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Yes! Finally. Macromedia announced its new software suite today, branded Studio 8. Amusingly, and certainly not by coincidence, it has been announced on the 8th day of the 8th month of the year. A quick look on the web and on the Macromedia website leaves me with little doubt that the upgrades, new features and enhancements are spot-on and numerous, although, I will have to wait for some hands-on reviews to be completely convinced.

Dreamweaver, Flash, and Fireworks, all seem to have been greatly upgraded. From the many new features announced for Dreamweaver, I am most excited about the background FTP transfers, which means I no longer have to sit and wait for DW to finish uploading my files before I can go on with my work. CSS support also seems to have been much improved. I have yet to use Dreamweaver’s CSS editor to edit my stylesheets as I always edit the file directly (I currently use the MX 2004 version). I am curious to see if the new, unified CSS editing panel will change my ways.

As far as Flash is concerned, after two versions focusing on the developer site of things, Flash is now touted to have finally added designer-centric features, such as a new font rendering engine called FlashType. It is also notable that the Macromedia engineers put a large focus on improving the experience for Mac users, like myself. If this is true, we should expect better overall performance from Flash Player and Flash itself on OS X. I think this release will get many designers excited about Flash again, including myself.

I can’t really comment on Fireworks because it has been a while since I have used it, but it does look like it has some new features not available in Photoshop, such as an array of new blending modes. Perhaps when Macromedia becomes history and Fireworks is officially Adobe property, Fireworks’ underrated power will find its way onto Photoshop territory. But that remains to be seen.