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Adobe and Macromedia Shareholders Approve Merger

Posted by Zonk on from the so-happy-together dept.

Steve Nixon wrote to mention a CRN article discussing the shareholder approval of a merger between Adobe and Macromedia. From the article: "The deal, announced in early April, is slated to close this fall pending government approval. On Thursday, the companies said nearly 99 percent of the outstanding Adobe and Macromedia shares voted were cast in favor of the deal. Adobe's powerful PDF franchise and Macromedia's ubiquitous Flash presence on PCs, Macs and other devices could make the combined company a prodigious counterweight even to Microsoft, several observers said."

169 comments

  1. Imagine... by DrifterX79 · · Score: 5, Funny

    that one day soon we will have one company to blame for all those god awful, firefox slowing, IE crashing plug-ins. Not to mention on company to blame for the proliferation of flash adverts...

    1. Re:Imagine... by dnoyeb · · Score: 4, Interesting

      As a programmer, its hard to imagine a design that allows a piece of software I launch to assist my program, crash my program, or bring my program to complete uselessness. This was the standard in windows 3.1 days.

      WTF does acrobat bring IE and Firefox both to their knees. And why cant you cancel it? Why is it allowed to lock up the browser, and every instance of it completely?

      What is wrong with that architecture, and why do both IE and Firefox follow the same flawed model? Or is this some windows architectural thing getting involved?

    2. Re:Imagine... by MightyMartian · · Score: 1

      I agree completely. One of the big bonuses to using X is that I have some choices for lightweight PDF readers, and I'm not stuck using that horrendous piece of bloatware from Adobe.

      --
      The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
    3. Re:Imagine... by GileadGreene · · Score: 2, Insightful
      One of the big bonuses to using X is that I have some choices for lightweight PDF readers...

      See also OS X, and the nifty Preview.app

    4. Re:Imagine... by MBCook · · Score: 4, Informative
      I've got to weigh in on this. I switched to a Mac early this year. The Preview application is FANTASTIC. It does everything I need to view PDFs, it's FAST, and works great. I've loved it. Every time I had to use a PC since then with a PDF file, I've been unable to understand why Acrobat reader is so slow.

      Then I installed Adobe CS 2 on my Mac. It came with... Acrobat!

      Well, to be helpful, it nicely replaced Preview as the default way to view PDFs. That meant that if I was surfing and clicked on a link to a PDF, instead of it popping up almost instantly (like another HTML page) as it did before, the WHOLE COMPUTER SLOWED DOWN and Safari almost locked up for a few seconds as it opened. Then when it was open it was slow. VERY slow.

      I quickly found out how to remove the program from Safari's plugins so that it wouldn't cause that again. Acrobat absolutely sucks performance.

      But things get worse. I have to run Virtual PC on my Mac and occasionally have to open a PDF in it for various reasons. Now Virtual PC says my computer is the equivalent of 300 MHz. Launching Acrobat basically locks Virtual PC up for 2-3 minutes as it launches (I let it have 512MB of ram, so that's not the problem) and then trying to USE the program is like when I found a 386 running Windows 95. Sure it WORKED, but I didn't have that kind of time to spare.

      I can understand why Photoshop takes so long to load (although I think it could delay the loading of all those plugins until I trued to use one). But Acrobat is a performance black-hole for some reason I can't figure out.

      So, my response to your questions: This isn't a Windows thing. It's an Acrobat thing. Find a replacement for Acrobat. I love Preview, but there must be something better for Windows too.

      --
      Comment forecast: Bits of genius surrounded by a sea of mediocrity.
    5. Re:Imagine... by hazem · · Score: 4, Informative

      This article shows how to do "liposuction" on acrobat and make it load much faster by removing a bunch of the plugins. If you lose functionality you need, find the plugin and put it back in the plugins directory.

      http://www.theinquirer.net/?article=11041

      It works for both the reader and the full acrobat.

