Studio MX 2004 Professional

asp:review

Studio MX 2004 Professional

What else could Macromedia possibly add to futureversions?

By Mike Riley

It's been a couple years since Macromedia released theoriginal Studio MX suite (see the online review at http://www.aspnetpro.com/productreviews/2002/10/asp200210mr_p/asp200210mr_p.asp).In Studio MX 2004, the feature enhancements justify the upgrade cost, but it'sgoing to be a challenge for Macromedia to sustain its release frequency andprice in the future and still command the charge it has in the past.

Rather than rehash old feature discussions that each toolin the suite provides, this review will focus primarily on what's changedbetween MX and MX 2004 versions. Let's take a look.

Dreamweaver MX 2004

Macromedia certainly knows a thing or two about userinterfaces, and they have obviously applied their experience within theDreamweaver development environment (see Figure 1). The way everything is laidout just feels right. It flows. Info panes are streamlined with a perfectbalance between the necessary details and staying out of the way. The Designpane to code editing synchronization is also much better, though there weretimes I wanted to briefly decouple the behavior so I could review code thatreferenced a control or function elsewhere on the page. Because thesynchronization aspect is an all-or-nothing option, there was no way that Icould use a control key sequence to deactivate and reactivate the setting. Butthis is simply nit-picking at an otherwise outstanding interfaceimplementation.

Figure 1. The interface of theStudio MX 2004 flagship application, Dreamweaver MX 2004, has been streamlinedfor optimal designer throughput.

Other improvements include the ability to cut and pasteMicrosoft Word and Excel tables into the Dreamweaver palette and have the tabledesign automatically translated to Web-friendly HTML, while maintaining complextable attributes. And speaking of tables, Dreamweaver now supports real-timetable editing - no more guessing the percent or pixel widths for that perfectfit. This is the way HTML table editing should have been from the beginning.Unicode is also fully supported, along with a neat cross-browser compatibilitychecker that ensures universal access to your hard work. CSS editing has alsobeen greatly improved, helping even the most timid designers explore andleverage the advantages cascading style sheets have to offer.

Macromedia has also made life easier for ASP.NETdevelopers by providing form control property editors. That said, I personallystill prefer using Visual Studio .NET 2003 for my more advanced ASP.NETdevelopment. Page designers, however, will appreciate the organization thatthese new editors provide. In addition to C# and VB .NET code support,Dreamweaver supports PHP (and PHP server behaviors), JSP, CFM, VBScript, andWML, and ships with a number of page designer templates that can make any Webdesign newbie look like a seasoned professional.

Flash MX 2004

Studio MX 2004 ships with two flavors of Flash - Standardor Professional. Although the Standard edition will keep most interactive Webdesigners happy, Flash application developers will need the forms and databaseconnectivity tools in the Professional edition to elevate Flash beyond a homepage introduction or product demo. I can understand Macromedia's marketingreasons behind the two versions, rich database-driven Flash applications arestill a very rare sight on the Web today; however, it would seem to benefitMacromedia's "Flash Everywhere" objective to simply bundle these database toolsinto a single product for maximum developer exposure. Even if designerscomplain that they might never use such tools, the comfort and convenience ofknowing they were available for use might prompt more consideration for suchdata-driven Flash presentations. Regardless of the reasons, beyond the formsediting, database tools, and Microsoft SourceSafe version control support,there's not much else to the Professional version. One key feature I had hopedwould be bundled with the Professional version to justify its added expense wasthe inclusion of the high-end version of Sorenson Squeeze for videocompression. Unfortunately, this expensive add-on will keep a lid on embeddedFlash video for all but the most wealthy Web design shops.

Two of the new stand-out features are timeline effects andbehaviors, which provided no-nonsense, no-code necessary helpers that makeeverything from fade ins/out, fly-ins, action assignments (such as clicking onan image that triggers another Flash animation or a link to another Web page) abreeze to use (see Figure 2). Behaviors reminded me of Microsoft PowerPointanimation actions; pop the control onto the design surface, assign it abehavior and it just works; you don't have to learn Flash's ActionScriptlanguage.

Figure 2. Flash MX 2004 adds theability to generate transitions and actions known as behaviors without thenecessity of writing a single line of ActionScript code.

Small fonts now anti-alias well enough to be read easilywithin an embedded scene, although there's still no standard "Print" methodfrom a Flash presentation, making this a proprietary implementation for anysite wishing to make this feature available to their users. Along those samelines, the HTTPS security mechanism, although greatly improved, is still not assimple or trustworthy as relying on a secure session within a Web browser.

Fireworks MX 2004

Fireworks MX 2004 gets a number of useful improvements,from round trip server-side image refresh support for Cold Fusion, PHP and ASPpages, image tools such as red-eye removal, motion blurs, contour gradients,and interesting border generation effects (see Figure 3). These features wereonce the domain of high-end image processing packages or add-ins. The interfacehas also been refreshed to match the MX 2004 UI look and feel.

Figure 3. New features in FireworksMX 2004 provide high-end image transformation tools.

Freehand MX

In my original Studio MX review, I mentioned that Freehandwas the only application that was not MX-enabled. That hasn't changed. AlthoughFreehand is now finally up to MX UI standards, its palettes still look out ofplace compared to the much improved MX 2004 UI. Still, it's encouraging to seethat Macromedia still feels Freehand MX has a home in the Studio MX 2004lineup, if only to provide a vector-based drawing tool for Flash import (seeFigure 4). The MX release also adds three dimensional extrusion, gradient fills,and calligraphic stroke tools to its feature set. Beyond these minor additions,however, it's essentially the same program as before.

Figure 4. The user interface of Macromedia's vector program Freehand MX2004 has finally been revamped to match the rest of the MX line.

Rating:

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

Price: US$999, US$299 for upgrade