Archive notice: This article was originally published on August 8, 2005. Links and embedded videos are preserved as part of the historical record.
Macromedia today announced its new complete package for web designers, developers, video professionals and graphic artists: Macromedia Studio 8 supports the design, development and maintenance of interactive online applications. The software suite combines the current versions of the programs Macromedia Dreamweaver, Macromedia Flash Professional and Macromedia Fireworks as well as the two tools Macromedia Contribute and Macromedia Flashpaper.
With Studio 8, a new standard for the efficient design of impressive websites, interactive media and content for mobile end devices with simplified workflows is being set, the manufacturer explains. According to Macromedia, the new products are characterised by improved features and significantly higher performance: With their help, designers and developers can create even more impressive and appealing experiential worlds on the web and for mobile end devices in less time.
Studio 8 includes workflow improvements, additional products
in the package and numerous new features, some of which are available for the first time. The addition of the programs Contribute and Flashpaper allow a unified approach to the maintenance of web content. Websites created with Studio 8 can thus always be kept up to date cost-effectively, Macromedia argues.
The new video encoding tools provide a significantly simplified method for designing and distributing high-quality interactive video content. Extensions for Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) and visual XML authoring tools offer new design possibilities for websites and applications. With additional tools for designing and testing content for mobile phones, Studio 8 becomes a market-leading software package in the area of multi-platform development, the company concludes.
Studio 8 and the individual products included in the package are the
key components of Macromedia’s Flash platform, which offers the
most cost-effective way, according to the company, to deliver multimedia content and applications and to communicate on the web – regardless of browser, operating system and end device.
Dreamweaver 8 is the latest version of the web design tool; its new features include expanded CSS layout visualisation to simplify the design process, drag-and-drop integration of XML data feeds, improved support for XML and XSLT coding, and increased ease of use with features such as zoom and code collapse. Another advance is the simplified integration of Flash video content into websites.
Flash Professional 8 is characterised, among other things, by the significant increase in runtime performance, new graphical effects, more precise control of vector shapes, a script editor with a graphical interface, simplified editing of Flash Video and improved workflow integration with leading video editing and encoding tools. This makes it possible to realise rich multimedia content for the web that did not exist in this form in the past, Macromedia promises.
Fireworks 8 likewise offers quite a few new and improved features in the new version. Graphic designers and web application developers can now also use it to design interactive CSS pop-up menus, experiment with more than 26 new blending modes or import additional data formats. Cooperation with Dreamweaver and Flash Professional has also been further improved.
The products Contribute 3 and Flashpaper 2, newly added to the complete package, serve to round off the Studio 8 functionality. They offer a substantial simplification in the permanent updating of the implemented applications and content. Contribute 3 enables web professionals to outsource maintenance work to other employees in a controlled form with the help of a template-based workflow. This allows the integrity of the website to be guaranteed at all times. Flashpaper 2
simplifies content creation by converting
printable files – such as from Microsoft Office – into web-ready documents in PDF or SWF format at the push of a button.
The backbone of the Flash Platform is Flash Player 8 (whose
availability as a public beta version was also announced
today). This update of the platform-independent multimedia client contains a new video codec, an innovative text rendering engine and an expanded security model that allows users better control over their personal data. At the same time, Flash Player 8 offers previously unattained performance, Macromedia states.
The English-language version of Macromedia Studio 8 is expected to ship from September. According to the manufacturer, the German-language version will be available “a short time later”. The full version costs 999 euros, the price of the
upgrade from any previous version is at 449 euros. All prices are exclusive of statutory value-added tax.
Further Links:
- Further information on Studio 8 (manufacturer website)
