The Skinny on the New Macromedia Products...

Well, as some of you might know, MAX 2004, one of the largest Macromedia conferences in the universe, was held in New Orleans over the weekend. I didn't go, but it sounds like fun was had by all. Particularity interesting was a sneak peak session in which some of the Macromedians demo'ed early (probably alpha or even pre-alpha) version of upcoming software. Here are some of the highlights:

BREEZE

If you were ever worried about missing a Breeze conference/presentation, worry no more. Tom Hale & Peter Ryce showed a cell phone notification system that will be integrated in a future release version of Breeze. Personally, I don't think I would ever be worried about missing a Breeze conference/presentation because, frankly, I don't know of a single soul who actually uses the service/application - but that speaks more to the circles I run in than the popularity of the actual program. Nonetheless, the feature sounds interesting.


FIREWORKS

Frankly, the news from MAX about Fireworks was rather underwhelming. I know its not Macromedia's particular focus right now (and there have been rumors circulating about the fact that Macromedia is going to roll Fireworks into Dreamweaver one of these days), but come on! Fireworks is a great program that is only enhanced by its super duper tight integration with DWMX2004. Anyway, new features such as improved red eye reduction, text along paths, automated text layer on text creation, and improved "Save As" functionality.


FLASH PLAYER

The new features of the upcoming Flash player (code named Maelstrom) at MAX come on the heels of a demo my Mike Chambers at the Macromedia Flash Conference in Tokyo at the end of October. Interestingly enough, Colin Moock recorded the demo in Tokyo, so you can have a look at what I'm talking about (http://www.moock.org/blog/archives/000147.html). Features included dramatic framerate improvement, realtime graphic effects rendered by eh player (glow, drop shadow, blur, etc.), vastly improved text rendering (courtesy of a new text engine called Saffron), and a new video codec that produces incredible looking video.


DREAMWEAVER

As was expected, Dreamweaver was heavily featured. It look like there are going to be a lot of new and interesting features in the next version of DW...can't wait to get my hands on a beta (whenever they get to that point). Stuff that was discussed included template driven design using XML/XSL, binding with XSL stylesheets, a code toolbar (ala Homesite), drag and drop XML/XLS, including repeating regions, a new zoom tool (that would allow you to zoom in on troublesome areas of a table for examples, and new/improved CSS layout tools. I think I'm most excited about the CSS stuff. I would be happier than hell if they created some sort of visual CSS layout tool (something like WestCiv's Layout Master).


MACROMEDIA HELP

One of the unexpected sneak peaks didn't have anything to do with new software at all. Instead, it was a look at the completely re-designed knowledge management/help system. Anyone who has ever tried to extract some useful information out of the mess of technotes on Macromedia's website will be familiar with the sense of extreme frustration that many feel. As a result, Macromedia has really made an effort to make their online help system far more usable and approachable. First off, we're going to see a true centralized knowledge base that will contain help documents for all of the software and be accessible by a very powerful and flexible search engine. There was also talk of interactive software/technique demos powered by Macromedia Captivate (formerly eHelp RoboDemo). On top of all of this, they are going to be instituting RSS feeds for almost everything -product tech notes, forums threads, etc. I'm particularity excited about this one since I've become so damn obsessed with RSS (especially how it integrates into Firefox via LiveBookmarks) as of late.

It looks like Macromedia is definitely on the road to another significant round of releases. The good thing is that it also looks like they are going to let the current versions of their applications have a little more in the way of lifespan before they release the next versions. So, don't look for these new releases any time soon - I would guess that they are at least a year away (perhaps more),