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Microsoft To Acquire Macromedia?
perly-king-69 writes "The Register is reporting that 'industry sources' say that Microsoft have Macromedia in their sights. Whilst it could just be holiday gossip, if they do pull it off it could have a significant impact on the cross-browser compatibility of Flash applications."
Too bad for Microsoft that Macromedia documented and made the SWF format open a long time ago now. Even if they pulled the flash player from any platform except IE on Windows, we still have libflash.
As it is now, flash is a relatively open format, there's just no good OS flash players. But if Microsoft were to acquire them, I think flash would remain an open format for about 30 seconds. Then only Mac OS and Windows users would be able to browse a very significant portion of the web.
Sticking feathers up your butt does not make you a chicken - Tyler Durden
...what effect would this have? It could go either way - the Mac/Linux/Mozilla users, who are in the minority, would be disgruntled by this, and would either give in, or just not visit sites that choose to use a proprietary format.
.NET is usable by anyone, but MS gets to declare what the standards are. Perhaps MS are actually becoming a little more honest, on the face of things?
IMHO, any proprietary format on the Internet is bad. Flash is all very well for doing supplementary things (games etc) but not for features essential to the operation of a website. Common sense would tell you not to use Flash for content provision, but people seem to think otherwise.
It is most likely, however, that either this deal will not go ahead, or that MS will keep the standard fairly open. Remember, MS are moving towards semi-open standards -
Like car accidents, most hardware problems are due to driver error.
... and disturbing, since Flash is finally becoming an interesting and useful way to deliver content over the Web instead of an annoying tool to do things that could better be done in plain HTML and maybe JavaScript.
But I don't think it's the whole story. If Microsoft acquires Macromedia, they also get their graphics tools, which, while much less widely used than Adobe's, are generally well-regarded. Ggraphic artists have been talking for years about how nice it is to work in an area not dominated by Microsoft (and yes, Adobe can be just as evil -- but let's be practical here; they just don't have the raw power Microsoft does.) This could be Microsoft's bid to swallow up the last major area of the desktop market they don't yet dominate.
The correlation between ignorance of statistics and using "correlation is not causation" as an argument is close to 1.
For those of you born yesterday here is a recap: Microsoft bought Liquid Motion back in the late 90s. It was actually a contender for about 3 months but Flash quickly surpassed it. Microsoft quietly concedes this battle. Then around 2000 Microsoft acquires Visio. Again, pushing the visualization theme here. About this time they also come out with a very capable Photodraw application that even uses Adobe Photoshop plug-ins. Clearly Microsoft hungers for visualization software in it's portfolio. And Dreamweaver is kicking FrontPage's ass. It should be no surprise to anyone that Microsoft wants Macromedia. With this piece of the puzzle they could finally off Adobe and their pesky little PDF format.
My first web development platform was Drumbeat, which became Dreamweaver Ultradev, which became Dreamweaver MX. Everyone I know who uses both MX and Visual Studio .NET still prefers MX for the majority of their database-driven web development. I'd love to have MX's ease of use and powerful design support built into Visual Studio.
What's your damage, Heather?
Yes they are innovative! They created the web browser...er...they created that really neat program Visio...er...they created the office suite...er...they created the GUI...er...
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Bite Me Fanboy!!
Maybe this will be one of those technologies MS buys just so it won't go anywhere in usage or development. I would not be saddened by such a thing. Am I the only ones who is sick of flash splash pages to websites? Just give me my content damnit. :)
"Not knowing when the dawn will come, I open every door." - Emily Dickinson
I was kind of hoping those annoying Flash advertisements would be banished from Mozilla.
"And like that
furthering
It would be sad to see another innovator get gobbled up, I've been impressed with macromedia since the ol' Director days, it just seems shitty when a big guy buys up a brand or name then tries to pawn it off as their own.
The saddest example of late is Infogrames trying to ride the name recognition of Atari of all things! WTF? LOL
Sehr geehrter Toilettenbenutzer!
I'll kill myself if this takes place. If I'm not mistaken, they'd have to make some serious mods to ColdFusion or sell it because MS cannot distribute any Java based tech. without consulting with Sun first due to the lawsuit. There goes the tight Flash integration.
On a bright side, I'm glad CF's power is finally recognized:
"The ColdFusion web application server is regarded as superior to Microsoft's Active Server Pages (ASPs) and even Santa Clara, California-based Sun's Java Server Pages (JSPs) because of its simplicity, power and completeness. ColdFusion MX, meanwhile, uses ColdFusion Mark-up Language (CFML) tags that compile to Java."
it's called hostile takeover and it's done all the time.
