|
"Macromedia Flash MX 2004 is by far the best Flash animation program available today." |
Flash, Fireworks and Dreamweaver have always been the knock out punch for Macromedia and that is no exception for Macromedia Studio MX. The all-in-one Web design suit provides the functionality you need to cover every aspect of web development and offers a common user interface across all of its applications so it is easy to use. Whether you are just starting to build your first web page or improving your existing skills, there is definitely something for everyone. Even though Studio MX 2004 also includes FreeHand MX and ColdFusion MX 6.1 Developer Edition, we will be concentrating on the big three - Flash, Fireworks and Dreamweaver.
Macromedia Flash MX 2004 is by far the best Flash animation program available today. It is more powerful, requires less programming, improved help system and new usability features. Although Macromedia has split Flash into two, 'Flash MX Professional' for users involved in advanced application development and 'Flash MX 2004' for the majority of users, beginners still may not find it as easy to use as other cheaper versions.
For current users however this is a must have upgrade especially since it now supports Cascading Style Sheets (CSS), an improved ActionScript 2 programming language and a new API that allows third-party plug-ins.
Design and Interface Features
One of the more useful features is the new support for advanced PDF and EPS files, which mean you can create your work in your favourite programs then transfer them over into Flash. You will also notice a new Video Import Wizard, which you can use to select multiple clips from a single file and reuse encoding and processing settings so you do not need to start up a separate editor. One of the major text improvements is the support of Cascading Style Sheets (CCS), which should allow you to blend Flash and HTML more smoothly.
Macromedia has rewritten ActionScript 2 to make it compliant with ECMAScript 3 so it should now work in a way that is more familiar to Java programmers. The other major improvement is the new Extensibility API, which should help Flash benefit from the sort of third-party development and user sharing that Dreamweaver currently enjoys.
Timeline Effects are designed to help perform the common animation tasks such as changing size and opacity to setting up animated blurs and drop shadows. One of Macromedia's biggest challenges is making Flash MX 2004's programmability usable by the average user. To help solve this problem Macromedia has added a Behaviors panel similar to the one in Dreamweaver. Behaviors primarily relieve some of the hard work of programming interactive controls and allow you to quickly add the necessary scripts for handling actions all without entering any code yourself.
Flash MX 2004 has a range of other features and hidden extras that I just do not have the space to write about in this article, but if you want to deliver the richest web experience to your customers available today, Flash MX 2004 is definitely the package for the job.
No matter what you work with at some stage you will almost certainly use Fireworks, simply because when it comes to Web graphics creation, it is the best! For example you can now swap between open files using document tabs, comes equipped with an efficient interface and has a tight integration with the rest of the Macromedia applications. The biggest bonus however has to be the new graphical pop-up previews that appear when you are choosing a fill, line style or font.
Sure, Fireworks may not be the choice for professional image editing but each release of Fireworks includes additional bitmap features. There are two new creative bitmap tools in Fireworks MX: Replace Color and Red Eye Removal and it also includes a new anti-aliasing feature for improving text readability, especially with smaller font sizes. You will also find a range of new Auto Shape tools so you can add common shapes such as spiral, arrows, connector lines and stars, which creates an object with 3 to 24 points.
Using Fireworks and Dreamweaver you can also check files directly in and out of a Dreamweaver website and when you open a GIF or JPEG for editing you can save it to its original format instead of saving it to the Fireworks format of PNG. Bottom line is that the simple design and powerful tools make Fireworks MX 2004 the best Web graphics creator both for beginners and professionals.
Commanding 90 percent of the professional web design market, Dreamweaver is definitely the tool of choice and no matter how you want to create your website, whether you want to use HTML, ASP, PHP or Cold Fusion, Dreamweaver is designed to help you do it. So what is in the latest version you ask? To begin with, it comes with the shared Studio MX look and feel, reasonably uncluttered but intricate interface and the more noticeable Insert toolbar, which has been redesigned and simplified now comes with a new Favorites section.
Even though tags are still the most commonly used way of managing your web page layout, CSS is quickly becoming the method of choice and many of the new features in Dreamweaver MX are directed at CSS support. Dreamweaver MX also makes deployment a lot easier with improved CSS rendering, allowing you to view the effects of your CSS rules in the Design view. If however hand coding CSS sounds like too much work you can always use one of Dreamweaver's most powerful new features, the CSS Inspector panel.
There have been a number of enhancements made in relation to coding that should make life a little easier. The number of references has been increased with updated content on iSQL, ASP, .NET and PHP. Macromedia has also come to realize that most of the content you use the majority of the time comes from other sources, mainly Microsoft Office so you can now cut and paste directly into Word or Excel and Dreamweaver and still automatically preserve tables, fonts and colors.
Macromedia has made Dreamweaver more flexible by including support for a wide range of platform technologies and providing tools for cross browser development. Dreamweaver is still the best choice if you need the latest and greatest in Web site development, but for the average developper - Dreamweaver MX may be a bit too much to handle at first.
SUBMIT