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Rating: 
Summary: [my review]
Review: ...THERE IS NO FREEHAND MX 2004! Macromedia only created 4 MX 2004 programs, of which Freehand MX is not one of. It's already a great program, and for whatever reason, they chose not to update it. You note that is true for other programs they sell as well. Freehand MX was never upgraded to 2004, and that's that. Macromedia is selling a great product here. It's worth the money, and is even cheap at this price.
Rating: 
Summary: Know What You're Getting Before You Buy...
Review: BUYER BEWARE: The "Macromedia Studio MX 2004" includes 4 main programs: Dreamweaver MX 2004, Flash MX 2004 (Professional version optional), Fireworks MX 2004, and finally FreeHand MX. Notice that FreeHand is NOT MX 2004. It's the now old MX version. I fully understand that sometimes not all products get shipped out on time when selling a package. But the reason I'm posting this is because Macromedia will NOT give you a FREE upgrade to FreeHand MX 2004 when it becomes available (and I'm sure that version is coming out).How do I know this? Well, when I bought the Macromedia Studio MX version, they shipped FreeHand 10 with that package (which was the old version). I looked online for a free upgrade offer and it never came! Instead, Macromedia wanted you to pay the full upgrade price for FreeHand MX, even though you just bought the Macromedia Studio MX package, which should have included FreeHand MX. I think you'll agree that this is not right! And now they're doing it again. I hope that a lot of people agree with me on this and that somehow Macromedia (and other software companies that may be doing this) will become aware that people are very UPSET over this practice. Microsoft gets hammered daily for being greedy (which they are), but at least they WILL give you a free upgrade (or a very cheap one) when one application from a package is not published on time. When I bought Microsoft Visual Studio .NET, their Visual J# was not ready to be shipped. Purchasers of the studio could order (or download) Visual J# for free. Also, I just upgraded to Microsoft Visual Studio .NET 2003 at something like $30 (because it was a minor upgrade), which is a steal. A normal upgrade price is several hundred dollars for that package. The moral is: if greedy Microsoft can do this, why not Macromedia? I don't know enough about law to say that this is false advertising. All I know is that a "Macromedia Studio MX 2004" product is being sold to us, which includes several DISTINCT applications and one of those applications is NOT version 2004! I hope that Amazon allows me post this because consumers need to know (and so does Amazon). I just checked Macromedia's web site, and as of 9:00AM 9/28/2003, they have not posted a free upgrade to FreeHand MX 2004 for users who buy the Macromedia Studio MX 2004 product. George
Rating:
Summary: Product Activation - Bad News
Review: I am sorry to see that Macromedia has added product activation to the software. I think this is worrisome for many more reasons than piracy, the usually cited concern. I would use and enjoy this software if not for the product activation, which I object to, and will stick with the MX versions of the products, which seem to do just about the same thing. I think it's also sad that although they claim "great performance improvements" in Flash 7 player (version to match this suite), on the Mac it's still based on Carbon libraries, so the text still looks TERRIBLE. Shame on you, Macromedia, for making such a bald-faced bid for our hard-earned cash.
Rating: 
Summary: Going downhill... but there is still hope.