      The essence of the instructions are:
              * From the Start->Run windows menu, Open the "x:\Program Files\Adobe\Acrobat 6.0\Reader" folder, where x is the right drive letter.
              * Find the plug_ins folder and rename it plug_ins_disabled
              * Create a new folder named plug_ins
              * Copy the following files from "plug_ins_disabled" to "plug_ins": EWH32.api, printme.api, and search.api

    6. Re:Imagine... by .com+b4+.storm · · Score: 1

      So, my response to your questions: This isn't a Windows thing. It's an Acrobat thing. Find a replacement for Acrobat. I love Preview, but there must be something better for Windows too.

      Maybe something based on xpdf? I haven't used a UNIX-y PDF viewer in a long time, but I remember from my heavy Linux usage days that xpdf (and I think gpdf) was very fast. Acrobat reader for Linux was fairly efficient too, but clunky even by the Linux GUI standards of the time (this was a couple years ago).

      --
      "Wow, you're like some kind of superhero able to ward off happiness and success at every turn."
      -- Ryan Stiles
    7. Re:Imagine... by EEBaum · · Score: 1

      I've had no problems with either company's stuff. Then again, I use Opera.

      --
      -- I prefer the term "karma escort."
    8. Re:Imagine... by Khuffie · · Score: 1
      Who says you're stuck using Acrobat on Windows?

      http://www.foxitsoftware.com/pdf/rd_intro.php

    9. Re:Imagine... by bergeron76 · · Score: 2, Funny

      Let's just hope they don't call the new joint company "AdMedia".

      Or "MacrodobeMedia".

      or... nevermind.

      --
      Don't think that a small group of dedicated individuals can't change the world. It's the only thing that ever has.
    10. Re:Imagine... by A_Non_Moose · · Score: 1
      WTF does acrobat bring IE and Firefox both to their knees. And why cant you cancel it? Why is it allowed to lock up the browser, and every instance of it completely?

      What is wrong with that architecture, and why do both IE and Firefox follow the same flawed model? Or is this some windows architectural thing getting involved?


      (/dons tinfoil hat)

      Nothing wrong with it besides it being a sinister plot by AMD to make their dual-core chips more valuable when PDF viewing will only run on CPU0 and Flash on CPU1.

      Muaaahahahahaha
      (/takes off tinfoil hat)

      (defensive geek mode = on)

      The models aren't flawed, windows' architecture is fine, you computer is too old and slow because it is more than a month old.

      (wink wink, nudge nudge)
      --
      Have you read the moderator guidelines? Well, have you, PUNK? (and I want a Karma: Gnarly option)
    11. Re:Imagine... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      There's a great plugin for Mac at http://www.schubert-it.com/pluginpdf. Much less overhead than Acrobat.

    12. Re:Imagine... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      As a programmer, its hard to imagine a design that allows a piece of software I launch to assist my program, crash my program, or bring my program to complete uselessness.

      That's because these plugins are loaded in-process (as dlls) instead of out-of-process (as separate apps). The trade-off is that in-process goes faster and is more flexible... but it also means that one bad app can crash the other.

      As machines get faster, I think we'll want to revisit this trade-off.

    13. Re:Imagine... by panaceaa · · Score: 4, Informative

      Or you can upgrade to Adobe Reader 7.0, which loads plug-ins only as they're needed. For me it loads about 5 times faster than the old Reader versions (5, and especially 6).

      --
      my blog
    14. Re:Imagine... by QuantumG · · Score: 1

      But that's not the point. Firefox should load Acrobat in a different thread so you don't loose control over the window!!

      --
      How we know is more important than what we know.
    15. Re:Imagine... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Anyone else find that thing trying install a bunch of other random non-related crap (Yahoo toolbar etc)? Kinda like most spyware does?

    16. Re:Imagine... by Overly+Critical+Guy · · Score: 0

      Thanks to Quartz, which is based on the PDF drawing model. So PDFs are almost "native" to OS X. Which is why it's so amusing when Adobe Acrobat behaves so slowly on OS X when Preview blasts a PDF onto the screen in less than a second.

      --
      "Sufferin' succotash."
    17. Re:Imagine... by mrchaotica · · Score: 1
      ...there must be something better for Windows too.
      You want the GhostScript-related programs.
      --

      "[Regarding the 'cloud,'] ownership was what made America different than Russia." -- Woz

    18. Re:Imagine... by delus10n0 · · Score: 3, Informative

      FireFox has major threading issues anyhow. Go to any website, and start right clicking->'T' (open in tab) on every link you can find. Behold the slowness!

