Macromedia aims to jazz up Web-based animations, videos and mobile content while better integrating the five applications in its updated suite.

Macromedia boasts that the Studio 8 Web design, animation and video suite is the package's most impressive update yet. We'll wait for the gold code to make our final judgement, but from what we've seen of the beta versions of Studio's five applications -- Flash 8, Dreamweaver 8, Fireworks 8, FlashPaper 2.0 and Contribute 3.0 -- the upgrade to Flash is the most tantalising among them. Just don't expect Adobe's plans to buy Macromedia to result in hybrid Adobe-Macromedia software quite yet; Studio 8 offers no such surprises. See the table below for previews of each application in the suite.

Web design professionals may pounce on Flash 8's ability to lay video on top of video, to handle pixel graphics and to enjoy more font control. The Pro version adds support for mobile content authoring. Macromedia also rebuilt the Flash Player video codec and rendering engine to better stream multimedia content.

Work-flow improvements to the Studio 8 suite aim to prevent you from making many roundtrips between the applications, and subtle tweaks should facilitate work with graphics from Adobe's Photoshop and Illustrator. For example, you get ruler guides within Dreamweaver to position and size images within a Web page. Dreamweaver 8 lets you zoom in on page designs and will allow drag-and-drop XML feeds.

Macromedia is discontinuing its vector graphics program FreeHand MX, which withered in the shadow of rivals Illustrator and CorelDRAW.

We're curious about Macromedia's claim that even slower PCs will be able to handle the new Flash player. If a flurry of Web sites adopts more rich content, users with dial-up connections and old computers may increasingly be left behind. By Macromedia's estimate, 98 percent of Web users already have the Flash player on their computers, and the company hopes for 80 percent of those folks to adopt Flash 8 within a year. Such optimism is riding on the assumption that Web designers and surfers can't resist the allure of creating animation with green-screen videos, pixel-based graphics and special effects such as drop shadows and cartoon flames. And only the Flash 8 player will play content created by Flash 8, so we're talking about a captive audience. Animators will probably be keen to try out the new tools.

And you'd better get ready for next-generation mobile devices to dance and sing, because Studio 8 is also poised to craft on-the-go cartoons and videos for mobile phones, handhelds and other gadgets yet to come. Studio 8 will cost £699, or £299 to upgrade from Studio MX 2004 or earlier versions.

Should you cough up? Return to ZDNet for our full reviews and ratings of Studio 8 and its components, once the final package hits the market.

Macromedia Studio 8 components
Application	Price	Highlights
Flash 8	£499; upgrade £299 (Professional version)	Animation tool supports blue-screen videos, pixel graphics and mobile content; rebuilt Flash Player
Dreamweaver 8	£339; upgrade £169	Web design tool improves navigation and work flow, with more support for CSS and XML
Fireworks 8	£249; upgrade £129	Graphics tool flows better with the rest of the suite; imports more file types
Contribute 3	£99; upgrade £49	Web site management program offers new tools for workgroups; integrates content from Microsoft Office
FlashPaper 2	TBA	Creates print-ready PDFs or interactive SWF files

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