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In The Showroom I recently bought a new car, and the process of buying hardware/software is almost identical. At first, you browse the showroom or the dealer lots. You are attracted to some models because of their looks, others because of their price tag or because you have developed brand loyalty to a certain manufacturer. Illustrator 9.0 comes from a great bloodline, and over the years the Adobe palette interface has become comfortable to those of us who use graphics software. From this perspective, AI 9.0 has a lot going for it. I have used Illustrator 7 and 8 on both the Windows and Mac platforms, and there are very few differences. AI 9.0 carries on this tradition, but includes new features that have been wanted for quite some time. Users of previous versions will slip into the driver's seat quite easily, without feeling as though they've traded down.
Under The Hood If I sound a bit underwhelmed, I suppose that's because most of the features that were added are long overdue. Most of them are web-oriented: Pixel preview, direct export to GIF/JPG/PNG, Flash and SVG (Scalable Vector Graphics) options, as well as layering, transparency, drop shadow and glow effects - much like Photoshop has had for a long time. That's not to say that 9.0 is a poor release - it is very nice to have those things available. However, Photoshop 5.5 with ImageReady has been out for a year, and the update of Illustrator seems a bit slow in coming, to me.
A Little Bit of Background
Creating Flash Animations Of all the new features, I find the Flash export option most interesting. Using layers as individual frames, you can create animated graphics easily. I've included a simple example with this column, playing with text to create an animated logo.
When you finish creating your sequence of frames, you select "Export..." from the "File" menu and "Flash (SWF)" as the type of file you want to export to. When you click "OK" you will be presented with an option dialog where you can select to export your file as a Flash file, export the layers to frames, etc. and set the number of frames per second (fps). To create the animated logo, I simply laid out some text, then copied it to several layers and played with stretching it. In each frame, I stretched it a bit further. I then copied those frames in reverse order, so that the title appears to stretch out and back when animated.
About SVG Scalable Vector Graphics promises to do for the web what drawing programs did for the print world. Developed by the W3C Consortium, it defines a standard for vector-based graphics that will be viewable at any size. Want more detail on a graphic? Just enlarge it! SVG works through XML, the next-generation web-formatting language that many hope will replace HTML. SVG files are standard text files, like HTML. This means that they can be created in a text editor (though that would be tedious - more than likely you would do this to "tweak" a file created in a graphics program like Illustrator). Most browsers do not yet support SVG natively - you must install an SVG viewer plug-in (available from Adobe here).
Transparency Is Here! The incorporation of transparency is also a boon. PhotoShop has supported it for a long time, but this is the first time that layers in Illustrator can show through other layers, making for some interesting effects. Below is an example, using text, painted paths, and an icon that was copied from the Finder.
Test Drive So how does it handle? Perfectly, from what I have been able to determine. I had no problems installing the software or using it. I'm not crazy about the help features - Rather than using Help Viewer, the help files are HTML pages, which require a launch of your web browser. Adobe obviously saved some time/work by providing help files geared to both the Windows and Mac platform. However, most of the differences are only in key combinations. (Where Windows uses the Control key, the Mac uses the Command key. The Mac's Option key works everywhere that Window's Alt key is used.) At work, I've had trouble sending Illustrator 8.0 files that include text on a bezier path to my HP Laserjet 1100. The print job often crashes, which I attribute more to HP's printer driver than to AI 8.0. But AI 9.0 was able to accurately render pathed text to my HP inkjet in my home office without incident.
Signing The Papers Overall, I'd have to give the package 4.5 Smileys - the 1/2 smiley loss is only because I believe many of these features are overdue. However, I am adding back that 1/2 smiley based on the ability to create animated Flash presentations. For those that are used to Illustrator, it is more intuitive to create Flash files in AI 9.0 than to purchase Macromedia Flash and go through its steep learning curve. That, coupled with tight integration with Photoshop, GoLive, and InDesign make Illustrator 9 an easy choice. Adobe has been one of the few software houses to show continued support for the Mac, even during the dark times of the mid-90's. I have every confidence, now that the Mac is coming back, that Adobe will go on being a strong player in the print and web publishing arena and will continue to support the Mac. I recommend Illustrator 9.0 highly to anyone who needs a topnotch drawing program. However, if you already own 8.0 and don't need web features or effects like drop shadows and transparency, there isn't a lot new here.
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For
those unfamiliar with Illustrator, it's a vector graphics program
that has been around almost as long as the Mac itself. When the
Mac premiered, it came with MacPaint, which quickly became the standard
for Mac graphics editing and creation. Many graphics programs patterned
themselves after it even after the addition of color to the Mac
hardware.
