Illustrator 11 Rumors

"A number of potential features have been postponed" including a "Tool Option bar." This being the same as the tool option bar in Photoshop 7, I wonder?

I vote they spend the extra time and get it in there. I freakin' love my tool bar in PS7, and Illustrator would do well with one, it suffers from palette-itis. My LCD is locked into 1024x768 and Ill8 is quite the screen hog.

That Dimensions may be included in the next release is very welcome news for me. I still use it a lot and it is the only reason I still have Mac OS 9 still installed on my drive.

That, and multiple pages! There is simply no reason not to have multiple pages. This is why I find myself using Freehand more of the time--so I can create storyboards, wireframes, etc. I would probably have used Illustrator more for multi-page PDF docs if it could do multiple pages.
I've heard they're afraid that it will cannibalize InDesign, but I don't think this is true. InD has enough strength on its own.

Agreed, I *love* having multipage layouts in Freehand, it makes things so much more flexible, I have a hard time going back to AI when I need to.

I also meant to write that they should - damn't - get a History palette in there. For Photoshop to feature one as long as it has w/ out Illustrator picking it up is pretty lame. IMO.

Todd, how advantageous would a history palette be in Illustrator, though? I was thinking about this earlier too.

I understand from a consistency standpoint how it might make sense, but there are a lot of little adjustments and things you need to do in Illustrator that you wouldn't in Photoshop. Let's say I'm editing a complex path: for every selection, every time I adjust a handle, every moving of a point, I get a new history item? It would get pretty unwieldy in a hurry. I think Adobe would have to completely rework the way it handles... hence, no history palette in 11. Just my theory.

I've also heard the worries about Illustrator encroaching on InDesign's terrain, but I think that's hogwash -- there may be overlap, but there's overlap between Photoshop and Illustrator, too. Watch me lay out a book in Illustrator. Riiight.

The two complement each other wonderfully, but in the same way the "illustrators" don't write books, they exist best hand-in-hand, not trying to mimic each other.

And how about Streamline? Multipage support is a top priority for me, but what about poor Streamline. It is a great app that will never be updated - but they need to integrate it so I never have to start classic!

I'm glad Adobe is admitting what most industry pros already knew. Adobe Illustrator 8 is the superior product. Not only are 9 and 10 ungodly slow, but they are also full of bugs. My current production workflow employs OS X as the default OS, but Illustrator 8 keeps us launching classic daily. (Along with Outlook) Further, I hope with the forthcoming Illustrator 11 release they restore the shift-tool shortcut feature absent since 8. I aslo concur to the fact that Illustrator is becoming far too bloated.

I just can't wait to lay my hands on AI 11, the tenth version has a lot of cool features, but extrusion, multipage system and speed are needed, although I've read the multipage thing won't appear yet...
An options bar would be cool too.

I've compiled a whole list of things about 9/10 that bother me... am I alone or does everyone else have these same issues? Most of you people seem to be Mac users. Unfortunately, I'm stuck on the Windows platform. I don't have any choice in the matter.

When opening Illustrator, window maximization is not persistent. All other programs I have (including other Adobe programs) *do* stay maximized, as they should. Also, when opening a file by clicking on it in Explorer (rather than through the "open" dialog in Illustrator), Illustrator again becomes un-maximized.

You cannot move an object from a parent layer to a sublayer. This is extremely annoying, especially when copying and pasting an object does not put it on the same layer as the original (as it should), but on the parent layer. It should be noted that this is only a problem when using shortcut keys (i.e., ctrl-C, ctrl-V); it does not happen when alt-dragging the object to copy. Also, you cannot move objects to hidden layers. This would be extremely useful if it worked.

All sublayers are expanded in the layers palate when opening a file. They should stay however they were when the file was closed. Or if they were all collapsed, that would still be better than all expanded.

You can no longer cycle through the hidden tools (i.e., pencil, smooth, erase) by pressing shift with the shortcut key. This worked in 8.0, but has been missing ever since. To make matters worse, when you switch to a different tool and then come back to the previous (hidden) tool using shortcut keys, it switches to the primary tool (i.e., pencil rather than smooth). The hidden tool should be persistent, as it was in 8.0.

The measure tool has been moved from the hand/page tools and grouped with the eyedropper/paint bucket tools. This is stupid. It makes a lot more sense where it was, and everyone was used to it being there.

The file size sometimes increases dramatically every time the file is saved, even though there were no significant changes. This is a very serious and mysterious problem.

Empty text elements should just disappear like they do in PageMaker, rather than persisting as stray points.

Speaking of PageMaker, why can't you even cut and paste plain old text between it and Illustrator? This is totally unacceptable, especially considering Adobe's claim of interoperability between its programs. However, you can do the opposite PM->AI (sans any formatting or positioning).

I know some nice features have been added to Illustrator since 8.0, but more often than not, it's the things that are removed or are not as functional as they ought to be that are the most noticeable and annoying. Version 9.0 was a major change from 8.0 (much more so than 7.0 to 8.0), and unfortunately it introduced some major regressions as well. 10.0 cleared up some of them, but it's still not up to par with 8.0. If it wasn't for nested layers, I'd still use 8.0.

I have fond memories of 8 as the best pure vector version, it was a clean machine, but I'm not against the added functionality we're getting now. I do hope 11 runs faster as promised. I didn't bother with 10 so I'm really looking forward to some new toys. Has anyone heard a release date? It was originally supposed to be mid June.

I want 11. When is it coming out? Does anyone know? I need it. I want it, I've got to got to have it.

I feel multipage support for Illustrator would be very important to my application of AI, for multipage PDF documents generated from Illustrator.

??? Illustrator already had multipage support since 9.

??? Illustrator already had multipage support since 9. you just have to print to distiller. Not perfect, but not absent either.