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65 Comments
- davinci2k1, on 10/12/2007, -1/+5I cannot share the others positive outlook on this merger; Macromedia is (was?) an innovative leader in multimedia and web development software & applications. How many terrible web authoring apps has Adobe bought and relabeled?
I'm afraid this will lead to a lack of the competitive incentive in the industry. Adobe has become really crass in the last 5 years with their needless releases which add mostly useless "new" features to their already feature laden bloatware packages. (If they change the key shortcuts for Illustrator one more time! I'll lose it.)
I really get the feeling that Macromedia is much more driven by innovation and technology and that Adobe is driven by the Marketing Department.
(Marketing Directive:.. Better get CS4 out soon.. We need to milk our user-base for another round of upgrades..just add in some new and frivolous features...)
At least we can hope that we no longer have to deal with Adobe's Flash wannabe technology, SVG.
I am interested in what will happen with Flash Paper and PDF, though. - Bluezdood, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1And in other news, Hasbro Toy Inc. has announced a new game designed to teach youngsters the ins and outs of business. It will be called "Hungry Hungry Adobe".
- motionblur, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1HomeSite > Dreamweaver
Dreamweaver is for pussies. - sirplus, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1yeah, i use Macromedia MX 2004 every day, and i have to say it is some of the most well thought out and well executed software i've ever used. wonder if they'll lose their edge, not having to compete with adobe. remains to be seen. keep your MX install :) it works great.
- shumira, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1Unlike the first poster, I don't think this bodes
well for Linux or Macromedia. Remember FrameMaker? - iheartbeer, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1greg-j
"I've been a developer for 6 years and a graphic designer for over 11. I've been around since before Photoshop 3. So let me tell you what I think."
"Photoshop vs. Freehand (and GIMP?)
Freehand is simply not in the same league as Photoshop. It never has been, and never would have been. "
Um, if you've been a "graphic designer" for 11 years, why don't you know that Photoshop and Freehand aren't remotely the same thing? Photoshop is for bitmaps, Freehand is for vector art (like Illustrator). What the hell are you talking about???? - tanveer, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1One more thing, ImageReady is NO match for Fireworks.
- mwebb1984, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1prices will most definitely go up.... that's what happens when someone buys out their biggest competitor to grow closer to a monopoly.
- tanveer, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0davinci2k1: this is been said already - I've to say it for myself. I feel the exact same way! couldn't have said better.
I'd just like to add that Macromedia's been always been quite possibly to me the best produced software developer, Its got the sweetest suit and always had offered upgrades worth the money. I hold dreamwaver, fireworks 'n flash very dear to my heart as no other tool seemed to well produced and thought out and just plain smooth. Its just a pleasure to be working in that macromedia environment.
I just hope, they don't kill any of macromedia's 3 major tools or make it lose its innovative edge or jack up the price...
Don't spoil macromedia for us, Adobe. It'd really be a crime.
p/s: I'm saving up all my MXs and 8s - Chewie67, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0This could be okay. My guess is that Adobe will drop Freehand and Fireworks, and just keep the rest. Illustrator and Quark are the big players in the vector graphics market, so losing Freehand isn't a big deal. I've never used Fireworks, but I believe it competes with ImageReady, which is excellent.
Hopefully, this won't affect us too much. - KoZo, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0I think this is more or less a defensive strategy on the impending collision course with Microsoft....
- monkeymagik, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0I don't like this... less competition always means ***** below par or over priced products
- alexanderhazard, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0Farewell fireworks...I loved thee so
- evansls, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0is there are an adobe solution for macromedia's captivate? i love captivate... so cheap and so easy to use. amazing software if anyone is interested...
- VipeNess, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0should be super interesting in about 3 weeks. macromedia was hardcore pushing their limits at max 2005 and you could notice the merge with flash 8 and after effects.
- zecnobot, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0Well, AJAX came along just in time, coupled with DHTML and JS you could make equivalent flash-styled content. Perhaps someone will develop a WYSIWYG for this...