      --
      Not All Who Wander Are Lost
    19. Re:Imagine... by Skuld-Chan · · Score: 2, Informative

      Why do people always take the hard way out? Just go into edit > preferences > internet > uncheck display pdf in browser.

      That little feature has been there since at least acrobat 3 when the first browser plugin came about.

      With 6 and 7 there both package components too - so you can do a msiexec /i acropro.msi (or whatever the package is called) REMOVE=AcrobatBrowserIntegration and your done.

      Isn't windows cool?

    20. Re:Imagine... by Wyatt+Earp · · Score: 1

      Tinker Tool 2.5 allows you to disable Safari and autoloading pdfs. Also, just right click on a .pdf, get info and change the Open with to Preview.

    21. Re:Imagine... by theCAS · · Score: 1

      WTF does acrobat bring IE and Firefox both to their knees. And why cant you cancel it? Why is it allowed to lock up the browser, and every instance of it completely?

      A little that may help you:
      Options,Internet,uncheck "Show PDF in the Browser".

      The PDF file is loaded in the application and your browser is safe.

    22. Re:Imagine... by WWWWolf · · Score: 1
      that one day soon we will have one company to blame for all those god awful, firefox slowing, IE crashing plug-ins.

      Adobe ate Macromedia and now they're considering eating Sun? I can barely wait!

    23. Re:Imagine... by The-Bus · · Score: 1

      To be fair, Adobe Reader has slowly gotten better over time. Slowly. Version 5 had the annoying habit of not killing the application when you exit it. So once you're done reading the PDF and close that browser, it's still running, eating 30MB of memory. Version 6 fixed that, and now Version 7 has some info on the status bar about what % of your PDF is done downloading. Previously, you'd click on a page and you don't know if it's loading or not because Reader is downloading a 5MB document and until it is completely downloaded you don't know if it crashed the browser, failed to load, or what.

      Considering it took them 7 versions to do this, I think we will have to wait until version 16 for them to get rid of a lot of the bugs.

      --

      Small potatoes make the steak look bigger.

    24. Re:Imagine... by Namegduf+Live · · Score: 1

      People bash flash and pdf files too much.

      Flash makes great games, movies, and such possible online with minimal file size.

      The pdf format makes manuals and such viewable across many platforms and isn't bad either, the viewer does stink horribly but I use Foxit PDF Reader (which is free) instead.

      Flash is used for ads, but so are jpgs and gifs and such, and it is vunerable to the same kind of ad-blocking software as them. Flash files are in fact incredibly small and fast for the content.

      This could create interactive, cross-platform guides, tutorials, etc that are very small. By combining the best code from each company, all of their programs could be improved significantly. And it does create another major competitor to Microsoft, and we need them. Competition drives prices down and increases the quality of products.

      So I say bring on the merger! And a final point - Macromedia is not responsible for the proliferation of flash ads. That rests solely with the websites who put those ads up.

    25. Re:Imagine... by sat1308 · · Score: 1

      Check out Foxit PDF Reader. Works like a charm! All you have to do is disable the Acrobat plugin in Firefox and download every PDF and then open it. You don't even need to install it! Just unzip it and run it, it automatically configures Windows to run Foxit whenever you open a PDF! Just my 2 cents!

    26. Re:Imagine... by CKW · · Score: 1

      Really? What version? I'm at 0.92 and 0.93 at home and work (so many plugins I don't want to migrate forward), and I use bajillions of tabs. I *love* my "drag a link --> open in a tab" plugin. Yes there is an upper limit to the number of tabs I can open, but it's around 30 or 40 or so - and that's not because firefox gets slow, it's because at some point it stops opening new tabs.

      Once a week I have to exit and re-start firefox because it'll have reached 150 MB in memory size, but that's acceptable and besides, it's an early rev. Once a month firefox will "die" on me. I wish it's "history" function would have a separate grouping for "pages that were last known to be open". Perhaps I should try the plugin that caches and re-opens last open tabs.

