Adobe sponsored a whitepaper from IDC called “Turning Up the Heat with ColdFusion,” and it’s mostly what you would expect from a company-sponsored analysis of its own software. There’s heaps of praise thrown upon ColdFusion for its ease of use while offering all the tools professionals need to build and scale enterprise grade Web sites.

That’s all fine and dandy, but the whitepaper gets really interesting once it gets into future developments. It provides some early details on where Adobe is heading with future versions of ColdFusion. For ColdFusion Server, Adobe has two new releases on the horizon that will add a number of features and enhancements:

Adobe has discussed the broad outline of the next two releases of ColdFusion server — Splendor and Dazzle. In between releases, the team has continued to work on other aspects. For example, support for the popular Amazon cloud in the form of a Splendor AMI was released in early 2013, providing users with a quick and simplified approach to deploying ColdFusion applications in the Amazon cloud. The key thematic areas of improvements for Splendor include bringing ColdFusion into the era of mobile
application development and support for social applications. Special emphasis is planned for additional security features, building on the significant security work done for release 10 and taking its priorities from the OWASP Top Ten Project. Improved manageability and deployment as well as revamped and new PDF integration functionality are also planned.

For the Dazzle release, expansion of the mobile platform support capabilities and support for multiscreen content are planned. Dazzle is also expected to carry the water for Adobe’s aggressive push into the digital marketing space by introducing deeper Web, mobile, and social analytics functionality. A customizable enterprise video portal is also planned, and capabilities that will enable ColdFusion to run in cloud environments in major cloud platforms are expected in the Dazzle release. Finally, the improvements are expected to be accompanied by a strong focus on security, extending the work done with Splendor and prioritizing mobile security according to the OWASP Mobile Security Project.

As for ColdFusion Builder, Adobe plans to also release two new versions to coincide with the Server releases:

Adobe has also identified key work areas for two future releases of ColdFusion Builder. The Thunder release is expected to play a key role in the end-to-end development workflow for mobile application development as well as provide a professional JavaScript authoring experience. Focus on new developers will be delivered with new workflows around a “getting started” scenario. The following release, code-named Blizzard, is expected to coincide with the Dazzle server release and to feature one-click multiscreen support, deployment support in line with Dev/Ops integration trends, and improved test and debug workflows.

The rest of the whitepaper catalogs the various challenges facing ColdFusion, and how Adobe can turn those challenges into opportunities. It also contains a variety of case studies from various software development houses. You can read up on all of that here.

Adobe announced at its annual MAX conference that it will no longer be releasing new versions of its software under the Creative Suite banner. Instead, all future updates and features will be delivered via Creative Cloud. In other words, those who buy Creative Suite 6 will only get just that while all new features to Photoshop and the like will only be available via Creative Cloud.

The move to Creative Cloud, which is a subscription service, has upset some members of the Adobe user community. The complaints were excellently captured in a new video released by our favorite Taiwanese animators at NMA:

Adobe says that it’s moving to a subscription-only model because it will allow them to deliver updates to users at a faster rate:

“We launched Creative Cloud a year ago and it has been a runaway success,” said David Wadhwani, senior vice president and general manager, Digital Media, Adobe. “By focusing our energy — and our talented engineers — on Creative Cloud, we’re able to put innovation in our members’ hands at a much faster pace.”

To convince current CS6 users to move to Creative Cloud, Adobe is offering discounts on the subscription service for a limited time. You can check out all the different Creative Cloud plans here.

Adobe announced that Lightroom 5, the successor to its popular Lightroom 4 photo editing software, will be available through a free public beta starting today. Fans of Lightroom will be able to test all the new features in the latest version of Lightroom before it becomes commercially available later this year.

“Lightroom is the essential tool for busy professional and discerning amateur photographers, who are uncompromising in the pursuit for image quality or searching for artistic expression,” said Winston Hendrickson, vice president of digital imaging products, Adobe. “The Lightroom 5 beta is highly valuable in ensuring the new features support and address the needs of our customers and we look forward to hearing feedback.”

Lightroom 5 has a number of new features and enhancements that promise to make the photo editing process easier than ever:

The Lightroom 5 beta will be available on machines running Windows 7 SP1/8 and Mac OSX 10.7/10.8. You can grab the free beta here.

First, Flash Player is now up to version 11.7. The latest version introduces better security “through sandboxing enhancements.” The Flash Player team has also fixed “high priority bugs, and issues that were reported by our community and partners.”

In other Flash news, Adobe recently previewed the next version of Flash Professional codenamed “hellcat.” The main takeaway is that the next version of Flash Professional will be built for x64 architectures, and it will be “10 times faster” than Flash Professional CS6.

AIR received a pretty sizable update as it made the move to version 3.7. The mobile development suite introduces the following features:

…we are introducing exciting features such as captive runtime debugging capabilities for android apps; which let developers create and debug their Android apps quickly and easily. We are also excited to introduce the capability to force CPU Render-mode on some iOS devices. Using this feature, a developer can turn on CPU rendering for specific iOS devices, and utilize GPU rendering for others.

You can grab Flash Player 11.7 here, and AIR 3.7 here.

Adobe told multiple outlets today that it will be discontinuing its retail offerings of Creative Suite 6 and Acrobat. An Adobe spokesperson provided the the following comment to TechHive:

“As Adobe continues to focus on delivering world-class innovation through Creative Cloud and digital fulfillment, we will be phasing out shrink-wrapped, boxed versions of Creative Suite and Acrobat products. Electronic downloads for Creative Suite and Acrobat products will continue to be available—as they are today—from both Adobe.com, as well as reseller and retail partners. We are in the process of notifying our channel partners and customers, as plans solidify in each region.”

