Just don't expect Adobe's plans to buy Macromedia to result in hybrid Adobe-Macromedia software quite yet Studio 8 offers no such surprises. And Flash, Fireworks, and Dreamweaver now optimize multimedia content for cell phones, PDAs, and other mobile gadgets yet to come. To shrink the file sizes and hasten the playback time of Flash animation on end-user desktops, Macromedia gutted and rebuilt its popular Flash Player. The most tantalizing new product in this bundle is Flash 8, particularly because it introduces alpha channel video creation and provides abundant new effects that animators can manipulate in real time. Vector graphics app FreeHand MX has vanished from the suite, partly because it duplicated functions offered by Fireworks. Also included are the PDF maker FlashPaper 2 and the Web site manager Contribute 3. The suite wraps together an animation tool, Flash 8 a Web design app, Dreamweaver 8 and a graphics editor, Fireworks 8. Many digital content makers can find their way around Macromedia software in their sleep, but the upgrade to Studio 8 makes common tasks easier to execute for those without coding expertise. Macromedia Studio 8 is a complete toolkit for Web designers and animators, and it introduces new features that will make creative mouths water.
