I recently upgraded from Web Premium CS3 to CS4.  The normal upgrade cost is $599, but those upgrading from Adobe Creative Suite 3.3 Design Premium, Design Standard, Web Premium, or Master Collection can upgrade for $440.   I’m not sure how long this special upgrade price will last, and I couldn’t find a way to order the upgrade online.  If you’re interested in upgrading, call Adobe Sales at 800-585-0774.

Xara Web Designer is the most amazing web development program I’ve seen for $49.00 US.  Whether you’re an experienced developer who uses the Adobe CS4 Web Design suite or a rank amateur, you’ll find uses for this program.  Web Designer is unlike any website creation tool you’ve seen before because:

• You can easily create complete websites by selecting a page design from the bundled templates, all created by professional designers.  I generated a couple of pages and they did not use table layouts, as I expected.  The CSS validated as CSS level 2.1 and the markup validated as XHTML 1.0 Transitional.
• You can create individual graphics, from headings and buttons to text boxes and speech bubbles, using templates created by professional designers, and the graphics can be customized to fit your site in seconds.
• Web Designer is one of the easiest tools for creating truly efficient Flash animations, and the animations can be exported as .swf or added to any page being created in Web Designer.
• For designers, Web Designer offers unparalleled design freedom. It’s perhaps the fastest website prototyping tool around, even for websites created from scratch. As a designer you don’t need to know anything about HTML, but you’ll have complete freedom to design websites as simple or as complex as you need, with an actual working HTML result, rather than just a ‘fake’ static mock-up.”

Use the following link to learn more about Web Designer and download a free 30-day trial:  XARA Web Designer