Macromedia Studio MX

It mightsound like I'm gushing, but quite honestly, I haven't been this excited about asuite of software since the initial bundled release of Microsoft Office. TheMacromedia Studio MX CD-ROM has five separate, sophisticated applications, eachof which deserves a detailed review of its own. In the interest of space andtime, however, I'll summarize the most notable qualities (both good and bad) ofeach piece of software.

Dreamweaver MX

WhenDreamweaver first appeared in the late 1990s, it was regarded as one of thefirst WYSIWYG Web-design tools that got it right. It gave an accurate visualrepresentation of page layout while allowing designers to use metaphorspreviously restricted to desktop-publishing applications. HTML code jockeys whopreferred HomeSite or Notepad loved Dreamweaver because it was one of the firstdesign tools that didn't mangle their code. Dreamweaver later gave birth toUltraDev, an enhanced version that supported a live data view of data-queryresults, so designers could construct pages the way the presentation wouldappear in the final form. UltraDev also added code hints and syntax support forASP and JavaServer Pages (JSP).

DreamweaverMX dramatically goes beyond UltraDev by supporting most of the majorWeb-scripting languages available on the Web today, including ASP.NET, PHP, andMacromedia's proprietary ColdFusion syntax. Dreamweaver MX also supports XHTML,XML, ECMAScript, VBScript, VB .NET, and C#.

AsFigure 1 illustrates, the Dreamweaver MX environment is packed with options.The design pane allows artists to populate a Web page without seeing a line ofcode. Conversely, a developer can have all the formatting, highlighting, hints,and other sophisticated features found in code editors of expensive IDEswithout seeing any graphical representation of their creation. Naturally, theoptimal setup is to have both views synchronized in action, and Dreamweaver MXoffers this flawlessly. It also supports document templates to make therelationship between the inspired artist and analytical code writer atrustworthy partnership. One suggestion to keep in mind, however, is thatediting in this mode requires a considerable amount of screen real estate and,as such, necessitates running the program at 1600-by-1200 resolution or, betteryet, with dual monitors.

Figure 1. Dreamweaver MX is the mostcomprehensive Web-syntax-agnostic client-presentation code editor and designeravailable today.

Anotherstrong point is Dreamweaver's broad, technology-agnostic support for differentWeb-scripting, application-server, and operating-system environments, includingMicrosoft's ASP and .NET frameworks. Dreamweaver also supports Web Servicesthrough a painless, two-step Web Services Description Language (WSDL)consumption process. Dreamweaver can round-trip its live data connections withdatabases ranging from DB2 and Oracle to Microsoft Access, SQL Server, and evenopen-source favorite MySQL. The Windows version even supports file transfersusing Unix Secure Shell connections, courtesy of a free extension fromMacromedia's Exchange website.

Givenall the possibilities, it's nearly impossible to test every developmentscenario, but the program didn't hiccup once in the substantial amount of timeI spent with it developing C#-based, database-enabled ASP.NET pages (yes,Dreamweaver fully supports ASP.NET tags, Web forms, and DataGrid and DataListobject introspection).

I couldgo on about how the product comes bundled with integrated, fully searchable,electronic editions of O'Reilly's HTML, CSS, and JavaScript titles; and Wrox'sASP 3.0 and JSP reference titles. I could go on about how design behaviors canbe implemented on a page easily, how the product's site-management tools makeestablishing and maintaining a Web site's structure effortless, or how macroscan be generated and replayed through the Dreamweaver command menu easily.Dreamweaver MX is so rich and vast that technical-book publishers are sure tohave a field day exploring the application's nearly limitless possibilities.

