Macromedia MX – Pros vs. Cons

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Greetings all!

I just attended a few Macromedia Studio MX Seminars and am very excited to see some of the incredible things that can be done today. I am convinced that Macromedia and the movement they have started will quickly dominate the internet in the areas of multimedia, rich internet applications, and even data-driven applications.

I recently bought Studio MX and have been using Dreamweaver for several months. I’m just starting to harness the power of Flash and I haven’t even touched Cold Fusion yet (mainly due to not having a Cold Fusion web host). But let me say for the record that I’m impressed! I’m ready to jump on the bandwagon, invest the time and money to learn this stuff, and quickly start integrating it into my web design and web application development projects. (FYI: Flash is not just about “animation” anymore…)

Does anyone else have any comments or thoughts (good or bad) about this new “revolution”? Is my excitement just the product of brainwashing stemming from a long sales-based seminar in a cold room sitting on a painfully hard chair? ….OR do you see this stuff really having the power to take off and fly?

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Mark ~

I recently got MX, too. I don’t know why – I haven’t even mastered any of my other dozen graphic/content/multimedia software.
Please check this out and I am sure your questions will answer themselves bitbureau. You can definitely design outside of the box!

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I think Flash is well suited to some sites, and poorly suited to others. Sites which use a Flash Logo that you have to see over and over and over every time you return to the home page annoy me a lot, particularly for, say, a law firm, which has no business wasting my bandwidth with an animated logo. I also set my ActiveX to prompt, so you can imagine my joy where there is no alternative navigation for those whose browsers appear to be Flash capable but don’t actually run the file.

Other than that, it’s great stuff.

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We have just recently decided to use Macromedia to design our web site. My only complain right now is the fact that you need a host to run this stuff. Does anybody know of any place that you can get a decent amount of space to build some and still be FREE? I can pay very much to build my own stuff and I wont have access the the host at work.

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Daniel,
The only part you need a specialized host for is ColdFusion – which is a Server Platform itself.

The other apps usually generate files that are platform-independent. Of course, your server-side code will be determined by the type of host you have (such as PHP, ASP, CGI, etc…)
As for Flash files, standard HTML files, graphics, etc… these can all be on ANY web host with no special requirements.

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What kind of application is your site going to run? If it’s database-driven and you are most comfortable with Access and VBA, you might go with NT/2000 hosting to take advantage of ASP and ADO. This is not necessarily the best technology, but it will leverage what you know. I think Dreamweaver is platform agnostic, although their purchase of the ColdFusion engine might lead them to promote that.

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[indent]

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…platform agnostic

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[/indent]I like that term

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Right now we are using MS Outlook as a “frontend” to Forms that need to be filled out in order to process/convert data from one format to another. The information from the form is now being saved on MS Access 2K. We are tired to having to convert the database from one format to another at the whim of MS Office versions. Also, our biggest databases are right now on a IBM Mainframe using DB2 and we use Coldfustion to create the “frontend’ or the user forms to enter and update the data. The database is a little over 2 Terabits big. so we know the software and database work.

The only new part is the Dreamweaver and Flash software that is now bundled with the CF software.

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I have never used CF to access DB2 but it sounds like you have at least one web site that does that already. The MX user interface will be a learning curve to over come when compared to the OLD CF editor (or worse notepad). I think you’ll find the syntax checking to be excellent and the Macromedia version of intellitype works pretty well. If you are truly going to use FLASH for data collection, retrival, and updates and not just eye candy then the learning curve went through the roof unless you have experience with C# or Java and XML. Action Script is very similar to Java but the FLASH interface presents some additional challenges on how to organize the user interface assets and the code behind the movies which make it all happen.

I would highly recommend visiting http://www.macromedia.com/devnet/%5B/url%5D as well as investing in FIREFLY and the data connection kit for $299. if your time is worth just $10/hr you could easily save more than 30 hrs just trying to figure out how to put all the pieces together by working with the supplied samples and working components supplied with the kit. Macromedia used to give some of this stuff away for free. Now they have worked it into an supported product and sell it as an add-on. If I had a paying customer to cover the cost I would be able to tell you more about it. 299 is more ‘play’ money than I can invest right now.

You also might want to look around and see if there are other CF specific examples, they aren’t as good as MS about giving away code examples but they are getting better.

Just my 2 cents
HR

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Will due to budget cuts we won’t be going to CF classes until sometime next year. BUT, yea you guess it. I have between 30 – 45 days to build an application using 9 different forms, the data is saved on the mainfram’s DB2. As the Users enter new job request’s (the online forms), I need to create a “status” screen that show’s all the jobs that have a status of “submit” and not display the “finished” jobs.

I then want to be able to click on the control number to open a form on the submitted job. I know that this sounds simple to you experts, but the only exposure I have to CF is reading a book ” “Web Applications Construction Kit”. Funny thing is that the Programming Dept. has an application written in CF that writes to DB2 already. But, due to Office Politics we can’t ask them for help.

Ok, thanks for letting me and now I have to back to work.

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On this topic (MS Vs. MM) , I have an assignment to complete a styleguide for an existing visual/fuctional prototype (.ASP).
Naturally, this COULD involve alot of typing, so I’m trying to limit that if possible.

My question.
I believe that Dreamweaver will create a styleguide based on an existing ASP page(s).
Does MS have the same option, and if so which app(s) is used?
(I have the entire arsenal at my disposal (OfficePro-Visual Studio.NET-Rational Suite)

Note*- I am referring to a StyleGUIDE not a stylesheet.

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Mark (and others)
Have you run into any online resources that you’d recommend? (Aside from the lounge of course) Something lounge-like for Dreamweaver, etc?

Cheers

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For Dreamweaver I’ve always found that the Macromedia site is LOADED with help resources, tutorials, peer-2-peer forums, and the like. They are really good about keeping up-to-date information relating to their products and web development in general.

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