As someone who works in a Cold Fusion shop, I can say this wouldn't be a good thing, despite all the "yay, kill Flash!" posts.
Cold Fusion is much, much easier to develop and deploy web apps for than ASP or JSP.
Microsoft should be happy with just being the number one software company...why do they need to rule the world too?
Suppose that some "public interest" suggestion could be put to bear on MS acquiring companies in related fields....
OS/2 - because choice is a terrible thing to waste.
This would not be a bad thing. Now to get rid of animated gifs, who do they need to buy up and lock only into IE to spare us from those?
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
If that would happen', what is the posibility for flash to surive?
.NET.
It's just one step less if you wanna force down
Signature Pro version 1.13.2-3 release 83.5 beta3try7 after-breakfast edition
And a rumor posted on The Register at that. I'll believe this when I see it confirmed somewhere that doesn't appear to be cribbing from the Reg or Slashdot.
This also assumes Macromedia wants to be bought by Microsoft, even if MS is attempting a hostile bid Macromedia may go looking for a white knight.
I could see IBM, Adobe, or Sun ending up with Macromedia in the end.
Happy Fun Ball is for external use only.
Anyways, I'd be more worried about cross-platform compatibility for anything with a Mac OS preference or that Apple is the vendor for. Quicktime, anyone? I'd sure love it is Apple would release Quicktime for Linux. Microsoft has a stronger record of cross-platform compatible products that some. They have to, by law. There are bigger and better things for them to crush (Java lawsuits with Sun being a good example), which is why they do paradoxical things like hand Apple a barrel of cash to stay afloat.
perl -e 'print $i=pack(c5, (41*2), sqrt(7056), (unpack(c,H)-2), oct(115), 10)'
I hate to think what Microsoft acquiring Macromedia would mean for webstandards. Dreamweaver by Macromedia is certainly one of the most popular WYSIWYG HTML editors around, and because of that there has been groups such as the WaSP have been work with Macromedia making sure it is complies with the web standards out there. Who knows what Microsoft would do with Dreamweaver seeing that is in direct competition with Frontpage.
aus.music.scrapbook
Wrong, there is one way to use flash as one hell of a software.
In cold times you could use it to burn processors at maximum and keep computer warm.
Signature Pro version 1.13.2-3 release 83.5 beta3try7 after-breakfast edition
"Flash is a powerful and rich development environment, which - through Macromedia's changes this year - took a step closer to J2EE."
Huh? Excuse me? Flash is anywhere *near* J2EE? Last I looked, Flash is entirely orthogonol to J2EE. It is just a media/presentation layer. That's like saying HTML or SMIL just took a step closer to J2EE. Nonsense.
It's 10 PM. Do you know if you're un-American?
I wonder if (this report is in fact true) this will add fuel to the WV and MA appeal to the settlement? Can those states use post-judgement behavior to show that the settlement is ineffective and that M$ is not changing its Monopolistic ways?
"Being Irish, he possessed an abiding sense of tragedy which sustained him through brief episodes of joy." -W. B.
. . . Microsoft plans to aquire the DOJ.
Modular Redundancy--Because 4 out of 5 Nodes agree
However, Mozilla has much better (potentially in some future) vector presentation technology: SVG. It's better integrated to HTML/Javascript code around it. And it's really platform independent.
I think that the day Microsoft buys Macromedia, Flash will dye for Mozilla and many Mozilla developers will switch to SVG. Which is much better than Flash.
Less is more !
Does that mean they've fixed the sound-related bug that makes the latest versions of the players essentially useless on Linux?
-- Proud descendant of semi-nomadic cattle-herders.
The positive gain? MS Frontpage might just go away. Even if Frontpage wasn't replaced by Dreamweaver, I'm sure that the Dreamweaver influence would be good for Frontpage.
Keeping
There is a reason that I don't have flash installed on any machine that I frequently use. 98% of the sites that use flash use it for ads. Not installing flash is one of the best ways to avoid the most annoying ads.
Kent
Uh.. you can still use VIM
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I know from a friend in Apple that the deal was reached because of some out of court settlements. MS doesn't give charity to the competition.
...And when they came for me, there was no one left to speak out for me." - Martin Niemoeller (1892-1984)
The monopolies watchers are asleep at the switch. Hadn't you noticed ... ?
