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Announcing what its chief technology officer called "the most significant and broad set of product releases Macromedia has ever undertaken as a company," Macromedia is announcing upgrades to a passel of its Web design and development tools, including Dreamweaver, ColdFusion, and Fireworks.

The new versions being unveiled Monday bring the products into Macromedia's MX family, which already includes its flagship Web animation and interactivity runtime application Flash MX, said Jeremy Allaire, chief technology officer. The releases, which the company has been working on for nearly 18 months, are another step in Macromedia's vision to unify the tasks of Web design and Web development, he said.

The unity will lead to a different kind of Internet, Allaire said. The current Internet is built around the browsing metaphor, but the Internet of the future will enable more interaction by users, he said. That approach will require a rich client, good server technology, and top notch design tools, he said.

All the products announced Monday will be available in early June, Allaire said. Dreamweaver MS will be priced at $399 and Fireworks MX will sell for $299. Studio MX will be priced at $799. ColdFusion MX will be priced at $799 per server for the Server Professional Edition, while the Enterprise Edition will run $4,999 per server.

Easier Page Creation

Macromedia's rich client offering, the Flash MX player, is already available and plays "a central role in this strategy," Allaire said. The Flash MX player can work as an application environment for desktop and handheld programs and will be Web services-aware, he said.

New design tools for Macromedia's vision of a new Internet arrive in the form of MX-series versions of the visual Web page creation package Dreamweaver and the Web graphics and animation tool Fireworks, he said. Dreamweaver MX now includes four previously separate products: Dreamweaver, Dreamweaver UltraDev, ColdFusion Studio, and HomeSite, Allaire said. The four applications have been tightly integrated and share a common code base, he said.

The new Dreamweaver improves the visual tools for creating Web pages and integrates other applications, such as Flash MX, to support creating Web applications and services, he said. Dreamweaver MX also allows for the creation of .Net services and Java applications as well, he said.

Fireworks MX adds support for XML and smooths the export of graphics and HTML to other applications, he said. Fireworks is used by designers to build and optimize Web graphics and small animations.

Dreamweaver and Fireworks run on a number of Windows and Macintosh platforms; the new versions add support for Windows XP as well as native support for Mac OS X, he said.

ColdFusion Revamped

ColdFusion MX also supports Microsoft's .Net Web services initiative. It includes Flash Remoting, server software that lets developers create Flash applications that can interoperate with business logic and Web services, he said.

Macromedia also announced the release of Studio MX, a suite of products that includes Dreamweaver MX, ColdFusion MX Server Developer Edition, Fireworks MX, Flash MX and the Freehand 10 illustration package.

The new MX products were designed to be tightly integrated and the tools, such as Dreamweaver and Fireworks, ship with the MX Workspace, a common workspace for those MX-series applications, Allaire said.

The second component of Macromedia's vision is addressed with ColdFusion MX, Allaire said. The upgrade redefines ColdFusion, moving it from a proprietary application server to one that works with Java 2 Enterprise Edition application servers and makes it easier to develop Web applications and services, according to Allaire. Script writers, not only developers, can use it to create Web services and applications, he said.

The MX series of products further underscores Macromedia's move away from head-to-head competition with Adobe into a more Web-focused area, Allaire said. While Adobe is strong in publishing, especially with its PDF technology, Macromedia is looking more squarely at the integration of applications runtimes and Web applications and tools, according to Allaire.

Customers Receptive

One Macromedia customer happy with this focus on integration is FoxSports.com, which is developing an application that runs desktops and gives users real-time sports scores and news, said Adam Bain, FoxSports.com vice president of production and development. The application will use Flash MX and XML to deliver the information, he said.

FoxSports.com had been waiting for the kinds of capabilities offered by Flash MX and was excited to get a chance to implement them, Bain said. In addition, Flash MX supports microphones and cameras, hinting at possible future multimedia applications that interest FoxSports.com, he said.

New features in Dreamweaver MX, especially the XML support, make the product more attractive to FoxSports.com and the company is considering a switch, Bain added. FoxSports.com currently uses Web tools that were created internally.

"Overall, they've done a really great job of addressing some of the sticky spots from earlier versions," Bain said. The new versions are "a nice evolution for both products."

New features in Dreamweaver MX, especially the XML support, make the product more attractive to FoxSports.com and the company is considering a switch, Bain added. FoxSports.com currently uses Web tools that were created internally.

"Overall, they've done a really great job of addressing some of the sticky spots from earlier versions," Bain said. The new versions are "a nice evolution for both products."

The marriage of Flash and Web applications makes a lot of sense, says Randy Souza, a Forrester analyst. Interactive Web applications right now are "anemic," he said, but Flash "allows you to put together some pretty compelling and, most importantly, some pretty responsive applications."

Macromedia has also helped to make them easier to develop, Souza said. The company has in the past helped "developers to understand new and emerging Web technologies," he said, citing the releases of Dreamweaver and ColdFusion as tools that allow users who weren't sophisticated programmers to adopt new technologies. The company is "continuing that with MX," he said.

While he doesn't necessarily agree with Allaire that this is Macromedia's broadest and most significant announcement to date, Souza did see Monday's news as making "a ton of sense." Bringing the various products that form Dreamweaver MX together, along with outlining a strategic direction for the company, makes for "a line of products that is very compelling," he said.

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