Next Photoshop widget-happy?

By Elsa Wenzel – May 20, 2008 9:11 AM PDT

Users of the next Adobe Creative Suite may be able to mix and mash up the applications with online content and third-party tools.

In a bid to make workspaces more nimble, Adobe Systems is considering making parts of Photoshop and other Creative Suite applications available for users to manipulate within Flash widgets, according to a blog post Monday by John Nack, product manager of Photoshop.

The capability to bring tools from the Creative Suite to the desktop or the Web with Flash or Flex could lead to novel ways of exploring Adobe's expensive, hulking software. Users have mashed up Google Maps, for instance, to display apartment listings, ecological pollution, and even UFO sightings.

"The appeal of extending one's app with lightweight, cross-platform, network-aware widgets is so obvious that we were busy building support in my first app some eight years ago--and we had to build our own Flash Player clone to do it!" Nack wrote.

Developers would ideally be able to write one bunch of code rather than six separate chunks to create widgets for panels from Photoshop, Illustrator vector illustration, and InDesign page layout software, Nack added.

Adobe made its flagship photo-editing software available online with the March release of Photoshop Express.

The company aims to tell the public more about the next iteration of its Creative Suite on May 27.

A prerelease, beta edition of Flash Player 10 became available Tuesday via Adobe Labs. New features include effects for 3D-rendering effects and text-rendering enhancements.