Alison
"It is a miracle that curiosity survives formal education." - Albert Einstein
Despite the utter rubish some of the typical no-clue-on-design anti-flash zealots on /. kept crapping out in recent years, flash had a clear and distinct position in WWW content.
Until less then a year ago there was no way you could get CSS working the way it was intended on spec-release about 7 years ago. Flash was the *only* way to get a consistent visual apperance across Browsers with solid fonts and stuff that went beyond table-slicing (tables not being intended for pushing pics around anyway).
Flash was *the* tool to actually achieve what CSS promised for so long. With nearly every browser finally fully CSS 2 compliant, this is now a non-issue and put's flash in the extra gadget area so many slashdotters allways suspected it in. With SVG - a format that's substancially easyer to handle in the dynamic content serving dept. - and open architecture web 3D poppingup left right and center and the mighty Java Media Framework finally out, asskick competition for flash is closing in.
Considering this and the fact that the Uber-Web Tool Dreamweaver had it's days when it's templates where the next best thing to the then expensive and unwieldy dynamic content servers this is might actually be the wrong time for M$ to purchase Macromedia. Macromedia never got the curve to professional level tools, Dreamweaver aside. Flash MX coding is as crappy as ever, Director 8.5 still tops the hitlist as the most bizare software joke under the sun, PHP kicks Cold Fusion up and down the street and no f*ckin' way is Kava or JRun gonna stand against Suns free libs and the ever-growing Netbeans popularity combined with the bazillion and one Java/Apache OSS projects.
Bottom Line: I kinda hope that M$ buys Macromedia and drives it against the wall at full speed. Hideously bloated with ColdFusion-ASP-MX.NET intergration or whatever they think might be a cool name for a dead-end product strategy.
We suffer more in our imagination than in reality. - Seneca
But i agree, i have no need for flash..
> Would adobe finally make photoshop cross platform, invest more in making their own SVG Editor (flash level) & viewer if that would happen?
Last time I checked it is. IIRC Adobe makes their products for Mac OS and Windows, that would make it cross-platform. I wouldn't hold my breath for a Linux port.
Coldfusion is great for rapid prototyping, however, from the system administration side (ie, production support), it crashes just a little too often for my tastes. Yes, many times, it'll bring itself back up, so there will just be a 2-3 minute service interuption...
Now take into consideration that this is happening NIGHTLY. And it doesn't always come back up on its own. Due to the poor model that we have (ie, no one watches the systems save for 7am-7pm weekdays), this has resulted in multi-day outages on the weekends. Luckily, I'm not the one getting the 2am phone calls anymore, but when I hear that they want to put more and more things over on Coldfusion, I'd prefer it they had a stable system first.
Oh -- and I don't like their security model...I heard it's not so server-centric in MX, but well, before that, if someone with access to one directory knew the datasource name used by someone else on that system, they could muck with someone else's data. I'd prefer to see some sort of chrooting for the CFFILE commands, and access restrictions by directory, not for the system as a whole.
[And a daemon that doesn't keep crashing... but well, I'm off on another project, so someone else has had to be the one talking to Macromedia support on a regular basis.]
Supposedly, ColdFusion doesn't have these problems under windows [we're using Solaris], but then I've got to deal with Windows crashing, too.
Build it, and they will come^Hplain.
And those flash advertisements are why I uninstalled Flash. When you need a 1Ghz or better computer just to go to Yahoo's phone book due to the flash ads that kill your CPU if you run anything less, there's a big problem.
The fact that they (Macromedia) are not talking to the media is one indication and if you had read the story they are hurting financially (due to their own greed and mismanagement IMHO) and are ripe for a takeover. One that the shareholders would benefit from immensely.
Who are you? The new #2 Who is #1? You are #617565. I am not a number, I am a free man! Muhahaha.
Macromedia and Microsoft would make a good match. They both publish insecure software.
-russ
Don't piss off The Angry Economist
I already can't browse those sites. I won't run flash because it's proven to be insecure. And y'know what? The most significant site I had trouble with was http://www.dubyadubyadubya.com.
Do you call that a "very significant portion of the web."? I don't.
-russ
Don't piss off The Angry Economist
If this does turn out to be more than the regular rumour-mongering, it's worth remembering that even if a merger isn't blocked by US authorities, the European Union Competition Commission has shown itself more than willing to block deals like this that are so obviously anti-competitive. And yes, they do have jurisidiction over the deal, because both companies do business and have subsidiaries in Europe.