Flash MX

Nearlyeveryone with a browser has come across a Flash animation while surfing theWeb. Because of the pervasiveness of the Flash plug-in, Macromedia officialsdecided to evolve this nifty multimedia tool into an enterprise-class,client-development tool capable of retrieving and displaying data from a varietyof sources. One of the most important additions to the Flash 6 client, besidesits ability to embed and play back Sorenson Spark-compressed video, is itssupport for Macromedia's proprietary Action Message Format. This compact,binary message structure allows Flash clients to communicate in real time backto the Web server from which the Flash file was delivered, thereby essentiallyreplacing static Web forms with Flash-enabled dynamic presentations of data.Macromedia calls this practice Flash Remoting. Several showcases of thistechnology are displayed on Macromedia's Web site. The most prominent demo is ahotel-reservation system that only requires a single Web page with an embeddedFlash reference to book rooms, from room selection to credit-card payment.However, one serious impediment to this type of Flash application being adoptedin the e-commerce world is its current lack of trusted, secure connectionnotification. A padlock appears in the status bars of popular Web browsers(complete with the ability to click on the padlock to query the validity of thesecure certificate), but Flash lacks this critical feature. Until Macromediaaddresses this show-stopping problem, the product's use will be severelyrestricted to tasks such as public data display.

Whencoupled with the ColdFusion application server, Flash Remoting can offer someamazing and innovative application-development opportunities, particularly forembedded devices for which Macromedia has released the Flash client, such asMicrosoft's Pocket PC and Nokia's 9200 Communicator. Think about it: Instead ofusing Microsoft's pokey eMbedded Visual Basic or unfriendly and time-consumingeMbedded Visual C++ toolkits to connect wireless Pocket PC clients to real-timedata, programmers rapidly can develop stunning visual-presentation clientscapable of doing more than simply displaying data. Because numerousmedia-manipulation and playback facilities exist in the client, it's quitepossible to deliver charts, graphs, and even audio that the client canmanipulate for even more meaningful data presentation. Entrepreneurial WindowsCE programmer Anthony Armenta of Ant Mobile Software has developed aslick wizard named FlashAssist Pro. With a few clicks of the mouse, FlashAssistPro generates source code automatically that loads and hosts a Flash file fromwithin a native Windows CE executable. By using Flash MX and FlashAssist Protogether, the development time for native Windows CE applications has been cutin half.

Fireworks MX

At itscore, Fireworks MX (see Figure 2) is a paint program. But it's a paint programwritten from the ground up to create bitmap and vector-based objects for theonline environment. As such, all the features are optimized with Web-safecolors and online image delivery in mind. Besides the usual gif, jpg, and pngimage file formats, Fireworks MX also facilitates the painless creation ofanimated gifs, especially for rollover button and menu creation prevalent on Webpages today.

Figure 2. Fireworks MX provides numerouscolor- and image-manipulation options to help optimize the way images aredelivered to and displayed in today's Web browsers.

Multiplelayers and masks make it easy to reconstruct new artwork from previouslyassembled objects - a real time saver for those rollovers with different textlabels. Fireworks also includes a selection of image filters, though not nearlyas many as other graphics programs such as Jasc Paint Shop Pro or AdobePhotoshop provide. Competitors, however, don't offer the level of integrationFireworks has with other MX applications, particularly Dreamweaver MX. Forexample, after the navigational image elements have been created in Fireworks,selecting ExportHTML for Dreamweaver willsave the content for seamless, problem-free import into a Dreamweaver page,with all the fidelity and functionality retained.

The mostinteresting feature in Fireworks MX is its ability to generate graphicsautomatically from an XML file, using the new Data-Driven Graphics Wizard. Thisallows text templates in an image to be updated from the supplied XML datadynamically. Think of it as a mail merge for graphics. As such, hundreds ofunique buttons, banners, and menus can be created instantly, based on theoriginal template file.

FreeHand 10

Of allthe applications included with Studio MX, FreeHand is, by far, the weakestproduct of the bunch. It's called FreeHand 10 for a reason: Macromediaobviously had its staff's hands full simultaneously upgrading the company'smost popular products. Considering that FreeHand's main purpose is to generatevector graphics for Flash MX consumption, it's apparent to me that FreeHandtook a back seat. As Figure 3 shows, FreeHand's bland interface doesn't sportthe consistent MX interface design. 

Figure 3. FreeHand 10 is the only mainprogram included in the suite that has yet to sport the consistent MX userinterface.

