A lot has happened since Macromedia released their famous Macromedia Studio MX 2004. Not only with their next-generation software but with certainly the biggest change of all was the acquisition of Macromedia by Adobe. I can't begin to imagine what these two powerhouse software developers are going to create next! I guess we'll have to wait a couple a months to see what new revolutionary applications they'll come up with.
For now, we'll take a look at the latest Studio release of Macromedia: Macromedia Studio 8.

 

I work in the multimedia business and I've always been using Macromedia software for years and you'll see why. I've reviewed Studio MX 2004 earlier and was very happy with the new improvements. So let see what Studio 8 can offer to make it worth upgrading.

First of all, we'll take a general look at the new features of the software included in the Studio 8 package (Flash 8, Dreamweaver 8, Fireworks 8, Contribute 3 and FlashPaper 2) but I will get into more details with Flash 8 Professional since it's the software I use the most.

There are two versions of Flash 8, Flash 8 Basic and Flash 8 Professional. I'll talk about the Professional edition since it has more advanced features.

MX 2004 best improvements were the video and action script development tools. Well this time Flash 8 Professional made it even better and added key features that will literally take the face of web design to a whole new level. Here are my favorite features.

So what is exactly are filters? Well before it used to be tricky to add special effects to graphics and texts in Flash, but now you can automatically add built-in visual effects to your movie clips and text fields at a click of a button and customize them to your likings. You have a broad choice of blur, glow, drop shadow, bevel, gradient bevel and color adjusts.
This is a real time saver because you can update the look in real time.

This is a very interesting special effect filter. Those who use Photoshop will already know what they are and how powerful those tools can be to produce visuals. So imagine what you can do by animating them. This could really generate a whole new way to create something completely different. For those who aren't familiar with blend modes, it allows you to create composite from superimposing different layers of graphics on top of each other.

Flash 8 Professional now has a new font rendering engine that can generate clear and crisp high quality font rendering. You can now choose different rendering to make your text as visible as possible depending on the use. Either for readability or animation, it even gives you the option to customize the amount of anti-aliasing to get the best result possible.

You can now control the easing of your animations (rotation, scale, movement, filter, color) with pin point accuracy with the help a new graphic that controls the easing by using an editable line that modified to result exactly what you want.

You've probably noticed by surfing around the Web that a lot of big name companies are using video animation within their website interface. All integrated within flash elements, this new technology has been improved greatly in Flash 8 Professional. A new intuitive and very easy to use wizard to import your video source footage will guide you thru step by step on how you want to apply your video to your flash document.
You can either stream it (progressive download) embed it within the document or other more advanced options. It's even possible to skin your video to make it look the way you want it. Flash 8 also provides a more advance and efficient video codec to compress your videos called “On2 VP6”. I've tried it many times with different footage and it is without a doubt one of the best performing compressor to get a high quality image at a small file size. Truly impressive!

Another noticeable feature is you now have the possibility to support video files with an alpha channel. Which means you can utilize transparency of the videos to overlap them and create interesting compositions. They really came a long way since the first real introduction of video in flash with Flash MX.

Of course the real heart and soul of Flash is what makes it run i.e. Action Script. In Flash MX 2004, Macromedia removed the “Normal Mode” in the action script panel which meant a more hands on scripting by entering manually most parameters. It is a good way to really get familiar with the engine but it could've been intimidating to novices who are trying it for the first time. This time they added a new mode for editing action script which resembles “Normal Mode” but with a cleaner and more intuitive way called the “Script Assist”. It's now easier than ever to manipulate and understand the code.
With all of these new features (and this is just some of them), Flash 8 Professional is definitely the best leap forward in the Flash family over the years.

 

Another tool in the Studio 8 package is Dreamweaver 8. Dreamweaver has for a long time been the software by excellence to develop web sites and since I've been using it for many years I can understand why. It already has an abundant list of features to make site authoring a breeze, but let's take a look at what the 8th version has to offer to make work even easier for us designers.

CSS is by far the choice for designing sites, with the new unified CSS panel in Dreamweaver, your workflow just got faster. By having a cleaner and detailed view of your CSS layout, you can easily find and quickly edit the different elements of your style sheet. You can also view within your page how and where your CSS are applied in order to give you a more accurate design view.

There are also a few nifty tools to help you create your sites exactly as you want them to look. For example, the new zoom option that allows you to get up close and personal with your nested table when you have a very complex design layout. You can also add guides to your authoring page for pixel perfect accuracy to make sure that your elements will display exactly as you intend. Dreamweaver 8 in addition features tools to help you in coding. You can now use the new coding toolbar that gathers common operations for quick access. You can also use the collapsing tool to group or expend blocks of coding in order to better organize your layout and focus only on the code you want. Rest assure that Dreamweaver 8 is ready and compatible with the latest technologies such as ColdFusion MX 7, PHP 5 and Flash video.
Dreamweaver had already all the tools you could need but these samples of new additions are making it even more efficient.

Next up in the Studio 8 package is Fireworks 8. Fireworks is an all in one software for Web image optimization and building Web compositions to be integrated to the Internet. It now supports more file formats to be imported like QuickTime Image, MacPaint, SGI and JPEG 2000. Don't worry; it also keeps vector graphics compatibility. You can also have creating cool visual effects with new blend modes like Freeze, Glow, Fuzzy Light and Negation for a total of 25 different modes to choose from. Add perspective shadows to both text objects and paths or with the new solid shadow filter. In addition you can now reshape text on a path and make it appear as you see fit. All of this has been organized in a central location panel for easy access. New grids that are more subtle make a cleaner way to set up your compositions. These are just a few of many little improvements to make Fireworks work better for you.

With Macromedia Studio 8, you don't only get these design and development tools, but you'll also get 2 new applications that weren't available with the previous Studio bundle. You'll get Contribute 3 and FlashPaper 2 that are publishing oriented tools. Here's a quick description for them.

Contribute 3 is a Web Publishing Management software. It's for a hassle free web maintenance system so groups of designers and developers can update and publish content in a control and monitored environment for small and large scale enterprises.

FlashPaper 2 is a quick and easy application to convert various content documents to Flash documents or even PDF files. It is integrated within Microsoft Office tools and Macromedia software.

So there you have it, a quick look at Macromedia Studio 8 Professional. Once again they have raised the bar pretty high for the competitors and even for Macromedia's (or should I say Adobe) next software line. This 8th version is definitely a powerful arsenal to any multimedia developer or designer out there. With these tools, we can expect to see high impact websites and applications that will bring users to a whole new level of immersion. I personally cannot wait to see these next-generation sites.