For Immediate Release:
MACROMEDIA ANNOUNCES DREAMWEAVER 2
Major Upgrade of Macromedia’s Web Authoring Environment Raises the Bar for
Professional Web Site Design and Production
San Francisco, Calif. — November 9, 1998 — Macromedia (NASDAQ: MACR)
today announced Dreamweaver 2, a new release of its professional Web
authoring environment. The newest addition to Macromedia’s award-winning
family of Web publishing tools adds powerful new features for efficient
page design and production, comprehensive site management, visual authoring
for dynamic publishing, and Roundtrip XML. Dreamweaver 2 is an extensible
Web development platform that is designed to work with custom and
commercial e-commerce, database, dynamic publishing and rich media
technologies. Macromedia also announced that Dreamweaver 2 is seamlessly
integrated with solutions from industry-leading companies, including
BroadVision (NASDAQ: BVSN), Oracle Corporation (NASDAQ: ORCL), and Real
Networks (NASDAQ: RNWK) in related news today.
Dreamweaver 2 will be available standalone or in a Web Essentials bundle
with Fireworks, Macromedia’s premiere production tool for creating Web
graphics. Together, Dreamweaver and Fireworks are a powerful solution for
producing the essential elements of Web sites. For details, see pricing
and availability below.
“We’ve worked closely with our customers to ensure that Dreamweaver 2
addresses the Web publishing challenges facing them today and in the
future,” said Kevin Lynch, vice president of Macromedia’s Web publishing
division. “We’ve introduced powerful new features in Dreamweaver 2 that
give professional Web teams the productivity tools they need to help them
get the job done today, while supporting advanced technologies that
leverage their Web tool investments into the future. ”
“We need to create and produce dynamic Web sites for our clients that look
great in any browser, and are easy to update and maintain,” said Ben Rigby,
CEO of Akimbo Design. Akimbo Design has created Web sites for clients such
as California Pizza Kitchen and Sony Pictures Entertainment. “The new
features in Dreamweaver 2 — including advanced table support, live Flash
and Shockwave playback, and Dream Templates for team authoring — make it
an essential tool for professional Web developers.”
What You See Is What You Serve
Dreamweaver 2 is the first visual tool for dynamic Web publishing to
deliver “What You See Is What You Serve” — giving Web designers a visual
rendering of server-side content within a Web authoring environment for the
first time. Currently, Web designers have to post a site to a server and
preview it in a browser in order to see server-side content when creating
or updating dynamic Web sites. Because of its open, extensible
architecture, Dreamweaver 2 easily works with leading e-commerce and
dynamic publishing solutions. In addition, Dreamweaver 2 respects third
party or proprietary HTML tags through a new custom tag database.
Deluxe Site Management
With Dreamweaver 2, Web developers can efficiently manage design and
content across an entire site with the most powerful combination of site
management features on the market. Web designers can use new Dream
Templates to specify which sections of a site can be edited by content
contributors, while maintaining design consistency across a site. Dream
Templates enable fast turnaround on updates and changes, facilitating
workflow in collaborative production environments. Dreamweaver 2 is the
only tool that features site-wide search and replace of text, HTML source,
and attributes within HTML tags — enabling users to easily manage global
changes. A new site map and automated link and file management simplify
the creation and maintenance of Web sites.
Efficient Page Production
Dreamweaver 2 has many new features that help Web designers quickly and
efficiently build beautiful cross-browser Web pages. Users can now insert
an image to use as a guide while designing pages, enabling production
artists to go from a Fireworks or Photoshop comp to a finished HTML page in
record time. Dreamweaver 2 allows pixel-precise positioning of elements on
an HTML page, with one-step conversion of layers to tables for
compatibility with 3.0 browsers. Advanced table editing features in
Dreamweaver 2 give designers more control and formatting options than any
other Web authoring tool. Web designers can now also view Macromedia
Flash, Macromedia Shockwave, and other plug-in content live within the
Dreamweaver 2 authoring environment, without having to preview in a
browser.
Roundtrip XML
Dreamweaver revolutionized Web authoring with Roundtrip HTML, and is now
extending this functionality to support Roundtrip XML. Just as Dreamweaver
has always maintained the quality of a user’s HTML, Dreamweaver 2 now
parses and respects a user’s XML code. Since XML standards are still
evolving, the support for XML in Dreamweaver is extensible. Customers can
define XML tags using the new tag database, add new XML objects to the
Dreamweaver object palette, and create property inspectors for editing
XML. Dream Templates also support XML with Roundtrip importing and
exporting between templates and XML.
Pricing and Availability
Dreamweaver 2 will be available in December 1998 for an estimated street
price of US $299 (U.S. and Canada) for Windows 95/98, Windows NT 4.0 or
later, and MacOS 7.5.5 or later. Registered users of prior versions of
Dreamweaver may upgrade to Dreamweaver 2 for US $129 (U.S. and Canada).
Customers who order the Dreamweaver 2 full version or upgrade can add
Macromedia Fireworks, the premiere production tool for creating Web
graphics, for US $99 (U.S. and Canada) as part of the Web Essentials bundle
through February 28, 1999. For more information or to download a free
30-day trial version of Dreamweaver, visit
(http://www.dreamweaver.com/)http://www.dreamweaver.com.
About Macromedia
Macromedia’s mission is to add life to the Web. By providing its
award-winning Web Publishing, Web Traffic, and Web Learning solutions to
Web designers, consumers, and the enterprise, Macromedia is delivering a
completely new generation of Internet tools and technologies designed to
transform the Web experience. Headquartered in San Francisco, Macromedia
(NASDAQ: MACR) has more than 500 employees worldwide and is available on
the Internet at (http://www.macromedia.com/)http://www.macromedia.com.
Macromedia also hosts one of the most engaging entertainment sites on the
Web at (http://www.shockrave.com/)http://www.shockrave.com.
For more information, contact:
Macromedia
Kirsten Armstrong
kirsten@macromedia.com
(415) 252-4088