Macromedia Unveils Director MX 2004
Macromedia has updated its Director multimedia authoring tool with support for a variety of new features. Director MX 2004 seeks to bridge the Windows and Mac platforms.
According to Macromedia, the release is primarily geared toward making projects more interactive, and aims to make developers more efficient and productive.
This latest edition of Director introduces support for JavaScript, Flash MX 2004 content and DVD video. In addition, content can be streamed in Windows Media, QuickTime and Flash media formats. The software also allows projector files to be created for either Windows or Mac OS in a single step.
Macromedia notes that Flash performance has been propped up considerably in comparison to previous releases.
Like other members of the Macromedia MX family, the workspace is customizable with the inclusion of stage and movie-in-a-window interfaces.
A more detailed list of changes in Director MX 2004 is available on the product Web site.
In a statement, Norm Meyrowitz, Macromedia's president of products said, "Macromedia Director MX 2004 builds on the product's rich legacy and adds new features that will enable richer content and easier development due to its seamless workflow with other MX 2004 products and the addition of an industry standard, widely used, scripting language."
The English language version is expected to ship in February at a cost of $1,199 USD for new users, and $399 USD for upgrades from Director 8.5 and Director MX. French, German and Japanese versions will become available at a later date. Users must be running Mac OS X v10.2.6 or higher, and either Windows 2000 or Windows XP.
Reflecting on the product and its competitors, IDC research director Rikki Kirzner commented, "The ability to respond quickly to changing business requirements, to reduce development complexity, and to deploy an application or changes quickly are essential to helping companies be more agile and control development costs."
"The most valuable tools are those that not only help companies achieve these goals, but also use existing industry standards as well as allowing developers to deploy their applications to multiple platforms," said Kirzner.