Review: I have been using Macromedia Products since version 2 of Dreamweaver. I have a thorough knowledge of Dreamweaver and Fireworks. I have a bit less of Flash yet I do use it from time to time to create flash elements in sites that are primarily driven by html or xhtml code. I don't use Freehand because I think it is perhaps the most poorly implemented of all illustration programs bar none. I have always hoped that Macromedia would take Freehand seriously... and till this day I am still hoping. Regarding the software... Dreamweaver is by far the most popular web development software on the planet. In fact it has more users than all other web development platforms combined. This is a definite strength since you are able to find a tremendous amount of help around the Internet and in book stores. Dreamweaver is still very good at what it does, however it has gone downhill with this most recent release (yes, I have installed the newest updater which does improve the software to a degree). The problems with the software are many. Macromedia has sacrificed a nice usable and professional interface for this 'flowery' looking gradient mess. Oh... it's pretty alright. The problem is I'm trying to get work done! The previous versions of the Studio have a much more professional interface. The program seems taxing to the system no matter how powerful your processor or how much ram you have. It also seems to have screen redraw issues. This is especially true when designing forms. Why that is... I have no idea. The way the program handles CSS is quirky at best. You need to basically go thru and make all these changes to the default behavior it is shipped with in order to get it to work and write CSS in an external style sheet else it will be written to the head of the current document (How stupid is that?). Macromedia should have used the Define Site Dialog box and asked developers if they wanted to create a CSS based site or used the older HTML methods. If a person chose CSS the program should have required them to enter the name of an external style sheet that all CSS would be written to by default. Then when using the property inspector, any changes to the design code would automatically be written to the external style sheet and not to the head or body of the document. It definately needs drastic improvement if it will ever be at the level of other Professional CSS coding software (think TopStyle Pro). Another issue with Dreamweaver that I have is with its lack of ability to support a dual monitor configuration without major bugs, headaches, and screen redraw issues. I know many developers that have gone over to the dual monitor approach to development because of a tremendously improved work flow. YOu could have the design Window in one monitor and the code window in the other (Go to Window -- Code Inspector -- or hit F10). Once the code inspector is open, you can drag it over to the second monitor and thus develop both visually and with code. However, the newest DW version has some serious issues when you do this. First of all, you can't maximize the code window... so you have to manually drag one corner and size it yourself. The other is when you are between documents and have no current document open. The program seems like it just wants to crash, drawing and redrawing the entire interace. 'What in the world is going on here?' is the question that comes to mind minus profanities! Flash has improved and is more powerful than previous version being more 'coder friendly' and allowing flash apps to be built using a forms based approach although I think they made a big mistake in making two versions of the software. It just confuses people and now is harder to share work within a team unless everybody is using the exact same version! Bad decision Macromedia. Fireworks is probably the program in the group that deserves the highest honors. It is tops in the field of web graphics and functionality. I put it over Photoshop/ImageReady because it is specifically designed for the web whereas Photoshop is trying to be all things to all people. And to people who need that functionality, Photoshop is King! However, Fireworks is significantly easier to learn and use than PS. It will do anything you could possibly want in creating web graphics and eliminates all the functions that a print designer needs. Fireworks is for the web... not print. If that is acceptable for your work load.... use it! Freehand is dead at this point in my eyes. Illustrator and Coreldraw are both vastly superior in usability and power. Freehand is a clunky and bug ridden program that does poorly what Illustrator does masterfully! Evidently Freehand has also taken a back seat in the eyes of Macromedia too. Freehand has always been delivered much later than the rest of the Studio. Even to this day in June of 2004, Freehand is still one version behind the rest of the software even though the MX 2004 Studio has been released for nearly a year (August 2003)! Some have argued that Macromedia purposely delays Freehand so that they can make more money off the developers who have already bought the current Studio and then need to purchase an upgrade to the latest Freehand. So perhaps this is a marketing ploy used in order to make more money. My opinion is that they will make more money if they improve their software, eliminate bugs, drop the 'flowerly' interace, and release the Studio as one release for both Mac and Windows (This means no 'pro' and 'non-pro' versions, all version share the same name...MX 2004 or whatever). Another note, Mac users should not be considered second class web developers. This particular offering for Mac users is particularly bad because of the bugs and speed of the software. The best I can rate this offering is two stars... hopefully things will change in the near future. All that being said, I still consider myself a fan of Macromedia software... and just think they had a major hickup here with this latest offering.
Rating: 
Summary: Flash is slow; Freehand, useless. Buy it anyway.
Review: I heard that they were going to speed it up. Apparently that meant the compiled swf files. The program itself is so slow as to be annoying. Launch (wait) click (wait) click (wait)... it is very unresponsive. Moreso than it's predecessor MX. I also hate the MX 2004 name. Let's call it seven. No one knows what the MX stands for... roman numerals? MX missile? It's dumb, and I hope it ends soon. And what about this false marketing dichotomy of "professional" and, what, "amateur?" Ridiculous and confusing. Pro means you can do decent video, or something. The capabilities of the program? The object-oriented stuff may turn out to be great, but right now it's just a wrinkle in the already strange mix of timeline, event, and function-based programming. There's got to be a better way. It will undoubtedly spawn countless books and magazine articles and keep the publishers happy, and maybe even make your Flash project better. But what about the simple things that Flash lacks? How about a scripts window (not the explorer) where you could page through all the code you've written and do find-and-replace easily? How about a snappy, responsive tool that doesn't make you wait while it considers your request? Of course, I bought it mostly for Flash, but there's more to the studio. Freehand still can't zoom in and out with keystrokes correctly. It does weird things with layers. The Freehand programmer has still not acknowledged the Illustrator and Photoshop conventions that Flash has learned. Yet, it is a necessary upgrade, and you will probably end up buying it, as I did. Then you'll buy a few books and spend a few days learning things. And so it goes.