    27. Re:Imagine... by chrish · · Score: 1

      In Firefox, try hitting "Back" while loading a page that uses Java... *boom!* no more browser for you.

      Firefox also leaks memory for every single UI event received on Mac OS X.

      Firefox could use some serious debugging. And no, I'm not going to do it, someone with a clue about the code should look at it.

      --
      - chrish
    28. Re:Imagine... by startling · · Score: 1


      Or you can downgrade to version 4! http://www.oldversion.com/program.php?n=acrobat
      Seriously, that's what I use and I've never noticed any missing functionality -- just quick loading times.

    29. Re:Imagine... by delus10n0 · · Score: 1

      1.0.6 -- I have around 10 different extensions installed (none that deal with tabs, though) and loading multiple tabs (especially if a tab has Quicktime/Flash/lots of images/etc.) results in the browser "locking up" for a second or so as each tab is loaded. This wouldn't be happening if it was truly multi-threaded.

      --
      Not All Who Wander Are Lost
    30. Re:Imagine... by FooBarWidget · · Score: 1

      Do you use the tabbrowser extension? It's infamous for making tabs slow.

    31. Re:Imagine... by delus10n0 · · Score: 1

      No, like I said, I have no extensions that affect tabs (as far as I know.)

      --
      Not All Who Wander Are Lost
    32. Re:Imagine... by Reziac · · Score: 1

      It's not just Acrobat. It's ALL Adobe programs. Compared to any of the competition that I've ever tried, Adobe apps are all pigs, and have been since way back. Photoshop has by far the slowest image processing of any app I've ever used. When I use the exact same filters in Corel Photopaint, the same job gets done on average in about 1/4th the time.

      I'm not sure how much of this came in when they acquired Aldus -- Pagemaker has always been slow (and has a horrible file format) even before it was under the Adobe label. One is led to wonder about programming methodologies that just plain suck, that might have pervaded the entire company over time.

      I'm reminded of a section of Michael Abrash's Zen of Assembly programming book, where he talks about how speed of an individual routine is not necessarily the best factor to make design decisions around. Frex, if you use a tiny, superfast routine that has to run a million times, that may well be far slower than using a big slow routine that only has to run once.

      I have a suspicion that Adobe products are designed around bad Zen.

      --
      ~REZ~ #43301. Who'd fake being me anyway?
    33. Re:Imagine... by CKW · · Score: 1

      Hmmmm, every so often back when I was choosing extensions I would get a misbehaving browser - at which point it became a game of figuring out what new extension was misbehaving. So I would disable one a day until I noticed no problems, and in that way winnow out the thing that was causing the problem.

      Have you tried installing the flash related extension that blocks flash from running unless you click to get it to run?

    34. Re:Imagine... by hazem · · Score: 1

      Actually, I use acrobat outside of web-browsing. I scan all my bills/etc, and keep them as PDFs while recycling the paper. It meets my obsessive need to keep copies of everything without having a basement full of 7-year old phone bills.

      So, the techniques I posted make acrobat open quicker, whether it's part of a web-browser or not.

      And actually, I tried everything what you said to get it to load seperately, but it would not. I even removed both mozilla and acrobat and tried installing them in different orders and it did not make a difference.

      Even with the tricks above, adobe stays in my browser and I wish it didn't. But this makes it load faster. I wish, though, there was a good windows based pdf viewer that wasn't acrobat.

    35. Re:Imagine... by dnoyeb · · Score: 1

      I always try that, but the browser never seems to respect that choice...

    36. Re:Imagine... by imroy · · Score: 1

      Actually I recently set up my dad's windows laptop to do something similar. Remove the Acrobat plugin from the Mozilla plugin directory, and set Mozilla to launch Acrobat as an external viewer. He likes it much better than having it embed in the browser. On my Linux box I use GV.

  2. One more acquisition... by g051051 · · Score: 5, Funny

    Now, they just need to buy/merge with Real, and you'd have a real powerhouse competitor to Microsoft.

    1. Re:One more acquisition... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Insightful

      I'd rather merge with Google and SuSE if I wanted to be a powerhouse competitor to Microsoft.

