Note: The following article details some of the product “sneak peeks” revealed in a session at the MAX conference. However, Macromedia doesn’t guarantee that these features will go into future versions; they’re just a glimpse at some of things that we are thinking about, planning, and hoping to include. Also, for more information on audience reaction to these sneak peeks, visit www.maxbloggers.com.

New Orleans is a rowdy town and the sneak peek session at MAX 2004 was no exception. Mike Chambers hosted the session and compared MAX 2004 to New Orleans jazz, "a place that's filled with innovative ideas, mixed resources and influences, pushing the boundaries of what is possible."

Mike Chambers dresses the part at the Sneak Peeks session in New Orleans

Armed with one or two noisemakers each, audience members got the following order from Mike: "If you like it and you know it, blow your horn—we want to know what you like in these sneak peeks!" The crowd went wild as he gave a short lesson on how to react appropriately to "good" and "bad." Then he launched into introducing sneak peeks into what may be coming for several Macromedia products.

Note: Keep in mind that any and all sneaks mentioned in this article may or may not be available in future versions of the product.

When audience members liked something, the sound was deafening

The session started with Tom Hale's sneak of upcoming Macromedia Breeze features. He brought an audience member up to the stage and invited him to log into a Breeze Live meeting with his name and phone number. Once the Breeze Live meeting started, the audience member heard a ring and picked up his mobile phone, as did several other invitees in the audience. Breeze evangelist Peter Ryce had initiated the Breeze Live meeting, which then proceeded to call each invitee to the meeting automatically. The invitees didn't need to call in; the conference call came to them. Tom said this is the future of business—with Macromedia Breeze, the meeting makes it easy for you to do business, no matter where you are.

Maureen Keating and David Spells sneaked a few features in the next version of Macromedia Fireworks. Maureen showed how Fireworks could automatically name a text layer based on text you specified. We heard several exclamations of "wow" and "that's cool" throughout the audience as David reshaped text on a line automatically and locked it. Some other sneaks included removing red-eye automatically, converting a marquee to a path, and a more complete range of file formats in the Save As dialog box. There was one feature they couldn't show, however, and one that we can't mention—you'll have to wait. (Keep in mind that all sneaks mentioned in this article may or may not appear in future versions.)

Christian Petersen demonstrates the new possibilities of Flash on mobile phones

Next, Christian Petersen of the Mobile & Devices team showed how he could have data and Macromedia Flash running together on a mobile phone, as well as a mobile phone emulator that shows bandwidth usage in a desktop testing environment. "We're going to continue to make it easier to develop for mobile," he said. The audience roared and applauded. Earlier in the general session, they had seen some of the exciting new possibilities in mobile from Juha Christensen—and heard all about the expanding business opportunities within the market. This crowd is really ready to move into mobile development!

Macromedia Flex released version 1.5 on Tuesday morning, but this didn't stop the crowd from blowing their horns when Flex team developer Ely Greenfield demonstrated dynamic and data-driven charts in the new version. With that, he showed a simple pie chart in Flex 1.5 dynamically shifting its labels from inside the pie chart to outside of it—depending on the amount of data it needed to represent—with a simple setting within a chart tag. If a chart dynamically represented more data than originally planned, the labels rearranged themselves with the data on the page automatically, instead of requiring you, the developer, to tweak an image or complex HTML to update the chart. He also showed how a bar chart, resized by a user, rearranged its labels to be more vertical as the chart's window reduced in size; how a user could drag content dynamically into a chart; how a developer could set up critical thresholds to create a "stoplighting" effect; and how to create Gantt charts. You can read more about Flex charts in Ely's article, "Beyond the DataGrid Control: Better Data Visualization with Flex Charting Components."

Ely Greenfield shows a drill-down chart, itself a Rich Internet Application, which is available in Flex

The product support team continues its commitment to make resources easy to use with an updated knowledge base and redesigned support center. Marty Halpin, senior director of technical support, demonstrated new search capabilities in the support section of macromedia.com. Users will be able to keyword-search in one or more product areas and then narrow their search of returned results by content type or category. He encouraged everyone to use the product support RSS feeds to stay on top of new TechNotes and Developer Center articles as they go live on the site.

Marty Halpin demonstrates the redesigned product support center and new search capabilities

Captivate, the new version of RoboDemo, sneaked some new features that will be available soon. Silke Fleischer, product manager for Captivate, promised that all features she sneaked are actually in the product; it's in production right now. She recorded a desktop process and audio simultaneously in Captivate through a few button clicks—then published the file format as a SWF file that you can modify in Flash and an MP3 audio file that you can edit within Captivate. Silke then dragged a new audio clip into the audio recording and cut out sections—all through the new audio editing features in Captivate.

Silke Fleischer shows how to modify audio files in her Captivate demo

Rob Christensen of the Dreamweaver team sneaked XML and XSL features planned for the next version. In one scenario, he showed how Dreamweaver would be able to introspect XML files and display them in a tree. Other editing features include the addition of a code toolbar, a feature inherited from Macromedia HomeSite, code collapse and expansion, and zoom tools (you can drag a selection in Design view and zoom in on it).

Rob Christensen rewards the rowdy Dreamweaver audience with a few T-shirts

Flash has more than a few surprises on the way in both the player and the authoring environment (code-named Maelstrom and 8-Ball). For the player, Mike Downey sneaked new map options, such as gradient maps, displacement maps, and pixel performance maps. In the Flash authoring tool, he sneaked drop shadows as a menu selection, being able to blend modes and invert them—and, for strokes, being able to change joins to points, format caps, and add gradients. Deleting overlapping objects, by default, always takes a bite out of the underlying object, but now you will have the option of deleting objects without affecting those underneath by using a new object-editing mode. Moreover, you can apply a radial gradient and change its direction, all through a few mouse clicks.

Mike Downey sneaks a few tasty Flash features

In Central, Daniel Dura sneaked a Flex application running in Central. This is newly available in the Central SDK for Flex. You can read more about this in Waleed Anbar's "White Paper: Developing Desktop Applications with Macromedia Flex." You can download the Central SDK for Flex at: www.macromedia.com/software/central/productinfo/gettingstarted/.

In Blackstone, the next version of ColdFusion, users can expect lots of new features, according to Damon Cooper, ColdFusion engineer. Among them is the ability to obfuscate your source code, something developers have been waiting for. The new SMS gateway will allow developers to "break out and build apps that aren't confined by web browsers," Damon said. He also hinted that the new version will help developers create instant-message applications.

Mike Chambers asks whether anyone likes what they've seen

Mike Chambers closed the Sneak Peek session. When asked whether they liked some of these features, the audience responded with a deafening blow of their horns. "OK," he said, "we'll see what we can do about getting these features in."

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