San Francisco - based Macromedia Inc. on Monday will herald Studio 8 , the new version of the companionship ’s suite of covering for content authoring . studio apartment 8 drop FreeHand , but add two other applications giving the rooms a good mix for its mark customer , according to the troupe . Studio 8 now include Dreamweaver 8 ; Flash Professional 8 ( including a raw Flash 8 Video Encoder ) ; firework 8 ; Contribute 3 ; and FlashPaper 2 .

The proclamation of Studio 8 comes just four months after Adobe released Creative Suite 2 . Once a rival to Macromedia , Adobe announced its intentions in April 2005 to purchase Macromedia for US$ 3.4 billion .

“ This come at a time when both companies are healthy , profitable and growing , so it ’s a right prison term for both companionship to be doing this , ” Jim Guerard , frailty president of Product Management and Marketing , tell MacCentral . “ The other interesting thing is that we will have the humankind ’s leading tools for deploy content under one cap . That ’s going to appropriate us to do some interesting affair for our customers . ”

Guerard said it was impossible to speculate how the Adobe softwood would affect Macromedia ’s horse barn of intersection , but the company has made some shifts in the latest loss . Macromedia FreeHand , the creative purpose putz for print and Web has been cut in Studio 8 , being replaced with Contribute 3 and FlashPaper 2 .

“ FreeHand continues to be an significant and successful production for the party and we will continue to sell , support and maintain it as a standalone product , ” said Guerard .

Two years in the devising , Guerard shout out Studio 8 “ the biggest software departure in the history of Macromedia . ” He also said the this is the most client driven release the ship’s company has ever done as merchandise team endeavour to understand customer needs like never before .

“ Each of the product squad went around the worldly concern to meet with 40 key client , onsite , for really immersive sitting , ” said Guerard . “ This was n’t just to talk about what they would like to see Modern in the tools , but to understand their pain - points , their workflow and their usability exit , so we could treat those in the process . ”

Dreamweaver build up on visual CSS , ease of use

Since debut in 1997 , Dreamweaver has been the puppet of option for many Web designers who liked the option of hand coding , while have a visual representation of their work . Dreamweaver 8 continues to construct on many of the visual aspects of previous sack , while meliorate workflow and desegregation .

“ This ramp up on what Dreamweaver has always been good at , which is make complicated technologies reachable to even the most basic substance abuser , while give advance users room to grow , ” said Jen Taylor , production handler for Dreamweaver .

One of the domain Macromedia focused on with Dreamweaver 8 is meliorate visual CSS . With a young , integrated CSS control board , Dreamweaver offer a one - stop shop for working with CSS style applied to pages . The new interface makes it easier to see the panache enforce to a specific factor and identify where attribute are defined , harmonise to the company .

Dreamweaver also include CSS layout visualization , which allows you to apply visual aides at design time to sketch caesium layout border or color CSS layout . A panache rendering toolbar gives substance abuser the ability to toggle to project view and see how a layout will look in mark , on a handheld or on a screen .

Macromedia has also worked on integrating feature of its other products in a more effective way into the work flow of Dreamweaver . For example , with Dreamweaver 8 , user can easy integrate Flash Video into a web site .

“ We want to ensure that within Dreamweaver citizenry had a workflow that enable them to merely encode and charge their video on the varlet , ” state Taylor . “ It could not be dim-witted ; you just graze to your Flash video file , beak a skin and you ’re done . you may have video up and running on your Web web site in less than five click of a mouse . ”

With the popularity of blogs these days , Macromedia peach to several of the blogging software Divine with the intent to sum up funding for them in Dreamweaver 8 . alas , that functionality will not be built - in to this handout , but may make an appearance through extensions .

“ It ’s something we spent a flock of time verbalise about and we really talk with a lot of them because we want to contribute support for them in Dreamweaver , ” suppose Taylor . “ We realized that they are at a point in their life bike where they are still exchange and evolving . What we are doing is work with the extension developing residential district to sum accompaniment for those blogs . ”

There are many more change to Dreamweaver 8 , which we sketch in our first look of the product .

