MACROMEDIA ANNOUNCES THE DREAMWEAVER 3 FIREWORKS 3 STUDIO
New Versions of Tightly Integrated, Market-Leading Products Enable Team
Collaboration And Streamline Web Site Design And Production
San Francisco, California November 8, 1999 Macromedia, Inc. (NASDAQ: MACR)
today announced the Dreamweaver 3 Fireworks 3 Studio, the complete solution
for professional Web site design and production. The studio combines new
versions of Dreamweaver, Macromedia’s market-leading professional Web
authoring environment, with Fireworks, the complete solution for Web
graphics development. The studio leverages tight integration between the
products, enabling developers to increase their productivity. Both the
studio and stand-alone versions of the products are expected to ship in
December.
Today’s Web sites are increasingly mission-critical and are being produced
by larger development teams. Production teams need solutions that integrate
with all their Web development software to increase their productivity.
Both products work well across large production teams, integrate with
various Microsoft Office, Web and back-end server software, and can be
customized to fit gracefully within a team’s existing workflow due to their
open architectures.
Dreamweaver and Fireworks are also key authoring components in the
Macromedia eBusiness Infrastructure. The recently announced eBusiness
Infrastructure provides a comprehensive, integrated solution for the Web
content lifecycle from content creation and management to personalization
and analysis.
“Macromedia Dreamweaver and Fireworks have made great strides in solving
the production needs of professional Web development teams, and these
deeply integrated releases continue that mission,” said Kevin Lynch, Senior
Vice President and General Manager at Macromedia. “Web professionals can
share HTML code across Dreamweaver and Fireworks for greater productivity
to create high-quality sites that integrate with leading servers, databases
and back-end systems. This functionality makes Dreamweaver and Fireworks
the central Web development environment for developers and the enterprise.”
Both Dreamweaver 3 and Fireworks 3 can be customized using industry
standards such as JavaScript, HTML and XML, enabling developers to create
custom work environments. The functionality of the products can be
continually enhanced, due to their extensible nature, which ensures the
quickly changing needs of developers can be met. Cross-application scripts
automate Fireworks and Web graphics tasks from within Dreamweaver. For
example, Dreamweaver 3 ships with a photo album script which takes images
placed in Dreamweaver and resizes them automatically in Fireworks, and then
returns to Dreamweaver to create a full photo album Web site. The products
also easily integrate files originating in Adobe Photoshop, digital
cameras, scanners, Microsoft Word, Excel and Access.
Dreamweaver is the standard Web development platform for leading
developers, educational institutions and the enterprise. Dreamweaver
outsells its closest competitor in professional visual Web site design by a
margin of nearly 70 percent (Source: PC Data). Dreamweaver was the first
visual design product to market with Roundtrip HTML and Roundtrip XML, and
continues to provide the highest level of source code control to
developers. Dreamweaver 3 includes Roundtrip Server Markup with support for
ASP, JSP, CFML and PHP formats, plus a revolutionary Quick Tag Editor that
brings code-level editing into the visual environment.
Dreamweaver 3 also contains enhanced collaboration and customization
features to make it easier to work across production teams. Dreamweaver 3
allows for the easy import and formatting of content from Microsoft Word
and data from Excel and Access. New Design Notes let team members share
information and status about a specific Web page in a friendly dialog
within the page itself. The entire application can also be completely
customized using JavaScript, HTML and XML to enable enterprise users to
make custom versions of Dreamweaver with menus specifically targeted to
users with different tasks and skill levels.
“Dreamweaver is, quite simply, the only visual HTML editor that we use in
Organic engineering. It’s incredibly flexible, it’s fast, and it does what
we want it to do,” said Dave Humphreys, Chief Content Engineer, Organic
Online. “With version 3, it’s now more flexible than ever. We are already
customizing Dreamweaver 3 and creating custom project-specific and
role-specific content editors.”
Fireworks 3 focuses on the specific challenges of producing Web graphics
and bridges the gap between Web graphics and Web authoring applications.
Fireworks 3 boasts new features for designing graphics for the Web,
including live preview and optimization of rollover effects within the
workspace. Fireworks 3 also automates the graphics workflow with a new
Library that enables storage of original artwork within the authoring
environment for easy access.
Fireworks 3 takes an open approach to integrating with graphics packages
and HTML editors files can originate, be imported or exported in any
leading format. Graphics files originating in Adobe Photoshop retain their
layers, editable text and effects layers in Fireworks, which in turn can
output a wide range of standard Web graphics formats, including Macromedia
Flash (.SWF). Fireworks 3 also outputs HTML code specific to Dreamweaver or
other popular HTML editors. New Dreamweaver objects can also add Fireworks
HTML, graphics and navigation elements in just one click.
PRICING AND AVAILABILITY
The Dreamweaver 3 Fireworks 3 Studio is priced at $399 and previous owners
of both Dreamweaver and Fireworks can upgrade to the studio for $199.
Previous customers of either Dreamweaver or Fireworks can upgrade to the
studio for $249. Dreamweaver 3 and Fireworks 3 are also available
individually. Dreamweaver 3 is priced at $299, with $129 upgrades.
Fireworks 3 is priced at $199, with $99 upgrades. The products are expected
to ship in December. For more information, visit
http://www.macromedia.com/special/webessentials/ or call (800) 457-1774.
ABOUT MACROMEDIA
Macromedia’s mission is to add life to the Web. Our award-winning products
empower developers to provide the most engaging experience on the Web and
enable more effective e-business. Headquartered in San Francisco,
Macromedia (NASDAQ: MACR) has more than 600 employees worldwide and is
available on the Internet at http://www.macromedia.com.