Interesting that web designers that get paid to produce large numbers of clean, cross-platform, HTML-standard pages use Dreamweaver then. How interesting indeed, if Dreamweaver produces "crap html code" that the normal output of a Dreamweaver MX coding session can pass the HTML 4.01 strict tests with nary a blink.
Perhaps you just enjoy the masochism inherent in hand-coding.
Illegitimi non carborundum
The reason that I stopped work on this when I did was because I ran into a dilema that I haven't thought of a good solution to. The problem is, there are many different types of sites that use flash:
- Sites that use it only as a decoration but assume that you must have it (hence the the download prompt you describe).
- Sites that use it only as a decoration and recognize this fact, gracefuly degrading when you view their page without flash.
- Sites that "require" flash and won't let you in unless you have it regardless of how necessary it actually is.
- Sites that have separate HTML and Flash versions where you are redirected to the appropriate section based upon whether you have Flash installed.
A plugin that masquerades as Flash would be great for all cases but the last one. I don't want to be automatically shuffled off to the Flash-only site when there is a nice HTML alternative that would work much better for me. Unfortunately, these sites are the ones where the webmasters use Flash responsibly, since they have alternatives available, so I don't really want to penalize them by breaking their site when it should work.I think the solution might be to modify the nullplugin that comes with Mozilla. This is the default plugin, and I believe this is the piece of code responsible for the "do you want to download" messages. When it asks you if you want to download a plugin of a certain type, it should have a checkbox that says "don't ask me again" and then it should remember that mime type (come to think of it, I'd be happy if it never prompted me for any mime types, so maybe I should just disable the prompt globally). It would be nice if it also picked the URLs out of the file on the web page so that you could bypass annoying intros as well.
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Free P2P Backup, Windows & Linux
Most shareholders are financial management portfolios guided solely by profit maximisation, and not interested in making sacrifices to fight against Darth Gates' empire. The profits they could reap from a MS buyout would convince them (especially next to the losses that MS could inflict by cutting off the oxygen supply of a defiant Macromedia). Even if the remainder were sworn Penguinhead Jedi, MS could buy Macromedia if they wanted.
Fireworks is, by far, the predominant web-designer tool for making small cross-platform compatible animations (rollovers, animated GIFs, etc).
Dreamweaver is preferred by all but the most masochistic of web-designers for making clean HTML-compatible code and for linking to a variety of database back-ends or scripting languages (support for PHP, CFM, etc).
Picture, if you will, the usual MS code-bloat and flash-over-usability on those programs. Gone will be the simple blank-page on startup, replaced with an annoying Wizard you can't get rid of for love or money. Gone will be cross-platform compatibility, in favor of Windows-only nonsense. And, the help agents! I don't think I could stand Dreamweaver MX-XP 2004 with some dumb paperclip or puppy telling me how to code an SQL connection.
Illegitimi non carborundum
We've had major problems with the latest version of Dreamweaver making a mess of our HTML.
So if Microsoft buys Macromedia, what will happen to the sharply named "Clean Up Word HTML" command in Dreamweaver? Would it change to...
"Remove Word HTML Enhancements"
"Downgrade From Word HTML"
"Reduce This Page's Functionality"
are a few that come to mind...although if I had it my way, it'd say
"You have Dreamweaver; what the hell are you doing making webpages in Microsoft Word??? Shame on you!!!"
$8.95/mo web hosting
Well they have a point that the combination HTML/javascript is cumbersome. At least they bother to address the issue whereas the rest of the world still struggles to acknowledge the issue.
I use dreamweaver occasionally and despite some annoying bugs this is a very nice development environment. People dismissing it as just another text editor are really not doing this product justice. I've spent quite a bit of time evaluating open source alternatives to dreamweaver but nothing I've seen so far even comes close. The key feature of dreamweave that I absolutely depend on is nested templates (define site layout/menus/etc. separately from the pages on the site). If anyone knows of an easy to use, oss alternative for that I'd be grateful.
Jilles
Why should Slashdot care about this news? Every time someone posts a site to Slashdot that uses Flash everyone just goes on about how it doesn't work with Lynx, wget, vi or emacs and it should be posted again when it uses "standard" HTML ...
[under breath]
Lord, I know I shouldn't troll, but did you read this? Man...