    2. Re:One more acquisition... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Mods: that was a joke, unless you want to run a flash animation playing a .rm file inside a pdf ;)

    3. Re:One more acquisition... by ciroknight · · Score: 1

      ...REAL? I hope this is a troll or just a really bad attempt at a joke. Real has been irrelevant for quite a while now.

      Now, a real merger would be with *brace yourselves*. Apple.

      Adobe has long been an Apple shop, and the acquisition of Macromedia gives them penetration into the Internet realm. Add in Apple's marketing, and you've got a powerhouse that it'd be hard for even Microsoft to compete with. Of course, Slashdot would hate it, and people would cry monopoly and Apple would be split into a hardware and a software company, but eh.. it's a pipedream.

      --
      "Victory means exit strategy, and it's important for the President to explain to us what the exit strategy is." G.W.Bush
    4. Re:One more acquisition... by iamwoodyjones · · Score: 4, Funny

      I looked at Real's web site for the merger and it says

      Merger is......buffering......

      Once they do acquire real we can see our pdf's......buffering......

      which might actually be better than that big duff with his arms outstretched and a bazillion plugins loading below him for 1/2 an hour

    5. Re:One more acquisition... by fm6 · · Score: 2, Funny
      Bite your tongue! Two companies with fair-to-excellent software combining with a company that produces crap. Plus they rely too much on ethically questionable marketing.

      Besides, competing with Microsoft isn't a matter of size. It's a matter of getting past Microsoft's control of the basic desktop.

    6. Re:One more acquisition... by slashdotnickname · · Score: 1

      Now, they just need to buy/merge with Real, and you'd have a real powerhouse competitor to Microsoft.

      You can't be serious. Whether good or not, Microsoft still dominates the OS, browser, and office application markets... markets that no merger you describe can touch. Plus, with the continous push for more open standards, a lasting future for PDF and Flash is questionable. This merger was more out necessity than an attempt to compete with Microsoft.

    7. Re:One more acquisition... by CheechWizz · · Score: 1

      Don't hold your breath .. Adobe and apple havent been the best of buddies lately. Seems that Adobe wasn't amused when Apple started competing with one of their most loyal dev's with final cut pro. As a result they've stopped making the apple version of premiere. Apple's motion is now picking up steam, would'nt suprise me if Adobe scraps After effects too.

    8. Re:One more acquisition... by timmarhy · · Score: 0, Flamebait

      why woudl this be a dream? apple is a cunt of a company which sues people who post bad press about them. they are extremely litigous. everything they sell is in a chick, niche. they are also horribly over priced.

      --
      If you mod me down, I will become more powerful than you can imagine....
    9. Re:One more acquisition... by jonwil · · Score: 1

      They should merge with Autodesk/Discreet and get Autocad and 3D studio into their portfolio...

    10. Re:One more acquisition... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Really? Links please.

    11. Re:One more acquisition... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Adobe has long been an Apple shop

      That stopped being true long ago.

      I'm a Mac guy, but look up where Adobe's growth is, and you'll see it's on Windows. Driven by Acrobat, by corporate clients. Their claimed Mac/Windows sales breakdown has been tilting increasingly away from the Mac for years. With the exception of one product, all of their video/audio/DVD apps are available only on Windows now. After Apple came out with Final Cut Pro and its related apps Adobe decided not to compete with the maker of the OS itself and started to pull away from the Mac.

    12. Re:One more acquisition... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0
      Plus they rely too much on ethically questionable marketing.

      Like hovering Flash ads with sound and embedded popups?

  3. Yes,... just like Microsoft... by FinestLittleSpace · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Apart from the money making obligatory installation of an OS on every machine....

    THAT'S why M$ are huge.

    Adobe and Macromedia already have huge penetration with Acrobat and Flash respectively on 90% of machines, but that doesn't make them close to the behemoth that M$ is.

    1. Re:Yes,... just like Microsoft... by brianopp · · Score: 1

      how can you say that when acrobat and flash extend much further then microsoft... they are on machines of all platforms!

    2. Re:Yes,... just like Microsoft... by FinestLittleSpace · · Score: 1

      ........And by themselves, make no money, at all.

