I am glad to announce that we have decided to extend the expiration date of the CS Extension Builder fully functional trial by 1 month to December 1st, 2011. If you have not downloaded the trial already, I urge you to do it now!
Check the trial FAQ.
gabriel tavridis
product manager
@gtavridis
I am happy to mention that our partners at Silicon Publishing used CS Extension Builder 1.5 to create an extension that runs within Adobe InDesign, Illustrator and Photoshop (CS5 & CS5.5) and enables Creative Suite users to access the 14 million images available in Fotolia without leaving their applications. Using the Fotolia extension, users can search, preview, download and purchase images from within the Creative Suite.
One of the cool features is the ability to drag-drop any image on your Creative Suite project. Once you decide to purchase the image , it gets replaced with the high-resolution version. And by the way, purchasing can take place from within the extension. That simple… Check this blogpost by Silicon Publishing for more information and a demo you definitely don’t want to miss 
.
This is one of the many examples showcasing what can be built using CS Extension Builder and the CS SDK. Feel free to send us examples of extensions you are working on and let us know how we can improve our tools.
gabriel tavridis
product manager
@gtavridis, @csextbuilder
At last week’s Adobe MAX, I got talking to an extremely talented InDesign developer with a complaint; in ExtendScript InDesign exposes array collections of objects in response to certain calls, but the CS SDK doesn’t allow for navigating these.
It’s an interesting point, and one with a little back story. What InDesign actually does is always return an object (e.g., a TextFrame); that object’s properties may then be for a single item, or a number of them (in which case every property you access on that object is actually an array). To the scripting DOM, though, both register as the same type (a TextFrame), and there is no way to know ahead of time what InDesign will return for these.
This is great for a language with weak typing, like ExtendScript, but poses challenges for how to represent that in a strongly typed environment, like ActionScript.
Fortunately, there’s a workaround that allows you to make use of these without having to call out to ExtendScript code; the host object delegate.
This is the core representation of the scripting element that the application returns, and so we can call any API on it that we choose. We lose the type-ahead in ExtensionBuilder, of course, and there’s the potential for runtime errors inherent in any untyped code, but it gives you a mechanism to use InDesign’s more advanced scripting DOM behaviour.
As an example, if you create a document with two text frames, assign the script label ‘test’ to both, and then use the code:
var myText:TextFrame = app.activeDocument.textFrames.item("test");
trace(myText.id);
This will generate a runtime error, because the call to ‘id’ will actually return an Array of Numbers, rather than the expected single Number.
To use the host obect instead, you’d simply change the code to:
var myText:HostObject = app.activeDocument.textFrames.item("test").hostObjectDelegate;
trace(myText.id);
You’ll now get both ids printed. Many properties and functions will work without this, but for times when that fails the HostObject provides an invaluable means of working around that.
Happy Coding!
James
Note: you may also want to set the script preferences version to work around an unrelated issue in InDesign with these functions not working in the 7.0 and 7.5 scripting versions. You can do that by inserting ‘app.scriptPreferences.version = “6.0″;’ ahead of the call (and a revert to 7.0/7.5 afterwards).
For those of you attending Adobe Max 2011, the CS Extension Builder team will be doing a session there. We will present the new features of CS Extension Builder 1.5 and examples of what you can develop with it.
We will also provide a sneak peek of a new “thing” we are investigating on to help you developers monetize your extensions and plugins. I think you will find what you will see very exciting! Click the link below to get more details for the session and sign up.
How to develop and monetize your Creative Suite extensions
Wednesday October 5th, 9.30-10.30 , Room 511C
Session Details
The team will be there for the entire Max conference, since we also hold a Creative Developer Tour on October 2nd (register for if you have not already). We look forward to see you there, meet you in person, share our future plans and answer your questions.
gabriel tavridis
Product Manager
@gtavridis
All,
The Adobe Solutions Enablement Team will be hosting a tour for developers and customers tis Fall. Things kick off in under 2 weeks in Singapore. There are also events in in New York and Munich (but with very limited space remaining). They are all two day events. We have a one day event with much greater seating capacity in Los Angeles the day before MAX (October 2nd, 2011). Here you will find out about:
• CS ‘Next’ – The next version of Creative Suite, the key features and extensibility
• Creating Extensions for CS using your Flex skills and CS Extension Builder (attendees will get a free copy of CS Extension Builder)
• Opportunities in the Enterprise and much, much more.
All the sessions are presented by the Adobe Engineers responsible for products like CS Extension Builder and the CS SDK, so it’s a great opportunity to network, learn and be ready for the next major product updates. If you or a colleague or even one of your customers would like to attend please have them register here. (seating is limited)
We hope to see you there.
Adobe Solutions Enablement Team
All,
A fully functional trial version of Adobe Creative Suite Extension Builder 1.5 is now available on Adobe.com. This is the first of our efforts to make CS Extension Builder widely accessible for the entire developer community. The trial will expire on November 1,2011. If at any point during the trial, you would like to get full access to the software and developer support cases, you can purchase a membership to the Adobe Enterprise Developer Program (AEDP).
Click here to download the trial
Useful resources
CS Extension Builder Trial FAQ
What’s new in CS Extension Builder 1.5
Create your first extension in under 5 minutes (vid)
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gabriel tavridis
Product Manager
@gtavridis
All,
I am happy to announce that we will be making a trial version of CS Extension Builder available soon. The trial version will be fully functional and I hope that will give more developers the opportunity to see how easy it is to develop CS extensions with CS Extension Builder.
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gabriel tavridis
Product Manager
@gtavridis
We finally got to present to the Flex User Group in London last Tuesday July 19th, 2011. The initial presentation had been postponed due to flight cancellations in England last May.
Three members of the Developer Technologies Group in Adobe Scotland presented the new features of CS Extension Builder 1.5, the business around developing extensions and the benefits to developers. Quite a few people attended and the comments were very positive. To list my favorite:
“Adobe is going to turn developing on it head and shake it until all the cobwebs drop out, such a refreshing demo to that didn’t focus on platform specific development, a true tool for all to benefit, thanks has to go out to Adobe, Academy class and the FLUG organisers for great evening of discovery.” by Mark Sturkey
For more information about the event and further comments, go here. Stay tuned, as there will be some announcements and more events soon.
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gabriel tavridis
product manager
@gtavridis
All,
The CS Extension Builder product team will be in London on Tuesday May 24th, 2011 (@ 7pm) to present at the local Flex User Group. We will demo CS Extension Builder, show examples of what developers have built with the tool, talk about CS extensibility and show some cool future things we are working on. If you are interested to find out how to create panels for the CS applications, influence the next versions of the product or meet with members of the team, do join us! (no registration is required)
To get more info about the event (venue etc) check the Flex User Group’s meetup website.
gabriel tavridis
Product Manager, Developer Technologies
twitter: @gtavridis
I am very pleased to announce that the latest versions (1.5) of Creative Suite Extension Builder and the Creative Suite SDK are now available through the downloads section on the CS Extension Builder website.
The team has applied significant effort to deliver a release only 12 months after the 1.0 release and we believe that it will be as successful as the first one. Some of the highlights of the 1.5 release are:
To find out more about the 1.5 release, take a look at the articles that the team has published on the CS Extension Builder page. Over the next few weeks we will be pushing more content (tutorials, articles, videos) to this page and we intend to make it the main resource center for Creative Suite developers. As always your feedback is important.
We hope you enjoy it!
The Adobe Developer Technologies Team
