Macromedia Revamps Dev-Tool Lineup

Macromedia on Thursday will outline updates to its Flash player and Flex development tools aimed at expanding the franchise and taking on Microsoft’s tool dominance. First, the company is updating the nearly ubiquitous Flash Player for playing multimedia Web-based applications. Version 8.5 incorporates a new virtual machine for faster performance and error reporting, better debugging and an ECMAScript-compliant scripting engine. That combo should provide a higher least-common denominator for applications, said Jeff Whatcott, vice president of product management for San Francisco-based Macromedia. Read more