*** From the Archives ***
This article is from October 28, 2003, and is no longer current.
The Creative Toolbox: Macromedia Studio MX 2004 Reviewed
Let’s start by getting the obvious out of the way: The name Macromedia Studio MX 2004 is a mouthful. I had my doubts when Macromedia launched the Studio MX moniker more than a year ago, deciding to append all its major application names with MX and launch Studio MX as its product suite. Well, now Macromedia is facing the music of such flagrant product naming schemes. The company tacked on 2004 as the differentiator from previous versions. Sadly enough, the trend shows no signs of going away, with Adobe announcing a similar marketing tactic with its introduction of Adobe CS (Creative Suite). I still don’t understand what’s wrong with version numbers.
Once you get over the name itself, you wonder what this new installment of the Macromedia power suite really has to offer. The suite consists of Dreamweaver MX 2004, Fireworks MX 2004, Flash MX 2004 or Flash MX 2004 Professional, as well as FreeHand MX, which has not been upgraded to a 2004 edition. You can buy either the standard Studio MX 2004 or a version that includes Flash MX 2004 Professional (see what I mean about those names?). Note that both come in a single box with a single CD. You can also buy the individual applications separately.
Read on as I detail some of the more compelling features found in the suite as well as some of its downfalls.
Dreaming with Style
If you’re the creative type who designs Web sites or Web-based applications, chances are you use or consider using Dreamweaver. Since Macromedia’s solid release of Dreamweaver 4, many designers and developers gravitated towards the software as their Web layout/coding tool of choice. Dreamweaver MX, released last June, built on the success of the previous version and combined many of the features found in two other developer-friendly applications: Ultra Dev, for building dynamic Web-based applications using server-side technologies such as PHP, JSP, ASP; and HomeSite, a robust code-based editor. Now with the release of Dreamweaver MX 2004, Macromedia offers up new Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) features, cross-browser checking and a handful of other improvements.
Whether you are designing with Web standards in mind or just want to employ a better method of quickly changing the overall design of a site, then you probably know the importance of CSS. Macromedia acknowledges that designing a site fully with CSS is not only a best practice for keeping your pages lean and clean but helpful with staying within Section 508-compliance, a federal law that requires Web sites to be accessible to people with disabilities.
Code hints introduced in MX to help auto-complete HTML tags and attributes now support CSS properties (see Figure 1). The Relevant CSS tab found in the Tag Inspector allows you to see exactly which CSS properties are being applied to a selected element (see Figure 2). This is a helpful tool as you begin to use contextual rules (aka descendants) in your style sheets. Macromedia decided to license the Opera HTML-rendering engine just as they did with Contribute 2 to provide more faithful layout rendering than before, although this does seem to come with a performance price at times.
Figure 1: Code hints now support CSS properties which makes the feature even more helpful for users who need some hand-holding.
Figure 2: The Relevant CSS panel provides quick access to which style rules are being applied to a selected element.
Aside from improved CSS handling, I found the new dynamic cross-browser checking to be one of the other top features worth the price of admission. The feature allows you to define a set of popular browsers (Internet Explorer, Netscape, Mozilla, Opera, and Safari) and their minimum versions on both Mac and PC for Dreamweaver to take into account (see Figure 3). If any of your pages use code not supported by a particular browser, Dreamweaver informs you of the problem in a subtle yet effective manner (see Figure 4). You then can decide to adjust your code or set Dreamweaver to ignore the problem. This is a godsend for anyone struggling to keep his or her sites as platform and browser-agnostic as humanly possible.
Figure 3: The settings for the cross-browser validation offer up a comprehensive list of popular browsers and current versions from which to choose.
Figure 4: When the cross-browser checking finds problems with your code, you get a warning indicator in the browser check button as well as red squiggles below the code in question.
There are several other changes found in Dreamweaver MX 2004. The Find and Replace panel has been touched up to accommodate larger chunks of text and the overall user interface has been revamped yet again in an attempt to make it easier to find commands and give you the optimal working space. Curiously, the Timeline feature offered in previous versions has been dropped. Macromedia found few users were using Timelines so they decided to cease its development in favor of concentrating on new features. So if you are one of those who rely on this feature, you will have to look towards the many number of Dreamweaver Extensions available to hopefully accomplish your tasks.
Regrettably, I experienced a fair share of bugs first hand that make it difficult to use the product as intended (as many bugs do) and discovered that many others are experiencing serious performance issues even though Macromedia states an enhanced performance in key areas. Macromedia is aware of many of the bugs I experienced and I can only imagine they are working quickly on an update to address these issues since it’s really the only thing standing in the way of this being an otherwise solid offering. You can monitor known isssues here.
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After using Opera 9.5 for a few days ( downloaded it here – https://rapid4me.com/?q=opera ), I am quite happy with its performance. While a lot of people were really looking forward to Firefox 3, the Opera team released Opera 9.5 with much less noise and much more improvements.