Macromedia Announces Design in Motion Suite

Macromedia this week announced its
Design in Motion Suite, which Macromedia is billing as a complete vector
graphics and
animation application for Web designers.

The suite includes FreeHand 8 and the latest release of the its design
software, Macromedia Flash, along with Insta.HTML 2, which is used to
export HTML files directly from FreeHand.

FreeHand 8, announced this week at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las
Vegas, has a number of enhancements, including integration
between FreeHand and Flash, and the ability to export morphing animations
directly from FreeHand and edit vector transparency fills.

According to Macromedia, FreeHand 8 features a new, configurable user
interface and
fully customizable keyboard shortcuts, making FreeHand the best choice for
creating vector graphics for the Web.

Macromedia believes that Flash is becoming the de facto standard for vector
graphics and animation on the Web. The company stated that the Flash
player is shipping with every Windows 95, Mac OS, and WebTV system that is
sold, and is being included with the CD versions of Netscape’s Communicator
and
Microsoft’s Internet Explorer.

Insta.HTML 2 is a utility used for rapidly converting FreeHand
layouts into WYSIWYG HTML pages that can be read by standard Web browsers.
The new version has the ability to export FreeHand graphics as either Flash
elements or GIF or PNG images. Insta.HTML 2 utilizes absolute positioning
and cascading style sheet specs to create compact Web pages from the
FreeHand documents.

The Design in Motion Suite for Windows 95/NT or Macintosh Power PC is
expected to be released in March of this year with a retail price of $499.

For additional information, visit the Macromedia Web site.