Adobe Buys Macromedia

[Generalissimo]

http://www.adobe.com/aboutadobe/invrelations/adobeandmacromedia.html

$3.4 billion


Good for adobe, bad for the customer - my opinion.

[MarkB]

Depends - if they dump Dreamweaver in favour of Go Live, then definitely bad.

[Generalissimo]

I recon they will merge all competiting products within a few years...

[chromate]

That is one huge acquisition for Adobe. Anyone that uses Adobe products will know how each product is able to interact closely with other Adobe products. It will be interesting to see how they handle this.

[moonshield]

This really sucks, The creator of the best interfaces was acquired by the company with the worst. :( I really hate Adobe with a passion. This really does suck.

[Generalissimo]

I must agree that I prefer the interfaces of macromedia products, and the load times, and the box art. Basically the only thing I prefer by Adobe in comparision to macromedia is Photoshop.

[Westech]

I agree with Generalissimo Incka on this one. Photoshop blows away all other image editing programs, but Macromedia is far better for everything else.

Acrobat is a good idea with a poor implementation. I think that everyone who's ever touched a computer hates Acrobat Reader with a passion. It's going to make me really mad if Flash Player starts taking 45 seconds to load every time and keeps asking me if I want to update it now or later every time I try to use it.

[moonshield]

Someone needs to rise up and compete with Photoshop, for raster images nothing really competes. Maybe GIMP somday, I can only hope!

[chromate]

I agree with Generalissimo Incka on this one. Photoshop blows away all other image editing programs, but Macromedia is far better for everything else.

Illustrator's a great prog too.

[Chris]

Acrobat really does have loading problems. In fact, I recall it loading faster on a windows 3.1 system back the first time I ever used the program.

I don't mind the load times with photoshop, but acrobat reader really slows down web browsing when you need to use it.

[chromate]

I've never had any problems with Acrobat load times. I do have problems when browsing pdf's on the web, because the pdf's tend to be a reasonable size and take time to download before Acrobat can read them. Opening one from my local HD opens Acrobat in a flash though.

[James]

This really sucks, The creator of the best interfaces was acquired by the company with the worst. I really hate Adobe with a passion. This really does suck.
Have you even used Flash MX 2004 Professional?
I hope they fix the program's interface and shorten the friggen name.

[chromate]

I try and keep well away from anything "Flash". I've only seen a few cases where it's been used well. Most of the time it's just a waste of space. There's nothing more annoying than seeing a "loading bar" when all I want is the information behind it.

[Generalissimo]

Huh-hum: Flash games, flash cartoons, flash animated diagrams, etc...

[chromate]

Oh - of course - for games and stuff that has a *need* to be interactive / animated. Flash is great for that. But only when it's needed and not just for the hell of it.

[Blue Cat Buxton]

I once designed an entire database front end interface in Flash (with PHP and MySQL.)

It was a real pain in the backside, but it had to fit in with the Clients' existing website format.

Back on topis, Acrobat might be a pain, but Adobe certainly know how to standardise a media format - PDF is easy to understand and most people can work out how to read a pdf document without messing it up!

[Tech Evangelist]

How about the rumor that they may integrate Flash into Acrobat? I think its pure speculation, but it could create whole new generation of annoying ads that run when you open a PDF. That's if you are not forced to wait forever for the combination of Acrobat and Flash to load.

[chromate]

my worst nightmare! :)

[James]

I just hope they'll learn a thing or two from Flash and make it so it's not laggy-as-**** when you open Acrobat.

[thebillionaire]

yea, its pretty stupid of macromedia to sell it self, after all they were the ones who invented flash, and shockwave, and were getting a great start to mobile tech, but adobe might screw it up, by filling it with major graphic components and forgetting about the main efficent purpose.

[James]

I don't think that the company will fire all of its employees and bring all of the development over to Adobe HQ....

[thebillionaire]

still macromedia was like my fav. webdev company, and now Adobe bought it :(

[moonshield]

maybe it will all fail and we wont have all this crappy unuseable navigation and crappy unuseable sites. (The useit.com guy can talk for hours on it.) Plain Nintendo(Jesse) style sites all the way baby. Though some style is good, all this rich media is just annoying cheese. When they get the brilliant idea (and I am sure they will) to mix acrobat and flash hell will have officialy come.

I don't like either company too much though I do use Dreamweaver.

[James]

I can't stand Dreamweaver. Raw coding in Notepad is the cleanest and easiest for me. I've used things like EditPad Pro etc. but they're just too busy and complex for me to use.

Photoshop 7 or CS, Windows XP, Firefox, and an internet connection. Give me these on a computer, and I can do everything I need for website design. And actually, this is really all I need for entertainment in general.

[moonshield]

ah, but when you are copying and pasting a couple hundred pages of formated text, notepad can become a major pain in the behind.

[James]

I'd just use PHP for that.

[moonshield]

well, some types of sites don't need to be database driven and do better static. There is a certain point where the site being dynamic is required.

[James]

If it's too small to not need to be database driven, it's not too tiresome to go through.
But since I'm lazy I'd just use EditPad Lite. And I said need not want in my other post, too ;):D

[moonshield]

i understand :D

[James]

kthxbie!!11111111!!1111 :D:D:D:D:D:D

[Emancipator]

soon as they stopped work on Atmosphere I knew something was up and low and behold they got macromedia. I love macromedia products, great company caant wait to see what Adobe does with em.. since im a fan of Photoshop CS as well :)