For many of us who comment regularly on the swirling, whirling Internet technologies space, "Web publishing" has never been a particularly satisfactory term.

If the metaphor of "publishing" was the correct one for the business of making things public on the Web, then how about the rest of the lexicon of publishing, such as "author,""editor,""jacket designer," and so on? It was almost as if half the elements of the publishing ecosystem were missing.

So it was a welcome relief back in1998 when Kevin Lynch, now Macromedia's chief software architect (then, vice president and general manager for Internet and multimedia authoring tools), championed vector design, and established himself as a key figure in Macromedia's contribution of the open .swf vector format to the Web. It heralded a new focus on one of the concepts that had been missing up till then, namely "Web authoring."

Some people take to newly breaking technologies the way surfers take to newly breaking waves: HTML, XML, XHTML, dHTML, and Web services were to Lynch as water to a fish, and before long he was swimming among such acronyms. First he defined and led the development of Dreamweaver. Then, as president of products, he took on wider responsibility for helping to make a "family" of Macromedia's various award-winning software and Web authoring solutions.

It was Lynch's conviction that creating practical, powerful, and enjoyable solutions would - by transforming the "Web authoring" experience - also transform the end-user Web experience (the "reader," to continue the metaphor).

In a move that foreshadowed the tools and technologies that have now become "MX" tools and technologies, Lynch broke down Macromedia's strategy for better Internet communications into three parts: emotion, context, and interaction. Macromedia pledged to considerably improve each part over what was acceptable at the time. "We're raising the level of human interaction across the Internet," he declared.

Bold words. But to Web developers, as to everyone else, actions speak louder than words. Macromedia's mission - now being continued by Norm Meyrowitz, who succeeded Lynch as president of products - has manifested itself as action after action. New versions of the company's Flash animation tools, Dreamweaver Web design package, and Fireworks graphics tools have been released, all overhauled to reflect a new emphasis on Web applications. Flash MX Professional 2004 was developed and brought to market, aimed at top-of-the-line Flash developers or people used to using forms-based programming metaphors like Visual Basic or Delphi.

Under Meyrowitz's guidance, Macromedia has made it easier for Flash to work with servers through Web services, and enabled ColdFusion to expose server code. But most important, the focus has broadened from Web-only to "digital interactions" in general. Flash on the handset, for example, is now a growth area for MX developers.

"Making the future better, one interface at a time"may seem a rather lofty goal but that doesn't mean it isn't achievable. In a world where technology is being increasingly embedded into PDAs, phones, and appliances of all sorts, the Macromedia credo is that new "experience hybrids"are a massive growth area for developers and designers. The Macromedia vision is for MX to be the platform that ensures that a good experience is possible on any device. Nothing more, but nothing less.

Wherever applications allow anyone to present information or impart knowledge, developers using the MX family of software can help with the creation and sharing of that touch point as a digital experience; nothing less than the ability to participate, that's what MX tools seek to help developers create.

The organizing principle of MX Developer's Journal is participation, too. It is edited "by MX developers for MX developers," and each section editor is a highly devoted IT professional in his or her own right, active at conferences and productive as a book author, Web site owner, or Weblogger. Thus our Flash editor, Jesse Warden, runs the energetic Jester XL blog; our Dreamweaver editor, Dave

McFarland, authored Dreamweaver MX: The Missing Manual (O'Reilly); our ColdFusion Editor, Rob Diamond, runs the high-traffic Web site BroadwayWorld.com; and our Fireworks editor, Kleanthis Economou, runs ProjectFireworks.com with equal vigor. McFarland is highly representative of the top-of-the-line quality we're seeking in MXDJ. Even though he's the Dreamweaver section editor, when he reviewed the first draft of his own article for this month's Dreamweaver section, he found he needed to focus more on just one topic, better organize some parts, and extend a few more once he'd added his example Flash file. So, he removed the entire first section. What remains is a great article about taking a complex, artistic design a designer has made for you - a completed "comp" (composition) - and implementing it into Flash using advanced ActionScript. It's a hybrid approach of timeline and OOP that RAD (Rapid Application Development) people will love.

So whether you have picked up this premier issue of MXDJ hoping that it will show you, through a real example, how to take an insanely cool and complex design, and implement it without sacrificing your OOP code, or whether you have picked it up because you are a newbie wondering whether MX Studio is for you, there will be much for you to engage in. You are quite literally holding the future in your hands, the future that the visionary Meyrowitz wants to "make better, one interface at a time."

In this and future issues, the international MXDJ team will bring you mouth-watering technical articles that drill down and deal with the code behind this vision. First-rate technical material, fresh insights about rich Internet applications, ingenious new extensions, wide-ranging industry interviews - these are the staple ingredients of the MX Developer's Journal banquet.

Best of all, we serve it to you on an all-you-can-eat basis, which is why even this inaugural issue is a hundred pages long.