Macromedia to charge $399 for minor upgrades to Studio MX 2004

[Bush_Eats_Beef]

First Look: Macromedia's Revamped Web Suite

Studio 8 features a new lineup, but few changes to its individual apps.

Dennis O'Reilly, PC World
Monday, August 08, 2005

http://www.pcworld.com/news/article/0,aid,122146,00.asp

Macromedia has overhauled its Studio 8 Web suite, but many of the changes are not to its individual apps. Overall, the $999 suite features tighter integration and improved links to databases and other Web resources; but if you work primarily in only one of the suite's big-name apps (Dreamweaver, Flash, or Fireworks), you may find few reasons to pay $399 to upgrade from Studio MX 2004.

Macromedia makes the biggest changes to Flash Professional 8. The vector-graphics program adds a new video encoder plug-in that provides more ways to control how video plays. The encoder lets you export finished videos directly from Adobe Premiere Pro, Apple Final Cut Pro, and other video-editing apps. The free Flash Player 8 also gets a video upgrade via On2 Technologies' new VP6 video codec, which promises improved playback and faster downloads of Flash files. The new FlashType text engine makes small fonts easier to read, and the drop shadow and other added filters give simple animations more pizzazz.

Fireworks 8, the suite's Web image editor, adds 25 new blend modes, CSS support, and batch processing of files, but more important for Web teams is the program's tighter hooks to Dreamweaver and Flash. For example, Fireworks now imports Flash vector objects with their colors, blends, and other attributes intact. Also, Fireworks more closely resembles its two stablemates via the new image-editing and AutoShape panels.

Dreamweaver 8 features a new unified CSS panel and CSS layout visualization that make it much easier to design and use Cascading Style Sheets, but this Web-design program doesn't offer anything like Adobe GoLive CS2's CSS page templates, which let you drag and drop prefabricated CSS layouts. You can drag and drop XML feeds onto pages in Dreamweaver, and make changes to the XML in the program's code view (a new XML and XSLT reference guide is included). As you might expect, moving files from Flash to Dreamweaver's layout view is another drag-and-drop affair.

[emulatorloo]

1. Self-delete -- not wanting to interfere w other's MX desire!

w negative semi-OT rant about Macromedia Upgrade Policies.

[ghostsofgiants]

2. Any idea when it comes out?

Too lazy to read the article to see if it says.

[Bush_Eats_Beef]

3. The dates haven't been released, and reviews are based on beta software

The Creative Pro Web Site has a much more in-depth review, if you're interested, and screen shots:

http://www.creativepro.com/story/feature/23247.html

[ghostsofgiants]

4. Cool, thanks