Almost every project we produce at my company uses at least one Studio
application and incorporates some form of video or Flash, and
ultimately, it ends up on CD, DVD or the Web. Fortunately, with every
iteration of the products that compose Studio- in the case of Studio 8,
that’s Dreamweaver 8, Flash Professional 8 (including new Flash 8 Video
Encoder), Fireworks 8, Contribute 3.1 and FlashPaper 2- Macromedia (now
in the able hands of Adobe) is making it easier to get the job done,
with increasingly impressive results.

One of the things I was anxious to see in the new version was whether
application speeds would improve in Studio 8. I tested the software on
several different Macs, including a 1.5 GHz PowerBook G4 and a duel 1.8
GHz PowerMac G5, and found slight speed improvements. Dreamweaver’s
launch was at least five seconds faster than that of the MX 2004
version, and the interface seemed to be more "fluid" than that of its
predecessor. Best of all, the application no longer seems to get bogged
down when a lot of fonts are open.

Macromedia notes that core stability improvements have been made, but
besides the slow interface responses of earlier versions, I never found
MX or MX 2004 to be extremely unstable. For those of you who did, you
should see a much better behaving Studio this time around.

If you do a lot of server-side programming with languages like PHP,
you’ll be happy to know that Dreamweaver 8 supports PHP 5, but the
really big story is the support for XSL Translations (XSLT) and
improved support for XML. Now maybe I won’t be as frightened to use XML
data sources for jobs that don’t require a database but do require some
sort of formatted text data source. I could see this being used for
pages that have templated content, or perhaps some sort of blog without
a MySQL database driving it.

With Dreamweaver 8, it’s easier than ever to add Flash video to a Web
site. All you have to do is direct the application to the file, select
the kind of playback controls you want and you’re done. Of course,
you’ll still need Flash or the Flash Video Encoder to put your video
into the FLV format, but it sure is nice not having to write the code
to integrate the video into a site.

One thing I found odd in Dreameaver, though: When adding an FLV to a
Web page by selecting Import Flash Video, I couldn’t preview the video
the way I can when I place a Flash movie. Macromedia says it will
consider adding this feature in a future release; I hope they do.

One of the greatest things about Flash has always been great
interactivity wrapped in a small file size. Now Macromedia is doing
even more to keep the size of Flash files down by rendering advanced
effects at runtime.

With the new addition of runtime effects such as drop shadows, glows
and a Photoshop-like layer effects palette, Flash becomes more of a
design tool and a tremendous asset to my workflow. In earlier versions,
there were no efficient ways of achieving such effects- only tricky
workarounds with bitmap images.

The addition of layer-blending effects like those of Photoshop
(multiply, overlay and hard light, for example) is also a major plus. I
use those features all the time in Photoshop, and until now,
re-creating the effects in Flash was a problem. Now I have similar
options built into Flash.

If there is one downside to the new Flash, it’s that taking advantage
of features such as rendering effects at runtime will require end users
to have the Flash 8 plug-in. Not everyone in every target audience is
diligent about updating their plug-ins, so, until users upgrade to the
latest versions, some of the benefits could be lost on them.

Included only in Flash Professional and not the stand-alone version of
Flash is support for true alpha-channel transparency. Video effects
artists and editors should be thrilled, because it means no more
masking; it also means smaller file sizes because you won’t have to
cheat by exporting 24-bit PNG files with transparency to achieve the
effects. This alone makes purchasing Studio worthwhile. (The benefits
of alpha-channel support, among other Flash features, are also
discussed in the November 2005 issue of
Studio/monthly,
www.studiomonthly.com/5567.html.)

The "batch" function of the Flash Video Encoder significantly speeds up
the export process. Also, much like Autodesk Cleaner or the Compressor
component of Final Cut Pro, it allows me to create and use my own
presets. I found that the Flash 8 video compressor, which is made by
On2, did a finer job with our graphically intensive demo reel than did
the Sorenson Spark codec used in the previous version of Flash. That
said, both codecs have always yielded desirable results. On2’s codec
seems to yield files with slightly smoother playback.

Studio 8 demonstrates clearly that Macromedia has an eye toward the
future. First, it includes a mobile emulator that demonstrates what
Flash content will look like when played on the Flash Lite Player for
mobile devices. Many of the emulators I’ve seen supplied by mobile
device manufacturers aren’t terribly good, and sometimes you can’t even
get an emulator from a manufacturer unless it’s for a
latest-and-greatest model. Macromedia’s list of templates for various
mobile devices is not extensive, and there are still many devices that
are not compliant with the Flash Lite player, but I’d imagine it won’t
be long before that changes. If you do a lot of work that’s destined
for a PDA or mobile phone, the emulator could be useful. Will it turn
you into a professional mobile app developer? Probably not, but it
can’t hurt.

Second, Flash presents the option of adding metadata to SWFs. In
theory, it’s great, because my one longstanding hesitation about
prescribing Flash for some clients has been that the files aren’t
spidered. For a client who cares about search visibility, it’s a lost
opportunity. The metadata feature may help you, but there’s a catch: I
asked Macromedia whether search engines are already spidering the
metadata, and the company said that Google, Yahoo! and MSN are planning
to do so, but haven’t done it yet. So, while we won’t see immediate
results from this development, it’s nice to know that the capability is
there.

Studio 8 is certainly worth the upgrade, but some of the features that
make it worth the upgrade aren’t backward compatible with the Flash 7
plug-in. It’s going to take a while for the public to be able to take
advantage of the content you can offer from this new software suite.
It’s possible that the next major release of Windows or the Mac OS will
help fuel this changeover, but there are still so many Windows users
out there with browsers using Flash 5 and 6 plug-ins.

Of course there are the workflow and speed improvements in Studio 8 to
tide you over. One thing is for sure: I’m excited to see what some
creative folks out there will do with these new features, and that’s
something I haven’t been able to say since the debut of Flash MX.