CNet and MacMerc report about a new line of products at Macromedia. According to CNet, Macromedia plans to announce an upgrade to its MX line today. Here is a primer of what's to come:
- Flash MX 2004. Flash will now be delivered in two versions (same binary, different licenses) with a new Professional Edition that focuses on video content integration. Both add support for ActionScript 2.0, CSS, accessibility, PDF+EPS and a spell checker.
- Dreamweaver MX 2004. DW new features are Expanded Table Mode to zoom on tables (but you shouldn't design with tables, should you?), SFTP (at last!), MS Office support (promises to convert to CSS on the fly, I'm looking forward to that one), built-in validation for cross-browser support, better CSS design support.
- Fireworks MX 2004. Comes with check-in/check-out support, unicode, faster, a cleaner UI and the ability to customize the application menu.
- Studio MX 2004. As usual, the Studio package will wrap all those applications in one box.
Macromedia continues to focus on standards (XHTML, CSS, unicode), accessibility and integration within its products. I bet the Standards Knights will give the MX 2004 family a close look as soon as they ship, since Macromedia is instrumental in the mass adoption of web standards within the web design shops.
Macromedia is also expected to release Flash 7, which is already available in beta.