Since last year, Adobe has put considerable marketing muscle behind its Creative Cloud subscription service. For $49.99 a month, subscribers get access to all the software included in CS6 alongside development tools for games and Web pages.

Phasing out its retail presence makes perfect sense as Adobe pushes for more subscribers. After all, a few hundred thousand subscribers paying $50 a month for years to come will make them far more money than single time purchases of CS6.

So, what if you really want to own a boxed retail copy of CS6? TechHive says that stores will carry boxed copies of CS6 until April 30. After that, you’ll either have to buy digital copies or sign up for a Creative Cloud subscription.

Adobe announced that Photoshop Touch is now available on the iPhone (4S and 5 only) and Android (4.0 and up only) smartphones. The app costs $4.99, and features a new UI that’s built specifically for smartphones. That being said, it features almost all of the same features and toolsets from the tablet app:

Much like the tablet version, Photoshop Touch on the phone has core Photoshop features like layers, advanced selections tools, adjustments and filters. We also packed in features exclusive to Photoshop Touch, like Scribble Selection for high-precision selections using only your finger, and Camera Fill for real-time creative blending of your camera feed with layers. This app features the same creative filters as the tablet version, like Color Drops and Acrylic Paint, and also a new Ripple filter.

Photoshop Touch also takes advantage of Adobe’s Creative Cloud to allow creators to share projects across different devices:

With Photoshop Touch and the Adobe Creative Cloud, I can start a project on my phone, continue it on my tablet, and polish it off at my desk in Photoshop CS6. Photoshop Touch will automatically keep my projects in sync on each device, at the full resolution and with all the layers intact. This capability is available to every customer with a free Creative Cloud account. There is no paid subscription requirement for syncing.

You can grab Photoshop Touch right now on the Apple App Store and Google Play. It may just be what you need to touch up that Instagram photo with some extra filters before you upload it.

Computer security company FireEye found yesterday that Adobe Reader was hit by a zero-day exploit. The exploit is currently found in the latest Adobe Reader versions – 9.5.3, 10.1.5 and 11.0.1. Here’s what the exploit does:

Upon successful exploitation, it will drop two DLLs. The first DLL shows a fake error message and opens a decoy PDF document, which is usually common in targeted attacks. The second DLL in turn drops the callback component, which talks to a remote domain.

FireEye has alerted Adobe to the threat, and the company is now investigating the report. It will have an update on what actions it plans to take soon.

Instead of waiting for Adobe to act, you should probably switch to a different PDF reader. There are numerous free, open-source PDF readers that do a marvelous job without relying on a Web browser plugin that can be exploited to insert malware onto your system.

The Firefox 19 Beta is also testing out a new native HTML5 PDF reader plugin that would be far more secure than traditional plugins. It’s only a matter of time before the HTML5-friendly Chrome follows suit with its own.

[h/t: The Next Web]

Computer World reports that Adobe has issued a patch ahead of schedule that fixes the two zero-day exploits that hackers were using to hijack Windows PCs and Macs. Here’s the report from Adobe:

Adobe is aware of reports that CVE-2013-0633 is being exploited in the wild in targeted attacks designed to trick the user into opening a Microsoft Word document delivered as an email attachment which contains malicious Flash (SWF) content. The exploit for CVE-2013-0633 targets the ActiveX version of Flash Player on Windows.

Adobe is also aware of reports that CVE-2013-0634 is being exploited in the wild in attacks delivered via malicious Flash (SWF) content hosted on websites that target Flash Player in Firefox or Safari on the Macintosh platform, as well as attacks designed to trick Windows users into opening a Microsoft Word document delivered as an email attachment which contains malicious Flash (SWF) content.

If you don’t want to be hit by something that nasty, you might want to update to the latest version of Flash now. Most Flash users probably have automatic updating turned on, however, and won’t need to worry as the update will take care of itself. For those who do not, you’ll want to download the latest version from Adobe’s Web site.

There might be other zero-day vulnerabilities floating around in Flash for hackers to find and exploit users with. Always stay on guard and only use Flash on trusted Web sites. You can do this by installing a plugin that disables any Flash content from automatically playing unless you authorize it. This technology is built into Firefox. Chrome users can grab the popular FlashControl extension here. If you’re using Internet Explorer, especially IE8, you should probably just stop.

Once again, you won’t be seeing this ad on Super Bowl Sunday. But you can watch it now:

A new infographic from Adobe shows just how much money a developer stands to make from creating games for mobile platforms. How much money? Let’s just say that the mobile gaming industry now makes about as twice as much as the music industry. That’s $56 billion being pumped into a single industry annually. Beyond the money, those looking for audience have one as 98 million Americans play social or casual games.

Making games is hard though, right? Actually, making games, especially for mobile platforms, is easier than ever. Can you program in Flash? Have an artist for a friend? You have all you need to make the next great mobile title. Adobe AIR allows you to seamlessly port your Flash developed titles to mobile platforms while taking advantage of native hardware acceleration.

Of course, anybody going into game development must have tempered expectations. It’s unlikely that you’re going to have the next Angry Birds or Temple Run on your hands right from the get go. Game development is grueling and sometimes painful, but incredibly rewarding for those who stick with it. Making bank is only a nice bonus on top of creating something that has the power to connect people on a deeper level than anything else available.

In short – If you’re making a game to make money, you’re gonna have a bad time.