Comment removed based on user account deletion
...if it happens, I guess I can write-off the possibility of Fontographer 5.0, which the team at Macromedia has been promising since 1997.
Honestly, it would be in Apple's best interests to snatch up Macromedia before Microsoft can. Apple is primarily a media creation platform, and if Microsoft holds the keys to the kingdom, then Jobs and Co. are fucked.
blog |
This pretty much sums up why enterprise osftware is so bad.
The J2EE community sorely lacks a programming environment that can make Java more accessible to mainstream developers. San Jose, California-based BEA Systems Inc has come close with WebLogic Workshop but this is more for Java-based web services.
Make J2EE programming "more accessible" to main stream developers? Exactly how does a user interface technology make enterprise application development more accessible to "mainstream" developers. If Java were better integrated with Flash, would developers suddly have an easy time churning out competently designed persistent objects and messaging services? Enterprise application development is complicated; deal. If you can't figure out how to write a J2EE from the wealth of resources available, the documentation and specifications, and the free or low cost development tools available (JBoss, Enhydra, Tomcat, etc...), perhaps you have no business building large enterprise applications, since understand JMS/JMX/EJB'S/JNDI/Servlets/JSP's etc. is just the tiniest part of what you should know.
You said galeon, so you must be on Linux. Just rename /usr/lib/mozilla/plugins/libflashplayer.so and /usr/lib/netscape/plugins/libflashplayer.so (this is a red hat 8 system, your files may be elsewhere but will probably have the same name). Keep them around, in case you need them later, but give them some nonsense extension (like .backup).
I just threw together a quick perl script called "toggleflash" that turns flash on or off. It is left off nearly all the time, and makes the whole web experience far nicer. I only leave it in case some idiot web site depends on it for navigation and I HAVE to use their services.
Mathematically impossible requirements are technically not against policy.
Last week they were going to buy Rational and Borland. This week they're going to buy Macromedia. Maybe next week they will buy IBM and Adobe. If people spent half as much effort fighting the things microsoft actually does as what they say they will do, we would all be a little better off. Microsoft acquisitions are actually pretty rare -- they can usually get you to do what they want without buying you so why sould they.
I am not a number! I am a man! And don't you
Last time I checked there was a lot more to Macromedia than Flash. Most notably are ColdFusion, and Dreamweaver. Fireworks and Freehand aren't all that great, but they have their niche. The question is does your hate for flash equal or exceed what it will mean if Microsoft really does acquire Macromedia?
In fact, here's my blockfile.
Need a Linux consultant in New Orleans?
There is a need for vector graphics on the web, but it is being filled by SVG. SVG is more standards-based, easier to generate, integrates better with the rest of the browser, and is easier to build tools for. And, hopefully, one can disable the "dynamic" bits of SVG.
>Has anyone ever done anything useful with flash?
>I'd hate to think I'm missing something.
Yes, this site is useful.
Highly offensive, but useful.
While we're all busy bashing MS and Flash, perhaps we shouldn't forget that Webdesigners, the professional ones nearly all use Dreamweaver and/or Flash. Golive doesn't come close to being an industry standard tool although it has improved greatly in version 6. The reason those people use Dreamweaver is because it makes webpage creation faster, not specifically easier. It also has pretty good intergation with the above mentioned server side languages.
What this will mean for DW and Flash is that MS will slowly, in one or two versions, phase out PHP and JSP intergration (they'll claim that the "customers" don't want it) and they'll add MSSQL, IIS, Frontpage and Office integration, by default, thereby making most webpages not work in other browsers or on other server platforms. They'll start adding "extras" into Flash (.NET automatic webservices and scan-your-drive-for-pirated-music stuff for free). They'll probably make a crippled version of the Flash plugin for the Mac in order to avoid the anti-trust complaints and kill the Linux one. They will almost certainly kill off the Mac versions of the MX suite ("because the sales there are so small" they'll say).
However, this will probably backfire nicely in MS's face. Coldfusion, in spite of it's ease (I've used it and it is easy), has become a major deadweight in the company, due to the advances in PHP. There is no real reason today to go for ColdFusion, given that it is expensive and the tags are proprietry. Flash already has a pretty good competitor for animated vector stuff with Livemotion2.0 from Adobe and *new* Flash only sites have all but died out because the ergonomics of the web dictate that you have to design for compatibility and therefore almost every Flash site has to have a HTML version accompanying it and that pushes up development costs and companies don't have money today for luxuries as they did in the dotcom days. This generally restricts Flash to be used as a tool for making animations.
