Macromedia Piles Everything Into Studio 8

With Dreamweaver, Flash Professional, Fireworks, Contribute, and FlashPaper inside, Studio 8 offers a comprehensive package for web developers.

Studio 8 comes along as San Francisco-based Macromedia announces new versions of several core products. Dreamweaver, Flash Professional, and Fireworks all arrived on Monday with new versions.

But for the digital media developer, Studio 8 includes all of those products. In a press release, Macromedia also notes the presence of new video encoding tools. Those will be useful for people who want to place a spot on Al Gore’s Current TV.

The Dreamweaver web authoring component has enhanced visual design features for creating Cascading Style Sheet layouts. The company also improved support for XML and XSLT developing, by providing more “code hints” for developers.

Flash Professional gives developers the key to getting content, including Flash Video, onto millions of computers around the world. The client player software has been available for multiple platforms for a few years now.

As more Internet households turn to broadband providers, more ad creators will find increased demand for enhanced ads. Studio 8 looks like an effective way to put a lot of tools in the hands of developers for the online advertising and interactive content markets.

David Utter is a staff writer for WebProNews covering technology and business. Email him here.