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Adobe Buys Macromedia for $3.4B
Kobayashi Maru writes "A press release from Adobe announces that they will buy Macromedia for approximately $3.4 billion. The new company will be called Adobe Systems, Inc."
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Woho! Saviour of the Universe
What does it mean when the two most instrusive web browser plugin makers merge?
Coverage from CNET news.com.com, from Reuters.
Flash will stick around for sure, but what will happen to Dreamweaver, Fireworks, and Freehand? Adobe may go with straight market share and keep Dreamweaver, Photoshop and Illustrator as the pro tools, and push GoLive, Fireworks and Freehand as the consumer versions, or they may drop them all together. I can't imagine many buyers interested in picking up the fight against the Adobe juggernaut.
From an Inkscape developer:
I think it's good news for us. There will be people scared or disgusted by the forming monopoly and looking for alternatives. Also, it seems likely that Freehand will be either discontinued or at least downplayed so as to not hurt Illustrator, which means a lot of users will have to migrate. All this gives us a certain opportunity.
Now, we're sure to see Flash get an improved user interface. I guess this is a case where Adobe's patent really helped it innovate.
Bad news?? We might actually see a standards compliant plug-in out of this that actually has a good development environment to go along with it. Adobe certainly will be inserting their SVG magic into the Macromedia environment. Plus think of all the integration possibilities with Adobe/Macromedia products.
I personally think this is at LEAST *promising* news!
PDF is an evolution of Postscript. It's strength lies (IMHO) in being able to render to paper exactly what you see on the screen. How would 'movie' files be translated to paper?
My UID is the product of 2 primes.
I for one wellcome our new massive software giant overlords...
Are they going to keep the Macromedia branding and just not compete with each other, or will we see Adobe Dreameaver?
And will the flash plugin have that terrible update software like Acrobat reader?
This is probably not good for anyone except Adobe, including us.
# cat
Damn, my RAM is full of llamas.
SVG is Flash's biggest rival, but Adobe has always supported it. I hope this means there will be more open standards in Macromedia Flash.
It's nowhere near as powerful (yet), but try out Nvu. It's meant to be a Dreamweaver clone, and it's pretty decent.
This will probably mean:
- Adobe will kill off Freehand, Dreamweaver, and Fireworks, and incorporate any good features from them into Illustrator, GoLive, and ImageReady, respectively.
- Photoshop and Flash will remain the same, since neither had competition from the other company.
- They'll probably maintain 'lite' versions of all of the above, giving consumers the illusion of choice.
- Corel will acquire the company that makes Preparation H, since their asses will hurt so much from shitting a few tons of bricks.
This is my signature. soid st egr.hyTa rsiugm usnin Any questions?
So far, the market seems to think Adobe is paying too much. They were paying a 33% premium when the deal was announced. ADBE is down over 11% so far today. MACR is up slightly.
They could do it as a flick book
The calculation I keep running over in my mind is:
Adobe PDF + Macromedia Flash = Annimated PDFs
Somehow I think Bill Gates is behind all this
I only came here to do two things; kick some ass, and drink some beer...looks like we're almost out of beer.
From a we-can't-have-any-monopolies point of view, it is rather bad news. However, from a product suite POV, it's probably a good thing.
Look at it this way: Dreamweaver is considered to be about the best commercial HTML editor out there. And Flash is totally ubiquitous. However, Fireworks and Freehand are generally no-so-great (in comparison to Adobe's stuff). Photoshop and Illustrator are the de facto standards, and are great at what they do, yet Adobe's LiveMotion and GoLive are both pretty godawful.
Now that the two companies are one, you can be damn sure that you'll be able to get a package deal with Flash, Photoshop, Illustrator, and Dreamweaver all in one box, and they'll be as nicely integrated as Studio MX currently is. As someone who uses these on a regular basis, I'd consider that to be a pretty good thing.
Now, if only we could get Linux versions of these programs...
I saw a demo where Jaguar had embedded a user-controlled VR of the inside of their latest model in a pdf. Even though the image looked like a picture in the PDF, there were buttons to pan and zoom the view so you could get a 360 view of the interior.
PDF (like HTML) has long strayed from its original purpose into uncharted territory. This is not (IMO) a Good Thing
Interested in a Flash-based MAME front end? Visit mame.danzbb.com
You just forgot the largest prist/press media company: Quark.
However... they won't stay at no.1 for long.
- Henrik
- when the Shadows descend -
What happens to the Macromedia brand?
Adobe recognizes the strong equity of the Macromedia brand. That said, it makes great business sense for a company the size of the combined company to align behind a single corporate brand. Over time, Macromedia products will transition to the Adobe brand. Adobe expects to keep and continue investing in key Macromedia product brands.
Also of interest:
Do you expect to integrate the FlashPlayer and the Adobe Reader?
The complementary functionality of FlashPlayer and Adobe Reader will enable the deployment of a more robust cross-media, rich-client technology platform. The combined company will continue to be committed to the needs of both the FlashPlayer and Adobe Reader users.
"...The new company will be called Adobe Systems, Inc."
Who else is holding out for Macrodobia?
AT&ROFLMAO
I think what you were looking for is
Freehand + Illustrator = Frustrator
You spelled "emacs" as "vi".
</flame>
Joe Llywelyn Griffith Blakesley
[This post is in the public domain (copyright-free) unless otherwise stated]
I've seen dreamweaver using CSS, and it usually goes "style1, style2,.." etc. and not a single style re-used.
This is hardly better than using the FONT tag. You'd have to set the style manually to make it work as intended. I guess you can do that in Dreamweaver too, but most Dreamweaver "experts" don't seem to care.
Maybe my attitude towards Dreamweaver and Photoshop would be best described by the ad slogan: "The right tools to get the job done even if you have no clue".
There is irony in that line, but I guess most people whose identity is defined by being an Photoshop/Dreamweaver expert will probably miss it.
I'm sorry, I should have shut up, but I think Adobe and Dreamweaver make a good match.
I'm still trying to figure out what people mean by 'social skills' here.
Try this, 'tis most excellent! Makes Reader load in 1/2 sec or so, terminates quickly, and hardly ever crashes. It seems it's all those damn stupid bloated plugins causing the problems. To fix:
1. Install Adobe Reader 6.0 and notice where it is installed.
2. Navigate to that folder in Explorer, locate the plug_ins subfolder and rename this folder to plug_ins_disabled.
3. Create a new plug_ins folder.
4. Move the files EWH32.api, printme.api and search.api from plug_ins_disabled to plug_ins.
Try it, you'll like it!
-- You are in a maze of little, twisty passages, all different... --