    3. Re:Yes,... just like Microsoft... by brianopp · · Score: 1

      and you dont consider the cost of the developing tools which are significantly more expensive then a copy of windows...

    4. Re:Yes,... just like Microsoft... by __aamcgs2220 · · Score: 1

      You're missing the point. Being a behemoth is not the issue. Microsoft motto used to be "A Microsoft on every desktop," but they conveniently changed it because it didn't sound very unmonopolistic during the trial. Penetration is exactly what they need to make more money. No, you don't HAVE to use their products to surf the web, but it sure is much more interesting and flexible if you do use Flash, Shockwave, or Acrobat, isn't it? How much content out there requires one of those products? How much do you think they are willing to pay for it? Beyond that, how much do you think advertisers are willing to pay to reach 90+% of desktops?

    5. Re:Yes,... just like Microsoft... by FinestLittleSpace · · Score: 2

      Yep, I do. say the developing tools are £1000 (theyre actually less), that's 5x the cost of windows. There isnt even a ratio of 1:10 of developers to users, it's much less, possibly in the 1:1000s, or even 10:100000s. Therefore they're not recouperating anywhere near the market saturation of marketed products that M$ are. Nearly everyone in the world with a window machine has Office on it, par example.

      I know very very well that Flash especially has a very low dev to user ratio. As an Actionscript 2 coder I'm in HIGH demand because they're actually RARE, and a lot have pirated copies as most flash work is done freelance. There's a good volume of people with pirated copies of Distiller or Flash, but legal? Not really.

  4. With as little information as we've got? by lostchicken · · Score: 3, Interesting

    At this point, there's very little information available about which products will and will not survive the merger. Why would any shareholder approve a merger when all he/she knew was that the two companies were to merge?

    --
    -twb
    1. Re:With as little information as we've got? by QuantumG · · Score: 1

      A promise of a big fat payout, that's why.

      --
      How we know is more important than what we know.
    2. Re:With as little information as we've got? by Trip+Ericson · · Score: 5, Funny

      It'$ not an ea$y que$tion to an$wer really, but I $uppo$e with $uffiient inve$tigation, we'll di$cover an an$wer.

    3. Re:With as little information as we've got? by ciroknight · · Score: 1

      Perhaps no restructuring is scheduled as of yet; all products survive the merger, and they let the consumer vote on which products survive the merger (vote with your dollar, that is).

      That being said, there's no reason once so ever that The big money making applications would not survive; Flash, Dreamweaver, Premier, Photoshop and Acrobat are undoubtely going to survive. Most of the rest of the company is frenge products, and a lot of those overlap.

      Truthfully, I'd approve the merger, but I dunno if the SEC should (have?). It means a lot of money for the company, an easy way to cut products that aren't making money, and perhaps a way to make Adobe Less Evil (tm).

      --
      "Victory means exit strategy, and it's important for the President to explain to us what the exit strategy is." G.W.Bush
    4. Re:With as little information as we've got? by kenshaw · · Score: 1

      Well, you can be sure that these products won't survive the merger:

      1. Photoshop
      2. Flash
      3. Acrobat
      4. Dreamweaver
      5. Premiere

      I mean, really, does anyone use any other products made by these companies?

    5. Re:With as little information as we've got? by drsquare · · Score: 1

      Well, you can be sure that these products won't survive the merger:

      1. Photoshop

      Why would they get rid of Photoshop?

    6. Re:With as little information as we've got? by op12 · · Score: 1

      *whoosh!*


      Better get that sarcasm meter checked, drsquare.

  5. Graphic Designers are all wondering what it means by deft · · Score: 4, Insightful

    As a designer that uses both companies programs extensively....photoshop and dreamweaver the top 2 right now, I am very curious as to how this will play out.

    My biggest hope is that this will create some real cross program compatibility between all of their native formats. Adobe is very good about making the jump with a file between all of their programs, and I'll look forward to doing that to MM stuff too.

    My biggest fear is the monopoly of programs angle, and losing the magic that made these companies what they are.... the innovation and usability being key.

    I hope they take the best from both and do something great.

    --

    There's nothing Intelligent about Intelligent Design.
  6. competition by brianopp · · Score: 3, Insightful

    what competition will there be in the market after this?? theyll have the leading animation, photo editing, and web developing suites all in one company!