Adobe could counter a buy out like this quite nicely in that they release their own version of the Flash plugin, thereby becoming the "standard" in web graphics that they have been running after for so long. In the resulting confusion and chaos in Webplugins, which "standard" do you think would win? MS tried this with DHTML, and even though they 95% of the browser market they don't have a monopoly on authoring, as almost all sites code for standards these days.
Mainly this would lose Adobe another competitor, because MS would certainly botch any attempt to gain designers with an MS version of Freehand. just as they have botched almost every attempt to make a competitor to Photoshop.
I was always kinda amused that they got away with the blatant rip-off of the RCA "listening to his master's voice" dog logo for SoundEdit. I still have SE16 kicking around on some zip somewhere, haven't used it in years.
RE: MS buying up Macromedia would REALLY SUCK. I have always liked Macromedia products, especially compared to Adobe and OTHER software companies. I even *gasp* like Flash (Homestarrunner, people? HELLO?!?) and am sick of all the whining geeks do about Flash intros, as if that was the worst abuse of Web technology out there. Losing Flash to The Dark Side(TM) would be a real step backward for everyone.
I've got a bad attitude and karma to burn. Go ahead. Mod me down.
Macromedia also has Dreamweaver and Director, but perhaps you forgot these:
.NET, but is oriented toward code, unlike Notepad and Wordpad.
* Fireworks and Freehand -- software for creating graphics. Maybe MS wants to take on Adobe (Photoshop, Illustrator)?
* Contribute -- a content-management system that lets you publish to the web without knowing HTML. As someone who has worked on many clients' websites, I can tell you this is going to be *big*.
and, since the Macromedia bought Allaire, they could get these too:
* ColdFusion -- a widely-used, tag-based web application server and language (and the easiest to learn, at that). Unlike ASP, it comes with things like administrating through a web interface, sending email, uploading files, verity searches, etc.
* JRun -- a popular J2EE Server.
* Homesite -- a great text editor that isn't as bulky as VS
Joe
http://www.joegrossberg.com
Borland, Rational, Macromedia, they might not get them all, but they sure want something under the tree for Bill.
One line blog. I hear that they're called Twitters now.
And its not just flash, there is another Macromedia product that I'm far more worried about Microsoft getting their hands on: Dreamweaver. Dreamweaver has quickly become the standard HTML editor. Can you imagine what's going to happen if it starts making code like Frontpage does now?
.NET !
.NET would help, but Dreamweaver, if they could get their hands on it, would be a major coup for Microsoft...
My bet is that Bill and Friends have their eyes on Dreamweaver more than Macromedia.
Don't know about the US press, but the reviews I've read over here in the UK regarding UltraDev (and subquently of Dreamweaver MX) are of the opinion that they are the tool for web development, and leave FrontPage in the dust.
In fact, one commentator over here, John Honeyball, writing in PC Pro, went as far as to say that Macromedia, with their MX products, put Microsoft's Visual Studio.NET to shame when it came to doing web development with IIS/ASP and
Of course, being in a position to 'persaude' ColdFusion shops to move to
-MT.
As only one person in this whole thread seems to have noted, this isn't about Flash plugins or Cold Fusion MX. It's about cutting off Apple's air supply. Just as Apple has been buying up a few pro video and music tool companies and discontinuing the Windows versions, this would be a means for discontinuing Mac versions of some of the killer apps that are run heavily on Macs. If you can't get Flash and Dreamweaver (and to a lesser extent, Fireworks, Director, Freehand and Fontographer) for the Mac, the Mac suddenly loses at least a third of its pro user base. Lose the web designers, and you also lose the people and companies that use Macs for that and other purposes. Once they have to move web people to PCs, they'll move the Photoshop/Illustrator people to PCs, too. Then the Quark people. Poof. Within two years, the only professional uses for Macs will be video production and some music.
Game over.
Supposing first that this rumored acquisition is true, it won't be political ties that permit it. Microsoft has given generously to both parties, almost equally.
No. If this deal is allowed, it will be because it wouldn't give Microsoft a monopoly, as Adobe still exists. With the Intuit case, MS Money and Quicken were two products that had a combined lock on 98% of the personal finance products on the market. While Flash is almost pervasive, Adobe exists with SVG and competitors to almost every other product that Macromedia offers.