FreeHand10's most severe omission is probably its inability to output to ScalableVector Graphic (SVG) format. Many standards proponents envision SVG replacingFlash as the dynamic vector-viewing format of choice. This is highly unlikelyfor two reasons: because of the massive installation of Flash players bundledwith all the major browsers on all the major platforms, and because the ease ofcreating Flash files with ECMAScript-based ActionScript is considerably easierthan authoring a comparable XML-based SVG file version. Even Adobe (the maincommercial advocate behind the specification) has somewhat acquiesced with therelease of LiveMotion, which can generate basic Flash format files. Obviously,it's in Macromedia's interest not to promote the use of SVG adoption, and theomission of SVG support in both Flash and FreeHand is a sign that Macromedia intendsto keep it this way.

ColdFusion MX Developer

One ofthe products acquired through Macromedia's purchase of Allaire was its flagshipWeb-application-server product, ColdFusion. ColdFusion MX (see Figure 4) isMacromedia's actualization of ColdFusion's next-generation release.

Figure 4. ColdFusion MX Developer isidentical to the Enterprise edition but is limited to use with asingle-developer IP connection.

Ratherthan executing the ColdFusion Markup Language (CFML) parsing engine inmachine-dependent and memory-leak-prone C++, ColdFusion MX merges its CFMLsyntax with its JRun Java application server in the form of a JSP tag library.Hence, ColdFusion MX is a full-blown, robust, standards-based Web-applicationserver that can consume Java 2 Platform Enterprise Edition (J2EE) and MicrosoftCOM-based objects as well as legacy CFML-based Web applications, with the addedbenefit of sandboxing the server processes. Gone are the days of rebootingColdFusion servers because of memory leaks and runaway processes. Plus, withlittle or no alteration, ColdFusion MX can host JSPs (including those callingJ2EE services) developed for use with overpriced and underused Java applicationservers.

Thebiggest reason ColdFusion MX is the server of choice for Macromedia Studio MXprobably is that it's the only server capable of Flash Remoting. If Flash isbeing considered for its new data-transaction capabilities, ColdFusion MX isinevitably part of that equation. And Flash should be considered becauseColdFusion continues its tradition of making the hard stuff easy. One reasonColdFusion caught on the way it did was its ability to connect to a databaseand display query results to Web clients with easy lines of code. ColdFusion MXelevates this theme of simplicity to XML Web Services with a single keyword. Bysetting the access parameter of any ColdFusion function equal to remote,ColdFusion instantly turns that function into a Web Service ready forconsumption by any .NET, Java, Perl, Python, or other Web Service-capablelanguage. ColdFusion can consume Web Services hosted by these other platformsalmost as easily. Simply set the webservice parameter of the CFINVOKEmethod equal to the URL of the WSDL file and pass the parameters to the remoteserver by setting the name and value of the parameter using the CFINVOKEARGUMENTelement. That's it! I thought .NET made it easy to create and consume WebServices, but ColdFusion makes it as easy as breathing.

To makeit simple for Macromedia Studio MX users to appreciate the incrediblytime-saving and downright cool features ColdFusion server provides, Macromediahas included a Developer edition of the product identical in every way to itstop-of-the-line ColdFusion MX Enterprise edition, with one important exception:a single connection from the same machine on which the server is installed.When they say Developer edition, they aren't kidding.

Tell us what you think! Please send anycomments about this review to [email protected] include the review title and author.

asp:factfile

Macromediahas packaged the most comprehensive and affordable software suite sinceMicrosoft Office. Macromedia Studio MX contains all the tools serious Webdevelopers and designers need to create stunning Web sites in a fraction of thetime it would take to code them using traditional text editors. MacromediaStudio MX also elevates Flash beyond simple click-through animations into a trulyuseful and exciting presentation layer for data. With the release of the MXfamily, Macromedia has cemented its position as one of the main softwarecompanies whose products will continue to drive Internet innovation for yearsto come.

Here areMacromedia Studio MX's highlights: 

Theseare the product's weak points: 

MacromediaInc.

600Townsend St.

SanFrancisco, CA 94103

Phone:(415) 252-2000

Web Site:http://www.macromedia.com

Price:US$799

Rating: