Studio 8

Upgrades to applications such as Flash and Dreamweaver are always going to attract attention, but because the release of Macromedia Studio 8 comes just four months after Adobe announced its intention to acquire Macromedia it is bound to draw an even closer interest.

Speculation has been rife over which applications would see the light of day once the deal was finalised, and with version eight of Studio we have a couple of clues. The big news is that FreeHand is disappearing, while Contribute and FlashPaper make an appearance – but what can web professionals expect from their upgrades?

With the release of Flash Player 8 it was inevitable that Flash itself would soon be upgraded. The new version comes in Basic and Professional flavours, and takes into account the rise of broadband, featuring as it does, enhancements to Flash Video through improved import tools and codec improvements to both versions.

Fuzzy fonts will now be a thing of the past, thanks to Studio 8’s completely new font rendering engine and a modification to the Text tool. This enables more direct resizing through dragging corner points, and means stroke settings are more versatile. Gradients are also now supported. Gradients themselves have also been improved and now have greater flexibility.

Flash Pro users will discover additional features to help them move away from the clinical vector feel of previous versions, as blend modes and filters are introduced to provide bitmap-like effects. These offer some great effects, including drop shadows, bevels and glow, all of which are rendered in real-time.

The interface remains largely unchanged, although tweaks to panel management now enable you to mix and match contents in the same way as Dreamweaver. Macromedia has also changed the Library panel so libraries remain accessible from multiple files.

Elsewhere in Flash, a new feature – Script Assist – has been added to reintroduce the Normal mode code view to help out designers with ActionScript. Lastly, the creation of a new SWF Metadata property will help your work be understood by browsers and search engines alike.

Dreamweaver has long been considered the leading application in its field and we’re pleased to report that Macromedia has made some solid improvements to areas such as Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) and simplifying integration of XML content around data feeds. The improvements to the CSS panel provide a more direct approach to editing style sheets and bring improvements to workflow. There is also now full support for more advanced CSS elements such as overflow, pseudo-elements and form elements, and the inclusion of a Style Rendering toolbar will give you a reasonable preview of how your final work will look.

Macromedia is pushing increased workflow speed as one of the important new benefits. Having the ability to continue working while FTP transfers are carried out in the background is a boon, as is the more intelligent approach to synchronising and comparing content.

The software also adopts some image editing controls with the new Zoom and Move functions, which are welcome additions when working with complex nested tables.

Coders will find that Code Collapse and the new Code toolbar provide powerful controls as more HomeSite elements are introduced. And there is now support for PHP5 and ColdFusion MX 7 as standard, plus the Reference panels now include advice for XML, XSLT and XPath.

With Fireworks’ imminent clash with Photoshop just around the corner, it comes as no surprise to find this is the title gaining the least amount of attention in terms of new features. Sure, Macromedia has added some enhancements to support file formats such as QuickTime, MacPaint, SGI and JPEG 2000, but it’s also carried out a few more impressive improvements.

The software’s strong support for creating functional web elements is improved with CSS pop-up menu creation. It also now recognises ActionScript colour values and preserves native vector attributes when creating content. Shadows now recognise perspective, and 25 Blending modes have been added.

Designing for mobile interfaces becomes easier thanks to a variety of mock-up devices complete with bitmap interface components, and the new AutoShape feature makes it easy to create simple and common shapes at the click of a button. The Image Editing panel is another new feature that provides a shortcut to frequently accessed controls.

The introduction of Contribute 3 and FlashPaper 2 enforces the natural relationship between Dreamweaver and Flash. Contribute enables remote authors to update content using Word, while FlashPaper offers an alternative method of converting MS Office documents into a web-usable format.

In many ways, the removal of FreeHand doesn’t present too many issues for the average web designer. Routine vector editing is still possible using Fireworks-enhanced tools and Flash, and the inclusion of Contribute and FlashPaper are much more practical additions. Flash 8 and Dreamweaver 8 will continue to rule their respective media, but how the next suite will look is still open to debate.

THE INTERFACE
1 The core interface remains largely unchanged, making an easy upgrade path for existing users who may choose to revise the order and positioning of the default panels.

2 CSS finds itself even more intuitive to access and, thanks to revisions applied to the Styles panel, it now comes integrated with the Properties section.

3 Editing raw HTML is made more efficient thanks to the introduction of HomeSite features that provide controls through the left-hand gutter and collapsing code.

4 Dreamweaver extends its audience and provides the new Style Rendering toolbar so you can check your work against different output formats without leaving the software.

5 A small but valuable addition is to be found in the new Zoom function for pixel-perfect positioning of page objects when working with complex tables or CSS-P.

RESOURCE
The Macromedia site provides support and extensions. FlashKit and DMXZone offer advice for Flash and Dreamweaver respectively.

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