-- Len
The fonders don't need a majority, just a big enough lump to make it hard to swallow. However, I'll bet that they don't if Microsoft can make a sweet enough offer to the VCaps and institutional investors. As I said, with the general slashing of tech stocks, a lot of them could really use the money.
Do not underestimate the power of large amounts of crisp cash.
One line blog. I hear that they're called Twitters now.
FLASH, is probably one of the best 10 web technologies out there.
Problem, is most people don't KNOW what FLASH is.
You all are downing FLASH, but that's because all you understand about FLASH is that it's an vector animation and presentation tool.
It is now, much, much more. It is now a dynamic data conveyance tool. It is a graphical object model that can potentially rival and replace HTML.
I could understand such comments when FLASH was naught but a simple "ooh/ahh animation" and "this is taking too bloody long to download".
But it's now advanced a far beyond that point. And is advancing further. I've observed examples of Flash tied to ColdFusion and SQL apps in which schedule changes were made simply by dragging and dropping the event on a different location. NO page refresh. The FLASH app went out contacted a ColdFusion component, passed relevant arguments, processed said actions, requested information, received it and displayed the updated information to the user.
All the user saw was himself clicking the event, dragging it to another day, and releasing it. Now that, is potential power potent enough to alter the web.
Yes, good utilization of FLASH is "rare". But if you see an application that uses FLASH to it's full extent, it will blow your mind. It blew me away. My jaw dropped.
In fact, a lot of people see the potential for FLASH to replace HTML on J2EE applications as the interface of choice. Further added improvement being the scalability of a vector based interface which can scale from desktop, to Palm unit, to billboard.
OK, I gotta give some credit for that one.
"To confine our attention to terrestrial matters would be to limit the human spirit." -Stephen Hawking
The good companies whose stock got dragged down with the dot.com trash are now perhaps undervalued and a good deal.
One line blog. I hear that they're called Twitters now.
I don't know what you've been smoking, but 70% more is quite a stretch.
Since you obviously didn't follow his link, I'll fill in the blank for you.
Since 1990, 43% of Microsoft-related donations went to the Democrats, and 57% went to the republicans. The 2000 cycle, which is when Bush was elected had the split 46% Dems. and 53% Reps.
Since your figure is "70% more money" is a comparison of the larger to the smaller amount, the actual figure is 34%. This is distorted by the relatively recent interest that Microsoft developed in politics.
Anyway, this site is "News for Nerds", so if simple multiplication and division are too tough for you, you should hang out somewhere else where you can put your Liberal Arts degree to better use.
-- Len
Maybe, maybe not, but all the headhunter/HR buzzword flacks seem to want 2 years experience and a completed project in it. (Waste of time explaining to them that it's only been out of beta for a year.)
One line blog. I hear that they're called Twitters now.
If anything, Mozilla would improve -- since Flash wouldn't work in Mozilla anymore, the developers might come to their senses and re-write it to igore Flash altogether. I mean, really, how many times do I have to say "NO!" when it asks if I want to load the plug-in before Mozilla/Phoenix/whatever realize that I don't want it and stop asking? And when are they going to block downloads from Flash servers the way they let us block downloads from ad servers?
If all this should have a reason, we would be the last to know.
People seem fixated on Flash. Macromedia has some other major products, including Freehand, an extremely powerful and useful graphic/layout app that, like most (all?) Macromedia apps runs well on Mac or Windows. If MS gets this it would be the start of it taking over DTP -- a field where MS products (Publisher, Word) are held in derision. Macromedia also has a somewhat dormant font editor, Fontographer. Adobe could be the next in the crosshairs.
wow... this is scary. I hope microsoft doesn't buy macromedia and then drop, or lower the quality of, support for Mac users within a few years. The day that microsoft forces me to use Windows for multimedia development I'm going to go nuts.
"Things are more moderner than before- bigger, and yet smaller- it's computers-- San Dimas High School football RULES!"
I would have to think that this is mostly about Flash. Flash MX is a pretty amazing product now that it includes Flash Remoting.
.Net and J2EE.
.Net (and exclusion of Java) whould be a big win for .Net. Clearly Microsoft wants this for it's own, and wants to cut out Java.
Flash Remoting is what Java applets should have been - a thick client techonology that works. Using Flash Remoting it is possible to make calls to serverside software components directly over HTTP. It's quite extrodinary to be able to invoke a method on an a server object from inside a client side script and get back a cached result set from a database. Right now Flash Remoting supporte both
It's obvious that integration of this with
Hopefully the FTC will put the deep six on this - it's an extremely anti-competitive merger.
