Macromedia Inc has announced a major upgrade to its flagship authoring software, Director 7 Shockwave Internet Studio. Director was originally used by content developers building multimedia titles for CD-ROM, but the company says it has rebuilt the software from the ground up to address the specific problems of building internet content. Its release has been timed to coincide with that of the latest version of Macromedia’s multimedia player, Shockwave 7. Director 7 handles animation for both narrowband and broadband environments, audio integration, and support for the emerging web standard XML. Shockwave 7 boasts faster and more stable playback, the company claims, and since the player is included in Windows 98, MacOS 8.5 and AOL 4, it could have the greatest reach of any multimedia player. In one final announcement, Macromedia unveiled its latest web authoring environment Dreamweaver 2, while Allaire, Broadvision, HP, IBM and Oracle lined up to declare their support. á