    1. Re:competition by DrifterX79 · · Score: 2, Funny

      The competition will be much like this. If you want to do anything fancy graphically on the web you will choose MacroAdobe. If you want to have the defacto standard in visual media you will choose AdobeMedia. If you want the number one company for browser plugins required to view half the web...

    2. Re:competition by MBCook · · Score: 2, Insightful
      None, really.

      Dreamweaver could argue MS's bastard step-child Frontpage (which they don't even seem to promote anymore). But for the most part, there are no real competitors.

      Photoshop? What is really up there with Photoshop? Next to nothing. Same with Illustrator. The closest things were Macromedia's products. The only ones that will have some competition left are Adobe's video products that Apple competes against (which exist, as I remember, because Adobe wouldn't port them so Apple made their own).

      There is no competition. This should NEVER get legislative approval, but it will because it will make lots of money for the shareholders and there are programs in competition (even if none of them are in the same league, they exist so they can be listed (We will still have to compete against xxx, yyy, and zzz)).

      --
      Comment forecast: Bits of genius surrounded by a sea of mediocrity.
    3. Re:competition by robertjw · · Score: 2

      Thing is, Adobe's not buying up competitive products. They aren't attempting to corner the photo editing market, or the html editing market - those are both already more or less monopolized. Adobe's just putting these products under one roof.

      I don't see why this shouldn't get legislative approval, it's not creating a monopoly, just combining two companies that have products that control their market segments. AFAIK, nothing illegal in that.

      --
      Find coupons in Greeley
    4. Re:competition by jacoplane · · Score: 1

      GIMP, Inkscape, Nvu. Fine, these products are nowhere near as good as anything Adobe/Macromedia offer, but if they stagnate the competition will eventually come from Free software like this. I doubt they'll stagnate though.

    5. Re:competition by SlamMan · · Score: 1

      The only products that realistically compete between Microsoft and Adobe are GoLive vs Dreamweaver and Illustrator vs Freehand. There are a million other HTML editors, even if none have the market share of Dreamweaver.

      Illustrator vs Freehand might be a more compelling argument.

      --
      Mod point free since 2001
    6. Re:competition by FLEB · · Score: 2, Interesting

      Well, CorelDRAW is still left against Adobe Illustrator. Photoshop tromps PhotoPaint outright, but for usability and features, DRAW blows AI away. You've also got the lower-consumer-end contender, PaintShop Pro, which Corel just bought out (I think it was) this last year.

      Of course, it sounds like Corel's going to try targeting Draw more toward corporate users, which will further lower printers' opinions of CorelDRAW designers (as inept hacks), even though DRAW has a suprising array of prepress tools and very good native PDF support built in.

      From what I hear (through the rumor mill), Adobe's liable to kill Freehand, among other things, which is another comparable-if-not-greater app to Illustrator.

      --
      Information wants to be free.
      Entertainment wants to be paid.
      You just want to be cheap.
    7. Re:competition by FLEB · · Score: 1

      I really don't see professional graphic designers, especially in print, picking up many free apps in any significant way. Things like printer compatibility and the like mean that apps tend to get entrenched. The fact that there still is a huge percentage of QuarkXPress users is a testament to that fact.

      Still, though, if the free apps get enough polish to them, I could see scrappy web firms leading the way to greater [Ff]ree graphic software usage.

      --
      Information wants to be free.
      Entertainment wants to be paid.
      You just want to be cheap.
    8. Re:competition by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Too bad CorelDraw couldn't step up. Corel owns Painter and Paintshop Pro too. They also had a program supporting SVG but it seems they do not make it any more.

    9. Re:competition by admactanium · · Score: 1
      I really don't see professional graphic designers, especially in print, picking up many free apps in any significant way. Things like printer compatibility and the like mean that apps tend to get entrenched. The fact that there still is a huge percentage of QuarkXPress users is a testament to that fact.

