy Flex Builder. What would be better is if one of the collections contained Flex Builder. In fact, what if there was a collection focussed on RIA development.

I had been thinking about this a little since seeing some demos of Thermo. Thermo

  
is essentially a Flex for Designers that will integrate with Flex Builder (Flex for Developers). So lets imagine a studio with a designer and developer working on Flex based projects. Ideally we could have a CS4 RIA Designer Collection and a CS4 RIA Developer Collection and they could look a little like this:

CS4 RIA Designer Collection

  • Adobe Photoshop
  • Adobe Illustrator
  • Adobe Thermo
  • Adobe Dreamweaver
CS4 RIA Developer Collection
  • Adobe Flex Builder
  • Adobe Flash
  • Adobe Dreamweaver
  • Adobe Fireworks
Finally, for the developer/designer we have the Premium collection:

CS4 RIA Premium Collection
  • Adobe Photoshop
  • Adobe Illustrator
  • Adobe Fireworks
  • Adobe Flex Builder
  • Adobe Thermo
  • Adobe Flash
  • Adobe Dreamweaver
Source: http://geekglue.blogspot.com/2007/11/adobe-cs4-ria-premium.html