Macromedia Announces Studio 8

Macromedia has announced Studio 8, an upgrade to its multimedia authoring suite. Interestingly, FreeHand got the axe and is now on its own, while Contribute 3 and FlashPaper 2 hop on board. Upgrades and improvements abound, as the suite overall has improved its interoperability. (Maybe Adobe's rubbing off on em?) Dreamweaver 8 has received better CSS support with an improved panel and visual layout. Flash 8 gets filters, better text tools (thank you!), some powerful new video encoding tools as well as improved features for designers and new-users. Fireworks - while not exactly Macromedia's knight in shining armor - did get some lovin with common image editing functionality and the ability to create CSS pop-ups that export straight to Dreamweaver.

Sounds like quite the upgrade, and Macromedia says they spent a lot of time playing catchup on their admittedly poor Flash user experience on OSX. Expected to ship in September, this shiny new suite goes for $999 while an upgrade will set you back $399. Get those credit cards ready!

Via Macworld.

Update: Our pal Mike will be covering Studio 8's release all day over at Flash Insider.

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