Macromedia Studio 8

Creating pages for the Internet has become even easier

Although Adobe’s takeover of Macromedia is yet to be finalised, the latest version of Macromedia’s Studio web design suite has clearly been influenced by the imminent merger.

One obvious change is that the Freehand vector graphics program is no longer included. Macromedia will continue to support it, but Freehand is being edged out to allow Adobe’s Illustrator to rule the vector graphics market.

The four main programs included within Studio 8 now concentrate exclusively on the business of web design and so Studio 8 will be an important addition to Adobe’s existing range of traditional graphics and publishing software.

Dreamweaver, Macromedia’s successful web page design program, is still present, as is the ubiquitous Flash and Fireworks web graphics program.

To replace Freehand, Macromedia has added Contribute ­ an easy-to-use web page editor, which can be used to update websites that would have originally been developed by professional designers using Dreamweaver.

Contribute is still in version 3 and hasn’t been upgraded along with the rest of the suite. However, the other key programs have all been upgraded to version 8, picking up some key new features along the way.

Flash is one of the best-known Macromedia products, although these days it’s more accurate to refer to Flash Basic and Flash Professional.

Flash Basic, aimed at designers with a graphics or multimedia background, gains a new Pasteboard that makes it easier to lay out graphics and other elements within a Flash animation. It also gets some new graphics tools for creating complex graduated colours.

Flash Professional, aimed at web programmers and application developers, has many new features, in addition to special effects filters that provide more precise control over the movement of animated objects. 

The most significant change for both versions is the inclusion of the Flash Video Encoder, which allows you to include compressed video clips within Flash files.

You can bet your boots this was another Adobe-influenced decision, as it creates a potential bridge between Adobe’s Premiere Pro video editor and Flash, allowing Adobe to get a foot into the web-video market.

Dreamweaver also gets a good selection of new features. There are some general interface improvements, such as redesigned toolbars and palettes to make the program look neater, but it also has improved options for editing tables on web pages.

Additionally, you’ll have the ability to copy and paste information from Word and Excel documents straight onto a web page without losing any formatting.

But the main emphasis in Dreamweaver 8 is on cascading style sheets (CSS), with many new options to make it easier to view and edit CSS content.

The new CSS Tab displays the style rules used on a web page, and makes it easier to select and edit attributes specified by each rule. There are also improved options for checking CSS compatibility with a range of browsers so you can be sure your pages will display correctly in as many as possible.

CSS support has been improved in the Fireworks web graphics program and in the Menu Editor, which simplifies the process of creating pop-up menus and transferring them into either Flash or Dreamweaver. Fireworks also has some impressive new graphics effects, such as perspective shadows and blend modes.

Apart from the loss of Freehand, Studio 8 is a solid, well-planned upgrade.

System requirements:

• 1GHz processor
• 1GB Ram
• 2GB hard disk
• Windows 2000/XP