MACROMEDIA ANNOUNCES PET MARKET APPLICATION

Built with Macromedia MX product family, Pet Market application shows developers the benefits of rich Internet applications

San Francisco—July 29, 2002—Macromedia, Inc. (Nasdaq: MACR) today introduced Pet Market, a sample application built using the entire Macromedia MX product family. Pet Market, a fictitious online pet retailer, illustrates both the benefits of rich Internet applications and the ability to deliver these experiences across different server architectures, including the Java ™ platform and Microsoft .NET Framework.

Pet Market is accompanied online by source code, and more than a dozen articles to show designers and developers how to create their own rich Internet applications that drive down cost and bandwidth concerns while providing a usable, high-impact user experience. The Pet Market site and resources can be viewed and downloaded from www.macromedia.com/desdev/mx/blueprint/.

"The Pet Market sample application highlights the enhanced user experience possible using the Macromedia MX servers and tools along with a rich client such as Macromedia Flash Player," said Kevin Lynch, chief software architect, Macromedia. "The articles, documentation, and source code will help developers learn how to build rich Internet applications, as well as see how they can be deployed across Java and .NET server platforms."

Pet Market was created using the Macromedia MX product family, including Macromedia Flash MX, Macromedia Dreamweaver MX, Macromedia ColdFusion MX, and Macromedia Fireworks MX. To showcase the cross-platform nature of rich Internet applications, Macromedia also released Macromedia Flash front-ends that extend and enhance the Java Pet Store and .NET Pet Shop blueprint sample applications. These front-ends will help Java and .NET developers understand how to use Macromedia Flash to deliver more intuitive and effective user experiences.

"The Java platform enables developers to build end-to-end solutions that embrace a wide variety of interface models," said Ralph Galantine, product line manager, Java and XML software, Sun Microsystems. "The Macromedia Flash implementation of the Java Pet Store demonstrates how a rich Internet application interface provides a dynamic user experience to powerful enterprise Java solutions. We are happy to see Macromedia addressing the usability of online applications in such an open manner."

"From the Pet Market demo application, it's pretty easy to see how a Macromedia Flash front-end can build a richer user experience across various infrastructures," said Tim O'Reilly, CEO, O'Reilly & Associates. "Macromedia Flash enables regions of the screen to be updated without a page refresh based on back-end database interaction. Macromedia Flash can no longer be dismissed as a tool for web animation. It's become a ubiquitous rich client that will radically change the way people use the web. We at O'Reilly are excited to see what developers will do with the possibilities of Macromedia Flash and rich Internet applications."

Pet Market was designed to clearly illustrate the more intuitive, responsive, and effective user experiences of rich Internet applications. For example, the checkout process of Pet Market breaks out of the standard multi-step, page-browsing model of the web and brings all user interactions into a single screen that never requires a page refresh. The application also enables customers to use the browser's back button to navigate through the Macromedia Flash user interface. Articles, commented code, and best practices are all available online to enable users to build their own rich Internet applications.

Pet Market also illustrates the use of object-oriented programming on the client side, which enabled Macromedia to change the user interface of Pet Market to respond to feedback gathered through usability testing. The user interface evolved throughout the development process without any impact on the central business logic and data tier of the application. The Model-View-Controller (MVC) design pattern of Pet Market also helped to make the application modular and easy to port across different platforms.