Rating:
Summary: Going downhill... but there is still hope.
Review: I've been working with computer doing design work for 12 years. Web for 7. I've used everything, Photoshop, Illustrator, Freehand, Flash, PageMaker, Quark, InDesign (love it), Director, GoLive (not bad). But Studio MX 2004 is so loaded with bugs and so slow that I've reverted back to an old version of GoLive. It's sad. Click to open a small file... and wait. CSS... oh, it decided to erase them and replace them witih crap. SO much for my styles. What you see is NOT what you get. AND tech support - awful. Their web site is the most awkward thing to navigate and find information on. STAY AWAY FROM THIS PIECE OF TIME-CONSUMING SOFTWARE. It will spin your wheels and give you headaches.
Rating:
Summary: Full of Bugs and S__L__O____W
Review: I've been working with computer doing design work for 12 years. Web for 7. I've used everything, Photoshop, Illustrator, Freehand, Flash, PageMaker, Quark, InDesign (love it), Director, GoLive (not bad). But Studio MX 2004 is so loaded with bugs and so slow that I've reverted back to an old version of GoLive. It's sad. Click to open a small file... and wait. CSS... oh, it decided to erase them and replace them witih crap. SO much for my styles. What you see is NOT what you get. AND tech support - awful. Their web site is the most awkward thing to navigate and find information on. STAY AWAY FROM THIS PIECE OF TIME-CONSUMING SOFTWARE. It will spin your wheels and give you headaches.
Rating:
Summary: MX 2004 Continues to Blow the Competition Away
Review: If you are serious about working on the web whether novice or professional, you cannot get any better than the Macromedia products. I've 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. I've used the MX 2004 version for about a month now and am thoroughly impressed. It's 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!!
Rating:
Summary: Expensive, difficult, and quirky.
Review: If you like software that's expensive, difficult to master and quirky, and if you think good looking is more important than good working, this might be just the thing for you. But be warned, working with this software is frustrating at every turn. Macromedia has given the user interface elements with minds of their own. Scroll bars mysteriously disappear and reappear. When working with some of the many, many dialogs, the tab key does more than just move from option to option. At certain places it magically removes all the dialogs and the tool bars from the screen. There is no printed documentation, just some brief PDF files. There is a good deal of mystery about option interdependence. The programs have hundreds of icons scattered through dozens of toolbars and dialogs. As you're working with them, you often find that when you're ready to use something, it's "grayed out". It can take hours to figure out why. It's typically because using it would lead to lead to invalid code, but it might also be that you're just not following Macromedia's rules of design. You're not doing things in the "right" order, for example. Don't depend on the help files; they were deliberately designed to be difficult or impossible to read. Here again Macromedia is demonstrating their preference to be trendy rather than useful. The help files have tiny light gray text on a white background, making them difficult to manage for people with normal vision and impossible for those without. The software requires product activation. The activation procedure worked well, but I'm troubled that some day Macromedia will decide that I've used the software enough and cease activating this product, making it impossible for me to install the software on some future computer. Who knows, perhaps I won't even be able to use it on the computer where it's installed now. When that day comes, I will certainly wish I could "deactivate" my $600 payment. I am not a newcomer to Macromedia software. I'm on my fourth or fifth versions of some of the programs in this package. And I have to say that most of the changes from version to version did not involve significant new features. Most of the changes were to the user interface. Each version gets more quirky and non-standard. Every time I upgrade I have to learn new ways to do old things. That makes the software very expensive indeed. While it might be true that using this software can save you from having to learn HTML, CSS, JavaScript, etc., mastering this software is a formidable task. And it's a dead-end street to learn software like this instead of learning the underlying technologies. When you can't figure out how to make it do what your client wants, and you can't find a plug-in that will do it, you'll just have to tell them you can't do it. You'll tell them that a lot, if Studio MX is all that you know.
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