Macromedia Studio 8

rokrok
Posted:
in Mac Software edited January 2014
okay, someone has to start the thread, so i'll be it.



first off, it's REALLY hard for me to not hate this update simply from the videos of posers and actors they have on the home page and the intro area. AND they want me to install a beta of flash player 8, which still even has issues on firefox for os x (which they proclaim on the entry page).



it's enough to almost make me not care "what's behind web page number 2."



i know we're still all waiting on what will happen with the adobe merger, but this studio update must have been in the works before the merger was planned, which means that it'll still carry over all of the macromedia-specific weirdness from the past since mx. (dreamweaver 4 is still my all time favorite, not for code, but for flat-out behaving itself and having an interface that didn't make me want to scream)



anyway, anyone else with comments who have braved going past the "secretary." ugh.



brief edit: apparently the "no" button will actually let you see some content, though they sure phrase it like flash 8 beta is required
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Comments

  • Reply 1 of 34
    murkmurk Posts: 935member
    Macworld's article about Studio 8 quotes Macromedia vice president Jim Guerard as saying it is impossible to speculate how the Adobe deal would affect Macromedia?s stable of products. Maybe it shouldn't but this alone taints my view of the upgrade. I think I'll wait a few more months and see what the merger brings.



    Also from Jimmy G: ?FreeHand continues to be an important and successful product for the company and we will continue to sell, support and maintain it as a standalone product.?





    P.S.-If you install Flash Player 8, the secretary throws off her glasses, undoes her hair, and does a little striptease.
  • Reply 2 of 34
    Looked pretty lame to me. Just some quasi-testimonial crap that didn't really tell me anything of interest...



    And where the phuq is FreeHand? Has it become the red-headed stepchild* of the Macromedia family?



    * - No offense to any red-headed stepchildren who may be reading this.
  • Reply 3 of 34
    I think I will skip this upgrade and see how the Adobe deal shakes out over the next year. I guess I should give up hoping that flash might support video formats other than Flash Video. I would really like to be able to design interfaces in Flash that call up Quicktime streams and videos.
  • Reply 4 of 34
    murkmurk Posts: 935member
    Click on the secretary after you have clicked on someone else.
  • Reply 5 of 34
    kidredkidred Posts: 2,402member
    I came in here looking for the next release of DreamWeaver, and I'm glad I did. I've been juggling the idea of getting 2004, I'd be pissed if i did only to see DW 8 come out next month. Nice to see Adobe hasn't pulled a M$ and killing the competition and making us all suffer with inferior GoLive.
  • Reply 6 of 34
    Quote:

    Originally posted by KidRed

    Nice to see Adobe hasn't pulled a M$ and killing the competition and making us all suffer with inferior GoLive.



    Yet...
  • Reply 7 of 34
    rokrok Posts: 3,519member
    Quote:

    Originally posted by KidRed

    ...and making us all suffer with inferior GoLive.



    depends on your perspective. the more research i have done into golive, the more i am convinced that it is geared towards designers, and dreamweaver (and flash) have gone the way of the developers. and it's damn difficult these days to find someone who is equal parts developer and designer, so neither is a great match. but golive isn't inferior (especially cs2), but it IS very different. and i truly believe that the eventual macrodobia beast will resemble the face of golive with the guts of flash and dreamweaver underneath.
  • Reply 8 of 34
    I'm definitely waiting during this round of upgrades, but as I do for every time one comes around. You can't change a major part of your workflow without knowing what potential harm may lay in wait. We're prepping to go to CS2 soon as it seems that any potential problems are winding down. Have to make sure that there aren't any bumps from design to pre-press.



    I'm really looking forward to Flash 8 since the demo or two that I saw some time ago (believe they were on Moock.org). Performance seems to be on par with PCs which has been a huge pain in the ass during playback and the drag-and-drop raster effects are nice. Video integration looks better than before and it'll be nice to make interactive video a bigger part of the web. Experiments with it in Flash 5 /Quicktime till now have shown some shortcomings that make it practically unusable.



    In terms of DW, all I'm looking for is more standards and accessibility integration. I use a mix of DW and Bbedit in my day to day dev life and the closer I can get to building XHTML/CSS pages with IE browser hacks built into the workflow, the better. M$ also has to do their part with IE7... though I'm not going to hold my breath.
  • Reply 9 of 34
    trobertstroberts Posts: 702member
    Has anybody developed ASP.NET web sites using Dreamweaver on a Mac? If so, is the content previewable on the Mac, or does my Mac need a connection to a computer that has IIS and the .net framework on it?
  • Reply 10 of 34
    Quote:

    Originally posted by troberts

    Has anybody developed ASP.NET web sites using Dreamweaver on a Mac? If so, is the content previewable on the Mac, or does my Mac need a connection to a computer that has IIS and the .net framework on it?



    you are going to have to be connected to a development server to see any kind of live preview regardless of what back-end you are developing for, be it asp.net, php, coldfusion, ect.
  • Reply 11 of 34
    kidredkidred Posts: 2,402member
    Quote:

    Originally posted by rok

    depends on your perspective. the more research i have done into golive, the more i am convinced that it is geared towards designers, and dreamweaver (and flash) have gone the way of the developers. and it's damn difficult these days to find someone who is equal parts developer and designer, so neither is a great match. but golive isn't inferior (especially cs2), but it IS very different. and i truly believe that the eventual macrodobia beast will resemble the face of golive with the guts of flash and dreamweaver underneath.