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-- Women are like fishermen. They're always complaining about the one they caught, and always bragging about the ones that got away. - konstratos, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0The future of rich web applications is here. Adobe will do great things taking Macromedia's products to the next level, so long as they don't screw the pooch.
- inactive, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0I'd be more worried if I only had a mac. I can see Adobe stopping all Apple products. Apple has been stepping on their toes a little too much. Jobs better get building a Flash alternative.
- miccet, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0it all makes sense and is good imo. flash in pdf is gonna be pretty neat. although, i work for tech support at Adobe, i bet its gonna be probs ;)
- kungfustickman, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0Farewell Macromedia perhaps you will move on to do better things. I truly mean that. I expect to see good things from the new Adobe.
- iheartbeer, on 10/12/2007, -1/+1No competition means ***** products, yay!
- sporkman, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0I can't believe they are letting Adobe and Macromedia become one. can you say monopoly? they won't let Directv and Dish merge, but they let Adobe and Macro media? they forced Microsoft to split also.
- joeyjojo, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0I don't know how anyone can see this as a positive.
"flash in pdf is gonna be pretty neat."
That will make a great frankenstein of a proprietary, annoying file format, eh?
"At least we can hope that we no longer have to deal with Adobe's Flash wannabe technology, SVG."
Ugh. Flash is a proprietary web vector format. SVG is the open standard web vector format. This is bad that we're loosing this support.
"My guess is that Adobe will drop Freehand and Fireworks"
FH has been dead for years. Which is a bummer, but we all saw that coming BEFORE the monopoly formed.
"llustrator and Quark are the big players in the vector graphics market"
Quark is a company, not a product. And it's not a vector illustration program. And it's not owned by Adobe.
"so losing Freehand isn't a big deal. I've never used Fireworks, but I believe it competes with ImageReady, which is excellent."
If you think IR is excellent, then you should have tried out FW. ;o)
The fact is that MM was a good web app company, Adobe was a good print app company, but they continually tried to compete in the same space, which was rather silly, and, obviously, what led to the merger.
The ONLY positive light, IMHO, is that perhaps we'll see Corel re-enter the Mac market and/or we'll see a renewed interest in many of the OS apps being worked on to compete in this space. - burke, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0Whoah. I thought Macromedia was acquiring Adobe. It makes more sense this way, I guess. As much as this sucks (I hate Adobe with a passion), I think it is a good thing, for me anyway; I currently use Dreamweaver, but I want to move away from licensed software of any and all kinds. With Dreamweaver about to be taken over by Adobe, I suddenly don't feel to much regret about not getting the new version :)
- tomkelleher, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0I agree this is good news, at first I wasnt very pleased when they announced this several months ago. Though after a cooling down period I realize how great this is, the way I see it is this. Adobe will keep Dreamweaver, and Flash, possibly Fireworks, so in return they will probably dump GoLive, because Dreamweaver it the "tool of choice" in the industry over GoLive. Also Im sure Adobe will dump Freehand, I've been working in this industry for a while now and I dont know anybody who uses Freehand.
- rosemat2, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0wow, this should be interesting for macromedia. maybe adobe will push for a 64bit version of flash for us linux users already using 64bit os's
- inactive, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0I wonder how this will affect their software prices, I have always found Macromedia to be a bit more reasonably priced than Adobe.
- leftfoot, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0This sounds great! Macromedia has their VERY successful pieces of software (Flash, Dreamweaver, Fireworks, Director, and Coldfusion), and Adobe has their very good software as well (Photoshop, Premier, Audition, Elements). This can only be good from web designers and multimedia makers! I Really hope this turns out well, and we can hope to see some great products coming soon.
- jpellegrin, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0davinci2k1 - well stated! I couldn't agree more.
- japanmoran, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0Sweet. Gonna put all my Macromedia swag on eBay.
- cosmotic, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0How can any of you say this is good news? Adobe has essentially eliminated its only compitition. THAT IS BAD! GET A CLUE!
- sethtrain, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0I would suggest that anyone looking for a decent editor find an plug-in for Eclipse. If Adobe gets rid of Dreamweaver and keeps GoLive we are all in a bind.
