Macromedia Studio MX 2004 released!

Can't afford it just at the moment but it looks very good though, much more CSS based with cross browser validation built in!

I heard that Flash now has a spel* checker, although it didn't seem to be mentioned there. I'll have to download the trial version and find out! Overall there don't seem to be ahuge number of improvements - it may not be worth upgrading.

If anyone checks out the trial versions please give us a review! I'm downloading flash right now - might do Dreamweaver today as well. Man, I hate all these forms they make you go through!

* edit - see, I need one!

Oh boy! Oh boy! Dreamweaver 2004 does not seem to do font tags! Yay! Anytime you try to change the font in the properties palette it just creates a new style. It also has a drop down to apply existing styles, showing their formattting if possible (a la Word) so you can easily see what it will look like. So the functionality that used to be in the apply styles view of the design palette is now in the property inspector and the design palette only shows the edit styles view.

Another biggie is improved support for div's - you can select a div right from design view and add one from the insert palette or menus instead of having to go into the code every time. Now possible to do flexible CSS layout without code view. Awesome!

Table editing is much improved. You can now add rows or columns directly from design view instead of having to go through the menus. When you insert a table you're also given the option to put headers along either side or along both sides and add a caption.

That's all for now!

Edit: The new page properties box has five sections - you can change your body tag properties here (background, margins, fonts etc.),the same for headings at each level, links (basic support for hovers), title/encoding, and tracing image... I guess people still want that.

Flash MX 2004

Haven't spent too much time with it yet. Timeline effects are kind of neat, but a little ackward at first. Spell checking is way better than I thought it would be - lots of settings you can change, including the language.

I'm not a real flash expert so I'm not getting into the actionscripting aspects at all.

Just tried the browser support check thing. The odd thing is that the default settings just check NS 4 and IE 5 ?!?!? Not Mozilla, Opera, or Safari. And really, who's checking for NS 4 anymore? Weird.

More - I don't like the new files palette configuration. It's now showing a list of all your available drives (of which I have 7, plus the usual a-d) above the list of defined sites. This means I have to scroll down to see my defined sites!

There *is* an option to show page titles, which would be really nice if I could figure out how to turn it on (option is greyed out).

Is anyone reading this? Just wondering if I should keep my running commentary to myself.

Will work with Flash today.

Im reading it Megan , thanks.

I never really got into DW MX, I just use its basic features to save me coding time. So as you describe certain features beyond the "listing" that Macromedia provides it is really helpfull in deciding if I should go forward or stay with this one.

I'm reading as well

Okay, cool

On to flash.

They've made some really irritating changes in keyboard shortcuts. Like tab no longer clears the palettes by default. Had had to make some changes to those settings.

Speaking of tabs, they've got a new tabbed interface like Dreamweaver's. Problem is that it takes up vertical screen space, which is at a premium with the properties palette at the bottom.

Nice new spell checker (more sophisticated than Dreamweaver's), but no accompanying improvement in text editing features. Rather ironic - you can do sophisticated spell checking, but you can't do bullets. I still hate the text properties being in that little pop-up.

Oh! Another really irritating thing - scaling is always done from center, even with imported jpeg's. Before, this was the case with symbols but not with imported graphics. I really wish it would always transform from the upper left (like every other program out there). Or at least it could have a setting to scale from center or scale from left corner. Overall I find the preference settings in flash to be rather skimpy. I also wish that you could view the timelines in other time formats (like minutes and seconds rather than just seconds).

nothing to add other than I'm reading, too.

I'm reading too, because I've been lusting after Dreamweaver for a long time. Just need the $$$.

Quote: Originally posted by Megan
Oh! Another really irritating thing - scaling is always done from center, even with imported jpeg's. Before, this was the case with symbols but not with imported graphics. I really wish it would always transform from the upper left (like every other program out there). Or at least it could have a setting to scale from center or scale from left corner.

However, scalining of flash vector objects is still done from the left corner. So a solution to the scalining of images problem is to break them apart before trying to scale.

I forgot to mention some of the improvements in alignment capabilities. When you drag an object around the stage dotted lines will pop up when you get close to being in alignment with other objects. So you can easily snap your object into alignment with something else. That's kind of neat.

"Another really irritating thing - scaling is always done from center, even with imported jpeg's."

If you set the image reg point to the top left corner (0,0) it will scale from the top left corner, not the center.

One of the major features of this new version of Flash is the new Javascript syntax which has class support and a more rigid syntax implementation.

TonyMontana

Well so far the most exciting new feature to me: CSS in flash! this is going to save sooo much editing time and just opens the door for a lot of new production methods!

Quote: Originally posted by TonyMontana
"Another really irritating thing - scaling is always done from center, even with imported jpeg's."

If you set the image reg point to the top left corner (0,0) it will scale from the top left corner, not the center.

Okay, sorry for being so dumb, but how do I do that? I'm finding this new help palette to be rather difficult to work with. Is there a way to get this into a normal browser window as usual? It's irritatng to try to find room for it on the screem, and it seems to want to import my font sizes from IE (which keeps adjusting itself to small for some reason, which I don't want), so I'm having a really hard time evne reading anything in there.

Edit: Figured it out. Still annoying that it does that by default IMO.

I'm going to have to figure this CSS stuff out - unfortunately my action script skills have gotten very rusty! Not that they were all that great to start with!