    That's funny because I am a designer that absolutely knows nothing about programming or developing. My sites are nearly 90% graphics and I let DW do what needs to be done. I used GoLive when DW was at 3 I think, but it just got too bloated. Then after the DW learning curve, I'll never go back. I tried GoLive 5 which was a sad joke.



    Of course when i say inferior it's my own personal opinion, but honestly, I've never heard of someone claiming GoLive is the standard, and of my designer colleagues, they all use DW if they don't do it by hand.
  • Reply 12 of 34
    aplnubaplnub Posts: 2,605member
    I agree here. GoLive sucks and I mean it blows hard. I have CS and I can't bring myself to use it because it is so bad.



    DreamWeaver is better but dang, it sucks on the Mac when you have used it on a PC.



    Quote:

    Originally posted by KidRed

    That's funny because I am a designer that absolutely knows nothing about programming or developing. My sites are nearly 90% graphics and I let DW do what needs to be done. I used GoLive when DW was at 3 I think, but it just got too bloated. Then after the DW learning curve, I'll never go back. I tried GoLive 5 which was a sad joke.



    Of course when i say inferior it's my own personal opinion, but honestly, I've never heard of someone claiming GoLive is the standard, and of my designer colleagues, they all use DW if they don't do it by hand.




  • Reply 13 of 34
    Hey, is worth upgrading from Flash MX to Flash 8?
  • Reply 14 of 34
    there is quit a bit of cool shit in flash 8. they definitely give you more control over bitmaps in this release, right down to the pixel level. for the kind of stuff that we do regularly, flash 8 is looking like it will be well worth the upgrade price. that said, dreamweaver is the app that excites me the most of the studio 8 suite . after playing with it over the last couple of days, the gui refinements, improved workflow, speed, and reliability has me sold.
  • Reply 15 of 34
    Anyone know if Flash 8 has fixed that irritating bug that doesn't allow you to preview a preloader locally using Test Movie?

    (When using MovieClipLoader and an onLoadProgress listener)

  • Reply 16 of 34
    why don't you download the demo and find out?
  • Reply 17 of 34
    don't be silly with the "golive" speculation. adobe is quite aware that they were getting their ass kicked by dreamweaver. they're a smart enough company to know that they should just ride on that brand equity and change it to meet their needs. personally, i look forward to the adobe-ization of the dreamweaver interface.
  • Reply 18 of 34
    Quote:

    Originally posted by troberts

    Has anybody developed ASP.NET web sites using Dreamweaver on a Mac? If so, is the content previewable on the Mac, or does my Mac need a connection to a computer that has IIS and the .net framework on it?



    You can use Mono to host ASP.net sites on the mac, but it doesnt really support VB, gotta stick with C#.

    You can also host coldfusion, php and asp on OS X.

    The biggest problem with any Mac based development is that windows based deployments typically use SQL server for the database, so you need to use that in dev. Which means having a windows box, so you may as well host your web server on that box as well.



    I personally hate developing with DW, funny to hear people complaining that it is too developery, I would say just the opposite. Ever since they rolled Coldfusion Studio in DW it has just been a mess.



    I use TextMate for Coldfusion and Asp, NetBeans for Java and Visual Studio for .net. Oh, I have a Mac and a PC on my desk.
  • Reply 19 of 34
    sunilramansunilraman Posts: 8,133member
    believe it or not the some main dudes from macromedia showed up in malaysistan as part of their asiapac tour. i went for the macromedia 8 launch. i was a bit naughty, stayed only for the flash 8 presentation part and f**ked off after that, grabbing a few yummy mini-salmon-sandwiches on the way out.



    let's just say i have flash8pro on my winxp64 pc now.



    the two real interesting key areas are the built-in 'effects' engine, plus 'bitmap caching'... interesting stuff



    video encoding is supposed to have some improvements as well. and they've definitely cleaned up text antialiasing quite well.



    i would say a significant upgrade if you are running a studio or r&d type thing or have clients you can encourage to be cutting edge, get a jumpstart on the competition. particularly with the adobe merger, and most recent stats, flash is very much alive and kicking on the web. particularly a lot of sites using flash video for mini-trailers and stuff, skipping all the quicktime/real/wmv headaches.



    however my actionscript is rusty as the titanic. i need to bring myself up to speed with flashmx2004, actionscript 2.0, and do some of that middleware XML- UI-components interaction stuff. bah. all that time wasted trying to be a "cool designer" when i could be coding in Flash



    nah, it's all cool... just returning to my geek roots after burning out of the whole design/ ad/ creative/ marketing scene



    PM me if there is something specific in flash8pro (i only have the PC version) you'd want me to investigate and i'll see if i have the time inbetween bittorrent downloads and playing games and reading appleinsider and tuaw \



    hey are any of y'all certified in flashmx2004[developer]? have you found this official certification a worthwhile endeavour??
  • Reply 20 of 34
    sunilramansunilraman Posts: 8,133member
    Quote:

    Originally posted by micahgartman

    Looked pretty lame to me. Just some quasi-testimonial crap that didn't really tell me anything of interest...



    And where the phuq is FreeHand? Has it become the red-headed stepchild* of the Macromedia family?



    * - No offense to any red-headed stepchildren who may be reading this.






    Jim Guerard (one of the execs at macromedia) said that Freehand will still be available as standalone, not in studio8



    Freehand is quite vital to a lot of people so i reckon it's got a few years in it.



    Not sure about golive, it is possible adobe will do a final release and then kill it in about a year, focusing on dreamweaver. just a guess...
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