Macromedia Studio 8

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 Macromedias 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.

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.

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.

Click on the secretary after you have clicked on someone else.

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.

Yet...

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.

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.

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.

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.

Hey, is worth upgrading from Flash MX to Flash 8?

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.

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)

why don't you download the demo and find out?

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.

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.

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??

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...

I am demoing DreamWeaver 8 now (30 day trial period). I have a few questions.

I currently use FrontPage to manage the Work webpage. No FP extensions or junk like that. Just a plain-o-website (lots of tables of course). How can I migrate a FP website over to Dream Weaver? Is it as simple as just opening up DW and editing my pages? I saw a link on DW's website to a converter wizard thing that would covert my FP site to DW, but I am really curious to hear others trials and tribulations with this and not the "company line".

Also, I have 4 Mac's. For DW, I would need to install them on two of my mac's. Since I am the only Mac user I know, besides you guys and a few friends who live way far away, can I install and run DW 8 on two seperate Mac's or do you have to buy two software boxes (one for each Mac). I am so use to the cool Mac software people who let you install the software on every Mac you own/use (Delicsious Library, SuperDuper!, etc.).

stop using frontpage. NOW. seriously. STOP USING FRONTPAGE. NOW.

whatever it takes, for chrissakes move to dreamweaver7 or 8 or pure handcoding

you will likely need two separate serial numbers for each computer. i have encountered problems with macromedia studio products where computers on the local network with the same srial number, not good. the first computer will use that serial and then the second one will be like, "BZTTT. sorry, someone opened that application already.. BZTT..."

you need not go the full hog to dreamweaver8 if you are just starting to learn dreamweaver, dreamweaver MX 2004 pro should be a nice solid robust package to cut your teeth on, and may be significantly cheaper than dreamweaver8 especially if you are buying 2 licenses IMO.

Yes! - but I would contend that FrontRage, GoEvil and DreamOnWeaver are all horrible for standards and maintenance. I have done web devel since 1995 and tried them all and have unequivically concluded that hand coding (with bbedit) is the ONLY RIGHT WAY. Validate your pages (w3.org). Learn proper XHTML 1.1 and CSS (w3schools.com). Make the web a better place.

Now back to the topic at hand - Flash 8 is the only thing worth it but only for web video since its the most cross platform - otherwise flash is evil. Perhaps Adobe will make it do SVG and promote the standard, then it wont be as evil.

So you can see that I equate proprietary formats and non-standards complience with evil. The worst form of web evil (wevil?) is using gifs and empty table cells for spacing - which dreamweaver has been the worst offender. Did you all know a small kitten is sacrificed every time you create a site with dreamweaver?

well personally i am perfectly fine with dreamweaver and flash. handcoding and validation is all well and good if you're so inclined.

however goLive and FrontalNudityPage are all the tools of the devil. export to HTML from Word is absolute garbage as well.

everyone should use Flash 8 for everything! death to HTML!

Hey, hey lets not be hasty here. Flash is cool and all but do I really need a spinning chicken diving into a bowl of spaghetti to show that my form has been submitted?

Dreamweaver 8 is all right, Ive been using it now for 4 days and I have to say its been a pretty nice experience. Still wish they would include a PHP debugger and code formatter. Looks like Im keeping Zend for a while. Any body else jump up and down in their cubicle when they found out that pages open up in tabs and not individually. Im mean how long has the windows counterpart be doing this. Anyway not a bad update, I bought it and will get plenty of use out of it.

Originally posted by Relic
... Any body else jump up and down in their cubicle when they found out that pages open up in tabs and not individually.....

shhhhh... don't tell too many mac people that dreamweaver on pc has been doing this for a while

Originally posted by Relic
....Flash is cool and all but do I really need a spinning chicken diving into a bowl of spaghetti to show that my form has been submitted?

hey, that's a great idea! NOT

<me going offtopic again>
OMFG iTunes5.0.1 ripping CDs on my athlon64 venice 2.4ghz is FAST !! this bodes very well for macintels. that was a flawless, seamless AAC encoding experience right there using SSE/etc optimisations. Accelerate.Framework on MacOSx86 is going to rock the house.

