Macromedia today announced Macromedia Studio 8, an updated suite of software for web designers, developers, video professionals, and graphic artists to design, develop, and maintain interactive online experiences. Combining the latest releases of award-winning Macromedia Dreamweaver, Macromedia Flash Professional, and Macromedia Fireworks, and key productivity tools Macromedia Contribute and Macromedia FlashPaper, Studio 8 offers a new level of expressiveness, efficiency, and simplified workflow to create websites, interactive media, and mobile content. For more information about Studio 8, read on or visit Macromedia's web site.

Macromedia Studio 8 is expected to ship in September. Localized versions in German, French, Japanese, Spanish, Italian, Korean, Traditional Chinese, and Simplified Chinese will be available shortly thereafter. Pricing is USD$999 for a full license and USD$399 for an upgrade. Education, government, and volume pricing is available.

Dreamweaver 8 is Macromedia's latest release their tool for designing and developing websites and applications. New Dreamweaver 8 features include expanded Cascading Style Sheet (CSS) layout visualization for easier design, drag-and-drop integration of XML data feeds, improved code hinting support for XML and XSLT, enhanced usability features such as zoom and code collapse to streamline the development process, and easier ways to incorporate Flash Video content onto websites.

Flash Professional 8 marks a significant release for Flash, the industry's most advanced authoring environment for creating interactive websites, digital experiences, and mobile content. Improved graphics performance, new graphic effects capabilities, new animation controls, script editor usability, Flash Video features, and workflow integration with leading video editing and encoding tools allow the creation of rich, immersive content for the web that was not possible before. Flash Professional 8 is the professional authoring environment for the Internet's most widely distributed rich client runtime, Flash Player.

Fireworks 8 offers many new and improved features. Graphic designers and web application developers can now create interactive CSS-style pop-up menus, experiment with more than 25 new blend modes, import new file formats, and experience improved roundtrip editing with Dreamweaver 8 and Flash Professional 8.