- kwilliam71, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0@diggity_dank OMG you're right! Where was my brain. Why the hell do they call themselves that then?
- pr0t0, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0I've been a graphic artist for about 12 years now and a web developer for about 4. My feeling is...I'm not sure how I feel about this.
There's no argument that Macromedia has been dominant in web apps and Adobe in print. While I never cared for Freehand, a lot of designers used it because it was cheap and functioned as both a layout program and vector-art program. As others have posted, the lack of competition is something to be concerned about, as competition is a good thing.
As far as the whole Flash vs. SVG thing. I haven't messed with either much, but I've always wanted to use Illustrator for SVG work, just to play around. Personally, I hope they don't cancel SVG development. - TechReticle, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0"keep your MX's and 8's"
Anyone else thinking the absolute worst-case scenario? That everything on the Macromedia side (except Flash) gets killed, and Adobe forces GoLive, ImageReady and a huge price increase on the public?
Not a good day for designers at all... - Greg-J, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0Wow. People jump on the bandwagon far to quickly around here. Oh where to begin.
In all honesty, there is too much Chicken Little going on here and not enough intelligent speculation. The sky is not falling and the graphic design world is not going to come to an end because the two greatest companies in this market have merged.
I've been a developer for 6 years and a graphic designer for over 11. I've been around since before Photoshop 3. So let me tell you what I think.
GoLive vs. Dreamweaver:
In all that time, I have no clue what these programs do other than muck up my code anytime I switch to layout view to select an element in a page of over 1000 lines or so. DW has great out-of-the-box syntax highlighting and intellisense(autocomplete), but it's not that customizable. The Studio 8 version also happens to have much improved ftp support, which was a major gripe of previous versions. I used GoLive once. Until DreamWeaver3 came out. I have nothing intelligent to say about GoLive's short-comings. It' just complete crap, that's all.
Photoshop vs. Freehand (and GIMP?)
I don't need to say a whole lot of anything here. CS2 is hog. A much bigger hog than CS1 was, and about twice as slow to do anything. It does add some great features though, mostly to usability. Features that should have been a free update. Freehand is simply not in the same league as Photoshop. It never has been, and never would have been. And sinc someone mentioned GIMP... I switched to GIMP for 30 days for an article I did about 6 months ago. For open source software, it's scope is impressive. But still... It's not able to contend with Photoshop. I would prefer it over Freehand, but that's it.
Fireworks vs. ImageReady
Why ImageReady even exists baffles my mind. Every feature in ImageReady should be in Photoshop. There is no (logical[not financial]) reason for ImageReady to exist. If its feature set was within Photoshop, life would make more sense. FireWorks though, belongs alone. It's a great product and I'm sure Adobe can see that.
See, everyone automatically assumes that Adobe is going to swallow up Macromedia. I seriously doubt that. Ever heard of GM.. Chevy.. Cadillac? How about Dodge and Chrysler? Ford Mercury or Lincoln? The point I'm trying to make in this analogy is that just because Adobe now owns the collective asses at Macromedia, they're not going to go all G4 on the place (Read: G4 acquisition of TechTV - Most poorly executed corporate buyout/takeover in history).
Those are truly the only 'directly competing' products as I see it. As someone above mentioned, Flash + PDF (the technology, not necessarily the products themselves) would (and will) be a great thing. I smell direct competition for PowerPoint. Something that I for one would welcome with open arms.
As for Corel making a come-back. Not likely. And would we really want them to try? - DUGESTYLE, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0I know this is an OLD posting but I had to comment U DIG IT?
- anti_hax0r, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0greg-j is probably right, why would Adobe buy the competition, then kill it when it was more popular? Why not just keep selling it and developing it as is to increase their profits.
This has nothing to do with Microsoft as KoZo is speculating way up there, more to do with Apple's content creation acquisitions of late which puts them in direct competition with Apple.