Yeah, but don't make to much noise about it the folks around these parts are still under the impression that the G5 is the cats meow. I recently convinced my company to purchase a Sun Java Workstation W2100z to replace my aging dual 1Ghz G4 Powermac, good God this thing is fast. Dual 2.6Ghz AMD Opteron with 2Gb of mem, it runs circles around my Dual 2.3 Ghz at home. I'm so impressed that I'll probably sell my G5 and buy one myself. To bad Apple doesn't sell OSX as a standalone product, oh well, I actually like Solari 10 so I guess it will have to suffice for right now.

Oh and for the record because someone recently questioned me on my loyalty for Apple machines and my never ending computer buying sprees. So I currently own,

Powermac G5 2.3Ghz, 4Gb mem, 2 72GB 10,000Rpm Sata Western Digital drives

Powerbook 12Inch G4 1.5Ghz, 1.25Gb mem, 60Gb 7200Rpm drive

HP Dual 3.2Ghz Xeon, 2Gb mem, 3 72GB 10,000Rpm Sata Western Digital drives, raid 5 with Promise card 128mb cache Vaaroooom! Gentoo Linux and Solaris 10 8086

Panasonic Tougbook CF-18, 1.1Ghz, 512Mb mem, 40Gb 5400Rpm drive, Windows XP, trying to get Ubuntu to work

Sun Blade 2000 Dual 900MHz ,2GB RAM, 2x36GB 10,000 Rpm, Solaris 10

SGI O2 400Mhz R12000, 1Gb mem, 2x36GB 10,000 Rpm (Ebay is cool), Irix 6.5 (even though it's only 400Mhz this thing is a rocket)

and I'll probably buy an OQO for pure geeking around.

Ewww... make sure you wash your hands before returning to anything else. Bad code cooties.


The license checking functions are active on the same network, if not just the same subnet.
While we cannot counsel means to circumvent such methods, it is possible you might trip over your network cable while trying to troubleshoot this problem, and solve it inadvertently, if only temporarily.

Originally posted by curiousuburb
The license checking functions are active on the same network, if not just the same subnet.While we cannot counsel means to circumvent such methods, it is possible you might trip over your network cable while trying to troubleshoot this problem, and solve it inadvertently, if only temporarily.


*sigh* good times with this... i mean BAD memories at a job in 2003.

me: okay so there are 3 people in the web dept
IT: okay cool we got budget for your upgrade
me: sweet!
me: here is a list, 3 copies of macromedia studio mx thanks
IT: cool, everything looks signed off, etc.
(1 month later)
IT: here are your 2 copies of macromedia studio mx! yay! enjoy!
me: wtf? there are 3 web design computers
IT: [typical IT f* up blank look]
me: ah, whatever. install install install... okay
me: ooh, 3 people using dreamweaver at once, ooh...licensing issues
me: um, IT, we will need to buy that official legit 3rd copy
IT: [typical IT f* up blank look]
(2 months later, lots of hair pulling, complaining to bosses, etc)
IT head: *death stare* here is the 3rd copy of macromedia studio mx
me: [mutters to myself] well, that's one relationship i killed within my first 3 months on the job

for the record, i quit after 11.5 months at that job
hopefully no offense to IT managers, dept personnel on appleInsider. most of y'all are l33t par excellance. my story here though is certainly not unique...

Well, not to sound like a good two shoes, but I would have given you those three copies up front, straight away; sorry, I don't want my ass on the grill when it comes to a random licence audit, courtesy of our friends at the BSA.

Having seen the amount of wasted money on pointless crap that I see around offices, I'd say that paying for a legit copy of a piece of software is pretty damn small when it comes to the bigger things around the office.

Then again, with that being said, I'm now really stuck, I'm happy with GoLive! somewhat, but on the other side Studio 8 is a really nice package as well - which is probably a good thing; the products are so good, now its really hard to decide which one to use rather than being forced to use one because the others are so crappy, but the better one isn't that good anyway.

yeah let's just say that i was working for a certain prominent non-profit organisation in that job in australia. my manager (not the IT dept head) helped me hound the IT department coz he was like, "this is the perfect scandal that the media would feast upon" should a software audit be done and this particular organisation came up short. no it was not the BSA australia itself where i was working at though that would be hilarious if tons of people at BSA were using pirated software !!!

Smart manager; I don't know what the IT guys had to get out of being a tight ass, in regards to not authorising the purchase; they should know the consequences of using pirated software, especially if you turned around and told the BSA auditor that your IT department told you to install it onto another computer, thus exceeding the licence number - believe me, your IT people would have been in alot of shit, considering that all trained IT people are given education on licences and licencing policies.