Studio MX 2004 with Flash

If you are serious about working on the web whether novice or professional, you cannot get any better than the Macromedia products. Ive owned the suite since the second version was out and, with the exception of Adobe PhotoShop, the Macromedia products are the ONLY thing I ever use. Dreamweaver MX 2004 with Flash Pro continues the tradition of creating seamless code so you have to do very little tweeking - only if you know how and need to do so! It saves me so much time in coding and I can trust that it will not add extensions that are not viewable by all, such as the Frontpage product. It has roundtrip HTML, meaning you can easily add your own code, modify existing code, etc. without any problems at all. The interface builds upon MX by making CSS much more powerful. You can view your CSS styles incase you forgot what it looked like very much as you would a font in Microsoft Word 2000. The pallets are more intuitive and takes a slight adjustment to get used to from MX. Dreamweaver MX 2004 also has more robust features with added internal extensions to make your code bank stronger. The simple drag and drop method makes it so easy to use. Ive used the MX 2004 version for about a month now and am thoroughly impressed. Its a significant upgrade and worth the money. Flash MX 2004 Pro and Fireworks MX Pro simply build more functionality and makes life much easier. Flash MX Pro has more powerful tools for backend developers, video streaming and WAP devices. The interface for all of the products are very easy to learn. I am a professional now, but have used the products prior to becoming professional and it has helped me to make my transition from professional counselor to full-time web developer a dream come true! If I can use it, ANYONE can!!

Ive been in the computer game since I was 5, so Ive had time to try out a lot of programs. From Adobe to Apple, Macromedia to Microsoft Ive tried most of the creative suites out there. I must say that of everything Ive ever used, Studio MX 2004 is the best collection of programs youll find (and its worth the money if you can get an academic discount). I am a web designer by trade and I found every program in MX 2004 useful. Flash is the recognized standard in online animation. With this program I created in 30 minutes a navbar which exceeds those of Apple and Microsoft for usability. In five minutes I created an animated advertisement (though not a very good one). Fireworks is simply the best multipurpose image editor (photoshop is better at pure images, but not as versatile). Fireworks can do everything from having flames fly out of a friends mouth to creating web animations that reach out to those who have not downloaded Flash Player. Freehand is the least useful program in this suite. It has not changed at all since MX, so it is a bit behind in features and integration. Still, I used it for creating sketches of layouts or classic thoughtwebs. Dreamweaver! Oh, what can I say about dreamweaver! Any web designer who does not praise this program is either a hard-core pure coder, or an imposter. With this new version it becomes a 10 second matter to change the font used on every page of my websites. Rather than going through 30 pages of html, I open up one css file and type a color, or font, or size change. It is a beautiful culmination of WYSIWYG (what you see is what you get) technology. While most people will balk at the $999 price tag, I say look around until you find a academic copy (I got one for $199). At a $700 discount you can buy this and a new computer to serve your creations to the world. Either way I say anyone who is a job where they need to construct creative projects for the web or presentations needs to pick up a copy of Macromedia Studio MX 2004.

I really like Macromedia software, in general. I do, however, find it slow on my (months old) Mac, under Panther. Both Adobe and Apples recent product upgrades seemed to speed their software up greatly (hey, wow, upgrades can DO that???) but these new versions of Dreamweaver and Flash are an insult to Mac users. The software is the slowest I use, even with plentiful memory in my computer. Even after Flashs belated patch that was released, the software is still unsatisfactory to me. Theres no real reason for this software to be so incredibly slow and buggy! Often I have these programs quit for no reason, I cant think of one other piece of software I use on my Mac that does such things. I havent tried the MX 2004 Windows versions, but I havent heard such complaints from Windows users. I wish that Macromedia would work a little harder on their Mac versions. Sorry Im not getting into too many specifics about the software. In general, you cant beat the features of Dreamweaver in its class (nor, obviously, Flash, who is alone in the field anymore) but its not worth the time-consuming workarounds to get it all working well.

Couldn’t get codes for this so it was a waste.

I noticed that there were a few customers who had problems with registering the product. I did get an error page on the Adobe site, but nothing that indicated registration wouldnt be possible. I had no problem installing and opening the programs in the kit. I bought this package for the full copy of Flash MX, but Im pleased that I got some great additional Adobe products with the kit. Also the seller upgraded my shipping to priority at no cost to myself. This was a pleasant surprise.

Macromedia continues to improve on their ground-breaking Internet development suite of applications, bringing the MX versions to a completely new level of versatility and functionality with this release. While I found MX (the previous version) to be bug-ridden and slow, MX 2004 is a huge improvement not only in performance and stability but functionality as well. Ive read reviews claiming that this is the most buggy version of the software to date, but they have all been for the Mac version. While I cant speak for that version, I can say that the Windows version of this software is far better than the previous release, and the built-in update feature of this software should ensure that it will offer the best features possible until the next upgrade. Flash and Dreamweaver continue to be ground-breaking Web-development platforms, and this release is a huge step forward in making them accessible to both amateur and professional developers alike. I suggest that anyone serious about Web development consider this product.

Delivery was fast. Great product

As a package, this is probably the best one to buy out there! As individual programs, there are better ones out there. Still a little pricy from Macromedia, but extremely good value as a web design package. Its best asset is the online tutorials, which make initially confusing programs, easier to deal with and more user friendly.

All in all this upgrade is good, not tremendous. The problem lies in the changes to the ActionScript Panel: The Normal mode has been removed. This means that you need to learn how to write all your ActionScript yourself, without the great aids that MX offered. There are still a few little helper menus you can use, but if you dont understand the syntax of ActionScript in detail they arent much help. If you intend to use Flash without becoming a programmer, choose the MX version, not MX 2004.

good product