Macromedia today announced the immediate availability of an update for Macromedia Flash MX 2004 and Flash MX Professional 2004 that offers improved stability and more comprehensive documentation. The update (version 7.2) is available to current Flash MX 2004 and Flash MX Professional 2004 customers for no additional charge

It can be downloaded at www.macromedia.com/go/updates

This update to Flash MX 2004 increases developer productivity by reducing initial launch and compile times and making the application lighter and more efficient to use. Significant improvements to documentation consist of more than 400 additional code examples and new chapters on component creation and customization.

"The Flash community has been very engaged in helping us deliver this update," said Mike Chambers, product manager for developer relations, Macromedia. "The result is a significant collection of changes that substantially improve the designer and developer experience."

The update, previously code-named Ellipsis, was planned based on extensive input from customer interviews, surveys, discussion boards, and community blogs. Beta customers using the updated version have been pleased with the results.

"I'm thrilled to see Macromedia's commitment to improving the Flash authoring experience," said Colin Moock, co-creator of Unity and author of ActionScript 2.0 Essentials. "This new updater's extensively updated documentation will really help the community create compelling content."

"The amount of fixes in an interim release is extremely impressive," said Chafic Kazoun, senior Flash developer, B-Line Express. "With this updater, Flash MX 2004 runs faster, is more stable, and addresses numerous annoying day-to-day issues that make a big difference."

"The most engaging aspect of this release was how much Macromedia involved the community to make this update everything we needed," said Matthew David, information architect, Jewelers Mutual Insurance Company.

In addition to performance improvements and enhanced documentation, this update brings more efficient use of system resources, improved international font support, and a reduction in disk storage requirements to run Flash, which is of particular interest for educational and volume customers with multi-user configurations. Localized versions of the updater are expected to be available later this summer.

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