JD on EP

I bought through the phone system. They convinced me because they said I would get free shipping. I only received an email confirming that I purchased the studio. I haven't received a tracking number or anything else. As soon as I get my package I'll be a happy man. The nice blue box will look great agains my nice blue Lightwave box. I wish there were a ton more articles on devnet though.

scratch that.. i just got home and there it was waiting on the doorstep.. overnight shipping.. way to go!

Purchase of mx 2004 with free upgrade was kind of misleading. I was told I won't recieve the upgrade till sometime mid October and it will only be a download instead of the box. This isn't a big deal really, but it would have been nice to have known this upfront. Plus, I still have the trial version to play with till then.

I'd say it was a high five.

There are a few remaining things for the flash player to be a flawless platform

1) proper handling of rich text,
2) direct access to http:
3) fast regular expressions and
4) access to the camera and video object streams (opening rtmp)

That's it. Four things, that's not a lot remaining to do considering that's all that's needed to make the Flash player a flawless platform at this point.

Everything else has the feel now of a mature platform(well... aided by mtasc and the eclipse plugins). Hopefully to improve even more in the future.

The decision to punt to eclipse as the high end coding tool of the future was a briliant acceptance of reality. I could care less that the code tools weren't improved.

My first impression after only a few days is that everywhere that I used to see gaps in the documentation, they seem to have been filled with the important detail that folk really need. Lots of core improvements were made previously but weren't documented well enough that folk could actually use them with out resorting to folk knowledge or trial and error.

As for what was done, everything that was done seems to have been done really well. A number of fundamental problems were fixed and fixed well.(text appearance, matrix operations, stroke nuances, js communictation and bitmap access being the big fundamental things)

My criteria is not "did you fix and improve everything" to perfection, but rather "was everything that was fixed and improved a good choice and well done" and I'd say based on this criteria it's an a+. You probably fixed 2 thirds of the remaining problems with Flash and didn't add anything that somebody won't greatly appreciate.

Add those 4 things above and I don't see how anybody could want anything more in a plug-in that will install on any browser or os (assuming linux is next up).

My copy is going through customs right now acording to FedEx. Was annoyed that despite ordering from USA had to pay GST of 10% as though I ordered it in Australia.

Got ripped off in the Devnet to MVLP deal (paid $496 when the price is now $320 for the same thing) and now we can't even get the new serial numbers from the MM store, we have to wait on CDs and nobody at customer service is able to let us know what is going on with the shipping. Great, so people can buy it, Devnet people download it and we're left with the trials...
I really miss Devnet. So easy to have access to software, upgrades, serial numbers, drks, etc.

And the difference in pricing ($ vs €) is outrageous. The cost of translating is often stated as a reason, but book publishers usually don't raise the price of translated books.
People find different ways to buy the software from US shops. MM is the loser in this case.

As for the suite, the speed and the UI improvements of Fireworks and Dreamweaver are welcome, but I don't really see anything incredible in this new release (Fireworks can't even open svg files...). The big selling point is Flash 8 and the designer is really happy with the changes.

I'm more impressed with Sparkle than the Studio, that's for sure...