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Macromedia Updates Suite of Products

By Ed Oswald, BetaNews

August 8, 2005, 4:06 PM

Macromedia on Monday announced an updated version of its suite of multimedia creation tools -- dubbed Studio 8 -- heralding the first overhaul of its product line in two years. The suite includes its Dreamweaver, Flash, Fireworks, as well as the Contribute and FlashPaper products.

Also announced was a public pre-release of the Flash 8 Player, which Macromedia calls a major update to the technology.

"Studio 8 is a huge leap forward," Stephen Elop, CEO of Macromedia said in a statement. "There are tremendous improvements to features and performance allowing designers and developers to build and deliver more expressive and compelling experiences for the web and devices in less time than ever before."

Enhancements to Dreamweaver include expanded CSS support, as well as drag-and-drop XML integration, enhancements to the workflow process, and built in support to add new features such as Flash Video into Web sites.

Flash Video is one Macromedia's key highlights of the new version of Flash. In addition to new video and animation features, Flash 8 will include new graphic effects and better scripting support, as well as integration with popular video editing and encoding tools.

Along with offering new ways to create desktop Flash content, Flash 8 will also allow for content aimed at mobile devices. The Flash Lite player comes preinstalled on more than 70 devices - currently mostly in Asian countries. Flash 8 will allow the user to test mobile content through emulation features provided in the software.

"We are excited about the possibilities afforded by the Flash Professional 8 authoring tool to develop exceptional mobile applications," said Brad Brockhaug, senior director at Forum Nokia. "The new mobile testing features will save Flash developers and designers valuable time as they continue to bring to market innovative content and applications for mobile devices."

Macromedia's Fireworks product adds support for CSS-based pop-up menus, as well as broader import support and integration with the rest of the Studio 8 suite.

Also included in Studio 8 is Contribute, a content management tool, and FlashPaper 2, which converts any file type to either PDF or SWF file formats.

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By spiffyjeff

posted Aug 9, 2005 - 2:52 PM

I'm still waiting for a shockwave viewer for Firefox on Linux

Score: 0

By Thunderbuck

edited Aug 9, 2005 - 2:44 PM

Oops... double post

Score: 0

By Thunderbuck

posted Aug 9, 2005 - 2:43 PM

Interesting timing on this release, considering that MM will soon be swallowed up by Adobe.

I've reviewed the new features, and some of them are indeed compelling (especially in making Fireworks more workable). Their upgrade price is pretty nice, too, but I wonder just whether it's not worth waiting until they come out with a studio that integrates Photoshop and Acrobat...

Score: 0

By ArabianNight

posted Aug 9, 2005 - 11:54 AM

Nice, can't wait.

Score: 0

By Sphyr

posted Aug 9, 2005 - 9:29 AM

I'd be happy if they fixed the FTP code in Dreamweaver that they deny is broken.

Score: 0

By Pixel_Fan

edited Aug 9, 2005 - 8:12 PM

I agree I also believe the FTP code is brizzoken. I know how to use FTP, Im not an idiot. But for some reason Dreamweaver cannot connect to anything. It's retarded.

As for Studio 8, I am soooo excited bc im a hue Studio MX user and new features means better content.

Score: 0

By GoodThings2Life

posted Aug 9, 2005 - 8:29 AM

For those of you commenting about 64bit support... I can't help but sit here wondering...

Exactly how much performance speed does one really need with a code-based text editor and a WYSIWYG representation of that code?

If you're working with plain HTML, there's not exactly a lot of processing power required to generate that graphical representation of your code. For ASP, PHP, and various other formats, it doesn't display any of the active parts of your site anyway until you preview it in a browser.

Even Contribute which is purely graphical wouldn't benefit from 64bit "performance". Additional RAM, on the other hand, I'll grant you that, but that's true of any app.

Flash is the only product of the bunch that might benefit, at least somewhat, from 64bit environment, but at what cost? For all any of you know, they could have realized there were compatibility issues involved with such a decision. But then, maybe they just said no to 64bit because only 5 out of 5000 customers expressed interest in it making it a purely business decision.

Advice to those of you with an issue: Deal with it. Accept the benefits of the new software (Dreamweaver 8's new features look pretty sweet if you've looked at their video tour), or find an alternative product.

And always remember... there's always Studio 9. :)

Score: 0

By mlevit

posted Aug 9, 2005 - 6:58 AM

If this program was designed for a 64-bit processor then there will be the advantages of speed.

But since hardly anyone have WinXP 64 and hardly anyone has a 64 bit CPU chip, they just dont believe they should be releasing them just yet.

Score: 0

By Scary Guy

posted Aug 9, 2005 - 3:02 AM

Proprietary non w3c compliant crap.

Score: 0

By GoodThings2Life

posted Aug 9, 2005 - 8:13 AM

I beg your pardon?

I've been using Dreamweaver since 3.0, and I have yet to see it produce code that is as messy as FrontPage used to be (2003 is, admittedly, better).

And even if you don't like how it does certain tags, you can always modify its actions in Preferences. (For example, I always go in and mess with tags because they infuriate me. I prefer instead.)

Score: 0

By azimov

posted Aug 9, 2005 - 1:58 AM

No real need for winXP 64 specific support. No real advantage.

Score: 0

By darre78

posted Aug 8, 2005 - 10:07 PM

why would you need 64-bit support? That'd be one heck of a webpage to take over 4 gigs of ram. i'm sure it'll run on win64..

Score: 0

By etrigan63

posted Aug 8, 2005 - 9:22 PM

Yes, but still no support for 64-bit Windows.

Score: 0

By 4fingers

edited Sep 13, 2005 - 8:14 PM

Although will Dreamweaver 8 be able to run on my version of Win 64 as before with MX it said it didnt even support the operating system so I had to go get MX 2004 which did.

So will I be able to install version 8 with no worries although I understand if it doesnt re-write the code for a 64bit edition.

Oh any news if they can bring out a 64bit version of the flash player as its does get annoying switching between versions of Firefox.

Score: 0

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