The 1.0 version of Internet Explorer 8 was made available for public download today. It is important for anyone in the web business to download and test that your websites do not break on IE8, whether or not you personally use it, because the majority of web users still use IE.

IE8 is only available on the Windows. Highlights of the release include a new address bar, WebSlices, and a feature called “Accelerators”. IE8 also improves its compliance with CSS and has a number of Ajax enhancements. You can download it from this link.

Adobe recently released the Linux version of the AIR runtime making it now possible to run desktop based web applications created using Flex or the Flash authoring tool on Windows, Mac, and Linux. The install base of Adobe AIR is still nominal in comparison to that of the Flash Player which basically almost found on every single computer connected to the internet. The availability of AIR on Linux will help increase the potentional market base for those developing AIR applications. The new runtime can be downloaded from Adobe’ s website here.

The mobile version of Adobe AIR is also expected to be released sometime next year.

 One day after the release of the new Flash Player, Adobe is shipping Creative Suite 4. Adobe CS4 is shipping in seven bundles, Premium and Standard editions for Design, Web, and Production, and a Master Collection bundle. Check out the prices and bundle details over at Adobe. Those wishing to try out the applications will have to wait a bit as the demo versions are not out yet.

 Though some of us have been running the beta version of it for months now, the official final release of Flash Player 10 is finally out. What I personally find most exciting about this release is the addition of a native 3D engine, but what will in fact make this player even more ubiquitous is its support for HD video – the quality of it is unbelievable, but you will need a really fast connection to enjoy it.

Make sure that you get the new player to make sure that you can view all upcoming super cool Flash websites. There is still no release date for Flash CS4, but it can’t be too far now that the Player is released.

The CS4 product I am most excited about is, of course, Flash CS4. The previous edition of Flash introduced a complete overhaul of the programming language of Flash in the form of ActionScript 3.0 and provided tight integration with Photoshop and Illustrator. The new Flash CS4 does not provide revolutionary additions to ActionScript (luckily) and instead focuses on animation and 3D. 

The first major new feature of CS4 is introducion of Inverse Kinematics and Bones. This tool lets you easily create animations which are similar to real life movements by drawing chains along the body parts of an object so that they are joint together to move and react to motion in a natural manner. This is going to make the life of animators so much easier as you will no longer need to animate separate body parts indepedently to mimic real life physics.

Another new feature of CS4 is the “Object-Based Animation” which is a new tween format that attaches the animation movement to the object itself instead of the timeline and the keyframe. This feature lets you see the animation path visually on the canvas so that you can alter it and move it around without dealing with the timeline. Though looks like a potentially helpful feature, I guess it will take a lot of time to get used to.

Flash CS4 will also now have a new simple 3D transform and rotation tool which lets you move and animate objects through 3D space by providing a native support for the x, y, and z axis directly on the stage.

Other new animation features include: an Advanced Motion Editor, similar to that present in After Effects and lets you manage individual keyframe properties such as rotation and transparency, Motion Presets, which will let you apply ready made animations to various objects to save time, as well enhanced Deco and Spray Brush that let you spray smart custom-made animated objects.

Though mostly an ‘animation’ release, Flash CS4 also includes other non-animation related new features such as new tools for authoring AIR content (Flash CS3 came out before Adobe AIR was released) for creating desktop applications using Flash, support for the H.264 video format, direct support for InDesign and After Effect content, and support for Adobe’s new Metadata technology XMP. 

The new Flash CS4 page does not talk about about the new ActionScript 3.0 features, but we have previously learnt that Flash CS4 will include new AS3 APIs in response to community requests.

The actual release date of Flash CS4 has not been announced, but it is expected to be released next month. Flash CS4 Professional costs $699 and can be bought as part of a CS4 bundle for a better price deal.

You can learn more about Flash CS4 and watch some videos of the new features on Adobe’s Flash page.

 Looks like we will not have to wait for the 23rd of September (or the 24th of September if you are on this side of the world) to see Adobe’s CS4 Event because all the information on the new Crative Suite is now available on Adobe’s website! CS4 has new version of Photoshop, Flash, Dreamweaver, Illustrator, Fireworks, After Effects, InDesign, and other members of the Creative Suite. New features of the suite include 3D painting in Photoshop and Bones and Inverse Kinematics in Flash. The demos of the applications are still not available nor are the actual release dates but they are expected to ship next month. The Suite is available in the same Design, Web, and Production bundles (Premium and Standard) that were introduced in the last release. Check out all the details on Adobe’s website.

Atmosphir is a new gaming development platform that was announced at the recent TechCrunch50 conference. The interesting thing about it is that it lets you create rich 3D platform games (which are very similar to Mario 64) by simply dragging and dropping Lego-like blocks on a virtual canvas. The video above shows gameplay and development tools and they both seem quite fun. Games created on Atmosphere can be shared on the platform’s website to let others play and/or edit them if they wish. 

Atmosphir games are created and played using a desktop client for PC and Mac which is currently only available in a private beta (you can sign up for an invitation here). The client will be available for free once the project is fully launched towards the end of 2008.

For more info on Atmosphir you can visit their official website or view the transcript of the Q&A session of Atmosphir during TechCrunch50.

Autodesk announced its new version of Mudbox, a digital sculpting and texture painting tool. The new release is bundled with new features and a new redesigned artist-friendly user interface. One of the major enhancements in Mudbox 2009 is Texture paining, which enables the user to paint directly on the 3D model. To read more about the new features of Mudbox 2009, and download a 3D day fully functional trial visit the official website by clicking here.

Mozilla successfuly released yesterday the latest major edition of Firefox, though faced by an animation major blooper in its attempt to make a Guinness record for biggest number of downloads on the first day as its entire went down as a result of the massive number of people attempting to download the new version. Mozilla has recovered now and you can download the shiny new Firefox 3.0 with enhanced support of DOM, CSS, SVG and the newly added the capability to display animated PNGs (if you know how to make them!).

Serious web developers should also check out Firefox add-on Firebug and the Web Developer Toolbar to help them debug and test their websites in Firefox.

Download the new Firefox 3.0 via this link.

Adobe recently released a new version of its leading software, Acrobat 9. The whole new Acrobat 9 deliveries modern features that enables the pdf files to be more rich and flexiable. Its worth mentioning that in the ninth installment of Acrobat, you are able to create polished PDF files, present multiple documents in a PDF Portfolio, and even add multimedia such as flash animations. And all in a single file. You can read more about the Acrobat Family’s new features here.