What's more, Microsoft should be looking at purchasing Adobe now and keep them as a seperate arm and stop making Apple products like Apple has done with so many pieces of software (Shake, FCP, Spruce Technology DVD, etc). - n00854180t, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0Damnit, I knew about this before when it was originally announced, but I've been sort of hoping it wouldn't come to fruition (obviously a vain hope, I know), due to the fact that I don't want FW and DW bloated up with Adobe's *****, or dropped altogether. I use FW for different things than I use PS for, and I'd NEVER use ***** ass GoLive or ImageReady (HORRIBLE ***** APP). Bye Macromedia, my love affair with you was entirely justified, it's too bad you had to be raped by ***** Adobe.
Greg-j, I think you're being a little too opitimistic. Likely Adobe will try and rip out everything that makes FW great and cram it into the bloated resource hog that is PS, and I RUE THE DAY. ;-; Damn Adobe to a fiery fiery hell. - orangetiki, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0This happened months ago
- Math-Sux, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0Right on joeyjojo!
- Greg-J, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0@iheartbeer:
For starters, the correct terminology is Raster and Vector. Regardless of the purposes, Freehand is very much in the same category as Photoshop simply because they are used to accomplish the same goals. As we graphic designer I would look at both of them to do the same thing. As web graphics designer I would again look at both programs to do the same thing, as they are both suited to do both. Furthermore, Photoshop's support of vectors is definately good enough to directly compete with Freehand if you have even a modicum of skill. Most of us have tablets larger than a standard piece of paper, which negates the need for the vector support that Freehand offers. - cheech_sp, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0As long as they dont mess with Fireworks, thats the only graphics app I use. Mostly for web stuff, but I aslo print flyers, brochures, etc with it. I tried Photoshop and never cared for the feel of it.
*slightly off topic - if anybody cares for a (Windows) free non-Adobe pdf reader, Foxit Reader is great, just run the exe, no need for install, faster than Acrobat reader IMO:
http://www.foxitsoftware.com/pdf/rd_intro.php
Sharing is Caring =) - thebog, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0..no this is bad.. for those of you that were taught Illustrator in school, and are loyal to AI - I'm sorry, Freehand Is a much better program, did you know freehand was the first design app that let you import Tiff files? The first to flow text, paragraph text, algorithmic blends....
Because Aldus didn't give it to schools... I hope someone with a good marketing plan buys it from Adobe and continues to uphold a truly great page/design package...
... Seriously - AI - CS2 and Legacy text! What the heck where they thinking???? Try to charge that back to your customers... Dumb, dumb, dumb.... - sirplus, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0funny thing is is use illustrator and fireworks and flash and photoshop constantly, with dreamweaver as a sort of mothership for what i do. somehow the competition between adobe and macromedia has led to the production of design and web tools that surpass the usability of MOST software. what will happen? i don't care. i can use mx suite til the web stops running.
- inactive, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0I think it would be great to "jump" from Photoshop => Image Ready => Dreamweaver.
- DUGESTYLE, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0One more thing.. Freehand can be used as a small print publishing program as well.. It has the capability for multiple pages like the now dead Page Maker It also has Dot pattern control that I have yet to figure out in Illustrator.. In Freehand I can change the size of the dot pattern on and individual shape with in the same file and separation. This works great for screen prints. Yet another reasont not to ever ever ever compare it to Photoshop ever EVER!
- inactive, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0So it's going to be Adobe Flash? Adobe Macromedia Flash?
- DUGESTYLE, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0Your Smoking CRACK!!!! "
For starters, the correct terminology is Raster and Vector. Regardless of the purposes, Freehand is very much in the same category as Photoshop simply because they are used to accomplish the same goals"
Shut da _____ up. The 2 applications are not used to complete the same goal, not at all. One is an illustrative application and the other is a photographic application..... Hello they are called PHOTOSHOP and FREEHAND!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! U can compare Freehand to Illustrator. But STOP GIVE UP ON THE PS TO FH comparison. WOW have you even ever used them. All you got correct was the definition of raster and vector. But you were still wrong in thinking that this in anyway made the other comment about bitmap to be inaccurate. YOUR JUST WRONG. - MarkXL, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0Didn't see this coming, quite a turn of events.
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