Flash improve Mac user experience

Flash 8 Professional comes with many new characteristic admit higher - timber video and improved text tools , but Macromedia also focused much of their metre on better the experience for Macintosh user .

papers tab are now included in both Flash 8 Professional and Dreamweaver , a feature that was available for Windows in the last variant of the suite . Macromedia also moved to Mach - O for both Dreamweaver and Flash , bringing it nigher to aboriginal Mac OS X genus Apis .

Flash Player 8 will now utilise Apple supported Open - GL to render art , a move the Macromedia says brings performance very close to its Windows twin .

“ We ’ve done a important amount of work in the authoring tools specifically for Mac users in this release , ” said Flash Product Manager , Mike Downey . “ We lagged a small behind on the Mac version , so we not only wanted to catch up , but to do more targeted betterment in performance and serviceableness . ”

Flash 8 Professional now includes Filters , which allow pattern to be made with build - in filter effects like free fall shadow , blur , glowing , bevel , gradient bevel and color adjust . Adding the filter does not increase the file cabinet sizing of the Flash file because Flash Player 8 renders the filters in real - time .

Flash 8 Pro also includes a new font render locomotive called FlashType . Macromedia say that FlashType provides clear , high - quality font rendering , making small fonts see clear , greatly better readability .

Flash also tally a unexampled video recording codec , called On2 VP6 , which Downey said provides high video quality , but at a small-scale filing cabinet sizing .

While former version of Flash focus heavily on the developer , Macromedia occupy a different approach shot with Flash 8 professional . With this going the troupe paid more aid to designers and giving new users easy access to advanced authoring tools .

“ A focal point we ’ve had in Flash for this release was that for every powerful new feature we bring , we wanted to make it useful and accessible for every Flash user , not just script coders , ” say Downey . “ The last two release we have been very focussed on developer . Most of the work we have done has been through ActionScript controls and you had to be a fairly in advance substance abuser . This is definitely a designer focalize discharge . ”

There are many more change to Flash Professional 8 , which we delineate in our first face of the mathematical product .

Fireworks expand filter , import data formatting

While Macromedia ’s simulacrum redaction app , Fireworks , did n’t receive as much attention as Flash or Dreamweaver in this daily round of updates , there are a few notable additions .

Dreamweaver users will appreciate the ability to create CSS come out - up carte du jour in Fireworks and export the graphics and CSS computer code , ready to be import into a Dreamweaver document .

Fireworks also sum up an image - blue-pencil dialog box , which brings the most unremarkably used image editing pecker , filters and menu bidding in a central locating . Twenty - six new portmanteau word modes include Overlay , Color Burn and Hard Light are also included in Fireworks .

you’re able to read more detail about Fireworks in our first look of the product .

kick in 3 and FlashPaper included in Studio 8

After removing FreeHand from Studio 8 , Macromedia included Contribute 3 and FlashPaper 2 . Contribute is an well-heeled to use optical Web publication tool that allows collaboration of people in an organization . you’re able to say more about Contribute 3 in Macworld ’s recent review . include as part of Contribute 3 , FlashPaper enables users to create Flash or PDF - based files out of any printable document , utilitarian for embedding on Web pages .

Pricing and accessibility

Macromedia Studio 8 is expected to ship in September . localize version in German , French , Japanese , Spanish , Italian , Korean , Traditional Chinese and Simplified Chinese will be available curtly thereafter . Pricing is $ 999 for a full licence and $ 399 for an upgrade .

For the individual product , pricing is as follows : Flash Professional 8 — $ 699 and $ 299 for an climb ; Dreamweaver 8 — $ 399 or $ 199 for an upgrade ; Fireworks 8 — $ 299 or $ 149 for an rise ; Contribute 3 — $ 149 or $ 79 for an upgrade ; FlashPaper 2 — $ 79 ; and Flash Basic 8 — $ 399 .