Site Review: Adobe.com

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by Aaron West

5 Geeks

Adobe.com

Adobe.com has undergone a major facelift. The site has been completely redesigned and divided into four specific content areas. Instead of critiquing design, functionality, load time, etc. we are going to focus more on the content areas. This is Adobe we're talking about. We expect the design to be tiptop.

As we mentioned in a previous article, when rumors of this redesign began to surface, Adobe was looking into making their site more community oriented. We suggested that the best way to accomplish this task was to produce good content, not necessarily related to their own product line.

The layout of Adobe's site is remarkable. We said we wouldn't comment much on the design, but we have to give credit where credit is due. The new site is leagues better than the old site, which was okay, but not up to Adobe's standards. Everything is graphic driven, with graphics and icons driving the navigation. The impressive thing is the site is still a reasonably fast load.

There are four new 'Content Centers' on the site, all related to Adobe products. There is the Web Center, for the online publishing community, Print for graphics and print production, Motion for multimedia, and ePaper for Acrobat/PDF related topics.

We checked out all the areas while reviewing the site. The Print, Motion and ePaper all had interesting content, but we'll focus primarily on the Web Content Center.

There is a wealth of content on the site. They spotlight a creative web design firm who only uses Adobe products (surprise). They have an article about CSS Link effects within GoLive. There is also a good article on SVG, some web Photoshop content, image maps, columns and some news. The content is top notch. Every piece might revolve around Adobe products, but it's more technique centered, rather than a sales pitch.

There are also plenty of user forums which are already getting a good bit of traffic. Adobe has accomplished what it set out to do. They have created a community. There is no doubt whatsoever that Adobe enthusiasts will find plenty to keep them occupied here. People will also feel much more comfortable buying Adobe products when they see plenty of tips and tricks just a click away.

If you use Adobe products, have a look around. Most likely you'll learn something new regardless of your experience level.