April 29, 2002

4:34 AM

What does MX stand for?It doesn't say, but Macromedia, launched a huge new strategy today to integrate all of its software properties. Very smart, and perhaps too late?
posted by boardman (18 comments total)

According to the faq: The "MX" moniker is not an acronym and doesn't have a literal translation. "MX" designates products that are major new releases and part of the Macromedia MX product family.

It just sounds groovy, is all.
posted by iconomy at 4:44 AM on April 29, 2002

As far as I know : 10 years of Macromedia = MX.
posted by XiBe at 5:36 AM on April 29, 2002

Macromedia LOVES confusing acronyms. Before MX, there was swf, which originally stood for Shockwave Flash. But Shockwave is content created with Macromedia Director (extension dcr), not Macromedia Flash. When MM bought Future Splash (Flash's original name), they were going to market it as a light version of Director for the web, but they changed their minds. Now they've decided that swf stands for Small Web Format.
posted by grumblebee at 6:00 AM on April 29, 2002

I liked it better when it was "single white female" myself.
posted by bittennails at 6:14 AM on April 29, 2002

grumblebee: is it ? First time I hear with this new meaning.
posted by XiBe at 6:23 AM on April 29, 2002

I just hope the rest of Macromedia's tools aren't as... well... FUBARed as Flash MX. So much waiting, such a dissapointment...
posted by jedrek at 6:31 AM on April 29, 2002

Mexico.
posted by rodii at 6:54 AM on April 29, 2002

I love flash MX, the dynamic loading of images/mp3s, the MUCH improved XML parser and String functions, shape primatives ... all code stuff tho.

Anyway, it finally dawned on me why calling the creation tool Flash MX makes sense -- it removes the confusion with the Flash Player.

I used to tell people "you need flash 5 to view this", and they'd say "I can't pay that much" because they had searched on the macromedia site and gotten the Flash creation software. Now you can safely send them to get the flash 6 player.
posted by malphigian at 7:07 AM on April 29, 2002

Well, I see macromedia.com is getting hammered, took me far too long to get to the free download page to see that the DW download is still the old preview version and not the trial version.

While I was there loading the home page, I did notice that the html text portions of the page loaded a good 2 minutes before the flash ones did. I think I'll make some popcorn and wait for the latest round of anti-flash/pro-flash articles to start springing up.
posted by 10sball at 7:43 AM on April 29, 2002

Ditto what malphigian says - I was at Flash Forward this year in SF and people are pretty excited. Eric Natzke shared some amazing stuff, all done with a directory of .jpegs and some variable strings. It'll take a little while (and Flash crud from folks not sure what they're doing will continue to clog the internet, no doubt) but I think you'll see some really neat stuff soon...
posted by jalexei at 7:43 AM on April 29, 2002

Well, 10sball, if you wait for the load times, you'll find that the ColdFusion MX product overview is one big Flash file mimicking web pages -- complete with blurry, illegible, un-copy/pasteable text and un-bookmarkable pages. Barf.
posted by Tubes at 7:48 AM on April 29, 2002

I'm not saying that Flash 6 is bad, I'm saying that Flash MX - the authoring software - is just f**king horrible. MX is a slap in the face of everyone working in Flash 5. What's even worse, is that it's totally buggy.
posted by jedrek at 8:40 AM on April 29, 2002

I did some marketing/user testing for Macromedia a few months ago, and when I saw the new name and they asked me what I thought, I said "what's the MX stand for?" They replied "we can't tell you that." I'm going to guess Macromedia eXtreme, since the kids love their death-defying things these days.
posted by mathowie at 9:53 AM on April 29, 2002

Xtreme this, Xtreme that... xbox, xgames, sound blaster xtreme... ugh.
posted by hobbes at 10:16 AM on April 29, 2002

Yeah, that's the first thing I thought of... stupid hip-wannabe marketers with some sort of X-fetish. Or, as I often think of it: Flash MX == Flash 1010.

launched a huge new strategy today to integrate all of its software properties. Very smart, and perhaps too late?

Well, it's been in the works for a while, with CFMX coming soon (with some great Flash interoperability features -- think: webcam/voice chat through Flash!) All MX really is, is a monicker with which to relate all the different products and versions: Flash 6 and DreamWeaver 4 don't seem to relate; but Flash MX and DreamWeaver MX do.
posted by mkn at 12:26 PM on April 29, 2002

I agree that Flash MX is amazing -- with or without bugs (although I hope they fix the bugs). If you've been coding Actionscript for a while, I don't see how you could think otherwise. If you don't think Flash MX is a breakthrough product, perhaps you haven't explored it fully.

But I don't think MM has helped the name confusion at all (and I don't think they care too). An even bigger confusion than the swf/Director one is the meaning of the word "Flash."

Many people call swf files "Flash files," as in "I've put some Flash files on my website. But do they mean files of the swf format -- which can be authores in Adobe LiveMotion, After Effects and Illustrator, and also in XaraX, Swish, Koolmoves, Toon Boom Studio, Mojo and Freehand (and I'm sure others I've missed) -- or do they mean that they authored the file in MM Flash (which can also export in Quicktime and animated GIF format)?
posted by grumblebee at 2:56 PM on April 29, 2002

I've been using Flash MX since it's release, and I've really enjoyed it. I had just started using 5 last summer, and was pretty frustrated with it, but when I started working more in MX (mostly ActionScript stuff) I really got into it, especially the dynamic mp3 stuff, loadvars, and the new text field stuff...

But above all of that, the real kicker for me (and something noone's mentioned yet) is this: OS X!!! MX on X (hmm...) is a much better experience, IMHO, than MX on 9. Plus, it means that I can live in X now, which is why I'm looking forward to the rest of the MX'es (is Director included in that lineup?) since I used to use Dreamweaver 4 all the time (although it's quickly lost favor to BBEdit.)

Now, if only I could get Photoshop 7... ;)
posted by fizgig at 5:13 PM on April 29, 2002

One other thing: it appears that, with Dreamweaver MX, you will now be able to develop PHP/MySQL sites on Mac OS X. Hm, Macromedia confirms this, kind of. What does this mean for Cold Fusion? What does it mean for PHP developers? It looks like good news (at least, in the small scheme of things).
posted by boardman at 5:34 PM on April 29, 2002