Studio MX includes HomeSite+ (which has all the functionality of ColdFusion Studio and Homesite 5) as a toss-in, though they're definitely trying to get people to use Dreamweaver as a code editor.
Don't worry, though... it's still in the package. I think they know that there are a lot of us that don't use wysiwyg editors for code editing.
please click here to install it before proceeding to the courthouse. thank you.
sulli
RTFJ.
In Opera, to disable flash:
1) Hit F12
2) type p
3) Done.
Flash is off (yeah!) and sites will not nag you to the crap.
I recommend that you check out Opera - it has many USEFUL features and was developed by thinking people rather than brain-dead drones. It may not be perfect, but it's miles ahead of the Borg's browser.
Sigs are bad for your health.
Effluent To Acquire Another Bad Smell?
Sigs are bad for your health.
Today:
.NET apps and CF runs only on XP, and ONLY connects to M$ SQL server.
Developers use Dreamweaver to wrie cross platform code taht integrates with ColdFusion (which can be installed on a variety of platfors, and can connect to a variety of DB servers) and can include Flash components which run on almost all browsers, and can get data form a HUGE variety of platform indepenant sources.
Tomorrow:
The Mac versions lag behind the windows versions. The Windows versions get "extended" functionality... but only if CF is running on WinXP, and the DB it connects to is MS SQL Server. You can *still* use other things, but it's a huge pain in the ass.
Next Week:
No more Mac versions. Flash plugin is Active-X only, and can get data only from
I can only hope Macromedia looks beyond quick cash flow and actally gives a shit about the Web. Then again, given the sad state of "profit trumps all other decisions" corporate action the US is going through... *sigh*
PLEASE DON'T SELL YOUR SOUL TO THE DEVIL MACORMEDIA!!!
Department of Homeland Security: Removing the rights real patriots fought and died for since 2001
Seriously why is it that so many Slashdotters are reasonable when it comes to the right tool for the job attitude on most things, but because a lot of ads and annoying skip intros are done in Flash, they villify the tool. Fact of the matter is Flash is the right tool for some jobs, and despite all the abuse by "me-to" splash screen creators, there are a lot of things Flash does really well. And do you honestly think that if Flash vanished off the face of the planet tomorrow, there'd suddenly be less ads or ads would be less obnoxious?
I was hoping for some interesting commentary and speculation on the Microsoft buying Macromedia rumors and instead found an anti-Flash flame war. Sorry for the soapbox, but it's just disappointing.
Vote Quimby.
Take a look at this article on ZDnet I read recently about Flash MX.
.NET. This review shows it's not quite there yet, but it's certainly a step in this direction.
It seems that in some cases, Flash can be used to build REAL APPLICATIONS like this one here that are:
1) Easy to use.
2) Cross platform (windows, mac, unix, palm, etc)
3) Easy to build
In this regard, this puts pressure on VB and/or
What does MS do whenever it runs into something that outperforms their own products?
Buy the company, of course.
I have no problem with your religion until you decide it's reason to deprive others of the truth.
Hmm, a rumor of a small company being bought by a much larger company, and at the end of the year. ;)
Sound 100% to me...
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
You're the only person to notice this because this is not the reality of things.
If Microsoft wanted Apple dead they would've been dead several years ago. Don't you recall when Microsoft invested in Apple to keep ti alive? This was right around when the anti-trust lawsuits began. Basically Microsoft wanted to keep them around so that they (Microsoft) could claim that Apple was indeed a viable competitors and that they (Microsoft) were not a monopoly.
Taking a look at Apple now they are basically dead. They still have some dedicated designers but they're basically losing the educational sector. If anything this is a move against Java.
"Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere." - Martin Luther King, Jr.
I heard very strictly "off the record" from someone who interned at M$, and via another source who works there about a projects code-named Glimmer and Avalon. Avalon was apparently an attempt to build a rich-client-in-the-browser similar to flashMX, that might replace windows forms in .NET (that sounded pretty un-likely to me, but you never know...). Glimmer was apparently a sub-set of that. The only URL which details any of this is this fluff piece from InfoWeek. If M$ are working on something like this then a possible purchase of Macromedia would be very interesting.....
The idea that a purchase of Macromedia would be to put Apple out of business is absolutely laughable. Such an acquisition could be about any or all of:
Vote Quimby.