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So we officially announced CS4 today. Mostly this is just an unveiling of the suite configurations, the branding, and some marketing stuff. But we’re also starting to talk more in-depth about features and one of the big themes in this release is making developers and designers more productive together. You’re going to see that as you start playing with the CS4 tools and when you start getting to look at Flex Builder “Gumbo” (and the SDK), AIR 1.5, and Flash Player 10.

The biggest thing is FXG. We have FXG support in Photoshop, Illustrator, and Fireworks so you can take that artwork you’ve spent time on in the design tools and bring it into your Flex applications. It’s a full XML-based representation that will make the artwork easy for designers to create and developers to work with (in addition to saving on file size).

We’re also looking at helping developers be more expressive. Things like Pixel Bender help blur the lines between developer and designers. Developers can work with designers to code up great filters that can be used in Photoshop, After Effects and Flash. It’s going to make design across all mediums come alive in very interesting ways.

So CS4 is a big release for developers. I would argue it’s the first CS release to truly integrate everything Adobe and Macromedia did because it’s started to incorporate the developer side of Macromedia. There’s also some interesting new stuff in there that should expand Adobe’s footprint on the tech world, so I’m excited to see how that’s received.