Bruce Von Stiers

Macromedia has bundled up their products before. They have included Fireworks with Flash for example. But they haven’t put together a suite of their products in quite a while. Now they have put together a suite that includes Flash MX, Dreamweaver MX, Freehand 10.0, Fireworks MX and ColdFusion MX Developers Edition. This new suite is called Studio MX.

Just about all of the programs in this suite have been given a facelift. Dreamweaver and Fireworks both have been boosted up considerably. Flash now has more to offer. About the only program in this suite that stayed just about the same was Freehand. But Macromedia has included this program so that the suite had a complete set of graphic tools to integrate with the other components.

I recently took a look at Flash MX, so I won’t really go into that component of Studio MX too much. To quote from my review of that product, “The new elements in Flash MX will surely appeal to people who want to add cool animation and features to their web sites without having visitors suffer from slow downloads.” Click here to read my Flash MX review.

I was really interested in seeing the features in the new version of Dreamweaver. This is the program that I use to create the BVS Reviews web site. Some of the features are beyond what I’m currently doing with the site, but one of these days I hope to have a fully developed site using Dreamweaver MX.

Macromedia has placed their Dreamweaver UltraDev components into the new MX version. They have also added what Macromedia calls the “powerful functionality” of Homesite into Dreamweaver MX as well. This way you have the ability to write code for any number of web applications. With this new version, you will even be able to design web pages for the new XHTML and WML formats. With the ColdFusion elements added into the Studio MX package, Dreamweaver MX will surely have garnered a much larger share of the web application development market.

Some of the new features that you will find in Dreamweaver MX are the Answers Panel, a Tag Chooser, Code Hints, a Site Setup Wizard and collapsible, dockable tool panels. The Answers Panel will provide online answers to the most common questions that users might have. Macromedia is supposedly updating the information that the Answers Panel can access. The press material for Dreamweaver MX stated that “no promotions or marketing communications are listed in the Answers Panel.” I hope that they stick to that. There is nothing more annoying that to try to get some online help, only to be assaulted by an ad for a product that I am not interested in at that time. The Tag Chooser will show you all of the coding tags that are available to use. Add and edit tags quickly using this feature. Code Hints can be helpful if you are stuck and need some help writing code for your web pages. The Site Setup Wizard is a quick and easy way to help you set up your web site. The collapsible and dockable panels are great to have. Having to move a toolbar out of your way all of the time is a pain. This new program feature will take some of the grouchiness out of my web page design.

Fireworks MX is a program that is used to create graphics to be used in web pages. This program has been very successful in its earlier versions. Now Macromedia has beefed it up some and made sure it was compatible and integrated with the other Studio MX programs. Not only is it compatible with other Macromedia products, this version has a feature that will open Photoshop 6 files with fully editable text. The program also features things like roundtrip editing functions with Microsoft FrontPage.

Some features that users are sure to love are the Horizontal Pop-Up Menus, the Graphics Wizard, the Answers Panel and the Property Inspector. There is also the Instance-Level Button Properties and Slice Table Layout Controls. The Property Inspector is like the one in Dreamweaver, where you can inspect and change properties of a specific object that you are working on in Fireworks. The Answers Panel is also like the ones in the other Studio MX Programs. The Data-Driven Graphics wizard is helpful in that it cuts down the time needed to replicate graphics by assigning variables to graphic and web elements. These variables can then be referenced quickly and another instance of the element added to your work. The Slice Table Layout Controls help you set up and optimize all of your slice tables. This is done by dragging out the slice guides and having the program automatically resize them for you after any work is done to the table.

With the Instance-Level Button Properties feature, you can now create navigation bars with multiple buttons. Each one of these buttons can have their own URL properties. The text labels can also be different for each button on the navigation bar. This will make it easier for web designers seeking to make navigation bars that are unique. The Horizontal Pop-Up Menus feature allows you to create pop up menus that go left to right rather than up and down. Placement of the menus is now easier and the color and shading are now more in the hands of the designer than the program defaults.

Last year I wrote a review of the Flash 5 Freehand 10.Studio. The gist of the review was that with Freehand 10 Macromedia had “added some new elements to an already good program.” Click here if you would like to read the review.

The ColdFusion MX program is for the people who are designing server applications. When Macromedia picked up Allaire and its products, ColdFusion was a top selling program. Macromedia has enhanced some of the features and added it to this suite. It can be easily integrated with the other components in this suite. You can now use ActionScript (a Macromedia programming language) in your server side applications.

As you will find most of the help for the program online, Macromedia didn’t provide individual manuals for each component. Instead the suite ships with a single, 388-page manual that covers all of the components. This may not be enough for some folks who bristle at having to use online help. For those people; I’m sure that there will be a book or two out about Studio MX that you can read. I know that Macromedia Press/ Peachpit Press have books out on Flash MX. There probably will be others that follow those.

Some of you might also bristle at the pricing. The complete, new user, price is $ 799 U.S. That might seem a little steep until you find out that the programs will cost at least $ 300 each if sold individually. The Upgrade price is either $ 599 or $ 399, depending on the product you are upgrading from. There is also an Educational full version price of $ 199. This last price is for those users who qualify for educational discounts from venders such as full time students or professors.

If you want a full featured web application suite, then Macromedia Studio MX is well worth taking a look at. Flash is becoming the number one web animation tool. Dreamweaver and ColdFusion are quickly replacing other software as web designer’s application of choice. Freehand won’t be everyone’s cup of tea for drawing capabilities, but is still a nice graphics program. And Fireworks is a pretty decent web graphics design and editing program. With all of these programs thrown together, you should have a well rounded suite for web page and application design.

To find out additional information about Macromedia Studio MX, visit the Macromedia web site. It can be found at www.macromedia.com.