      Still, though, if the free apps get enough polish to them, I could see scrappy web firms leading the way to greater [Ff]ree graphic software usage.

      you won't see too many graphics people doing anything outside the core apps of macrobe for print or web now. graphics people aren't idealists. we're people who charge a lot for our time and we like everything to "just work." wasting time using other apps (as good as they might be) and possibly upsetting clients and vendors with odd file formats is just not a smart business decision. it's an insular industry that values its interoperability very highly. the fact that i can take other people's .psd, .ai, .swf files and just start working on them is a big boon.

      i doubt, at this point, it would be possible for any free software alternative to be able to open, edit and save those file formats. that alone is the death knell. right now we're witnessing the slow death of quark because it's not as interoperable with other adobe apps.

    10. Re:competition by sounddesignz · · Score: 0

      Well, beat me up, but I cannot find too much of a difference between photoshop and photopaint (that corel product). until cs/cs2 came out, it even had advantages, like editable text, smart objects, better layer management. and 100% ps plugin support. ps caught up, tho, and corel's future is uncertain since ages... somebody should buy them ;) [as a side note: of course you will now point me to stuff that ps can do that are unique; but the overall feature set is the same] same for coreldraw vs illustrator: the toolset is mostly the same, both progs are stable. only that coreldraw is mostly used by idiots (comic sans in 15degree happy-angle), so all the designers with no ego chose illu or fh.

  7. I agree by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Insightful

    "Adobe's powerful PDF franchise and Macromedia's ubiquitous Flash presence on PCs, Macs and other devices could make the combined company a prodigious counterweight even to Microsoft, several observers said."
     
    I agree. The .pdf files and flash crud that have been a blight on the internet for years should be a powerful rival to Microsoft, whose operating systems have been a blight on PCs for years, in the competition to see who can fuck the world up more.

  8. wise tactical move by apt_user · · Score: 5, Interesting

    This can only be a maneuver to prevent microsoft from buying either one of the two companies. Combined they dont necessarily stand to make more money than they would alone, but it creates a united front to keep microsoft out of their media software niche.

  9. counterweight? .. or easier target? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Microsoft could easily clone their technologies and make them free.

    The only thing flash is good for is cartoons.

    PDF does have a grip on academic publications, but
    there are other technologies that can duplicate it.

    I'm not so sure the sum of the parts is more than the components, in this case. They might be better off dodging Microsoft seperately.

  10. Hooray! by nmb3000 · · Score: 4, Interesting

    Now we can have a Flash ad with an embedded PDF document which plays a RealMedia clip!

    Besides, "a real powerhouse competitor to Microsoft"? Um.... Microsoft makes office software and operating systems. They make almost zippo from Windows Media Player. Two big multimedia-oriented companies and a pain-in-the-ass-that-just-won't-die video tech company have what influence on Microsoft?

    --
    "What do you despise? By this are you truly known." --Princess Irulan, Manual of Muad'Dib
    /)
    1. Re:Hooray! by ciroknight · · Score: 1

      I'm sure they make almost zippo from all of those multimedia devices that play Windows Media content, too.

      Oh, and Windows Media's pretty laden with advertisements for various companies, I'm sure that brings in a few pennies too.

      --
      "Victory means exit strategy, and it's important for the President to explain to us what the exit strategy is." G.W.Bush
    2. Re:Hooray! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Wow! I don't think I could be that short sighted if I tried. You can't see how they could compete with MS? You think MS just make Office and Windows?

      Good luck in your next job as a checkout person!

    3. Re:Hooray! by timeOday · · Score: 1, Interesting
      I don't know about you, but I'm *glad* .pdf came along and countered the then-growing trend of posting links to .doc documents. I'm glad flash came along and nipped that atrocity ActiveX in the bud. I'm glad when I find websites using Real rather than Windows Media, because Real files play on my linux desktop and most Windows Media links don't work at all.

      I guess you don't see any links there, but I do.

    4. Re:Hooray! by jrockway · · Score: 1

      M$ is not into media devices for the money, they're in it for the lock-in. Imagine that you go buy a shiny WMA-only audio player tomorrow. Then OS X comes out for x86 in a few months. Guess what, if you want that player to work you won't be buying an Apple OS. You'll be forced to by Longhorn.

      And again, Microsoft wins by making sure you can never use anything but their products.

      That's why there's Windows media player. The key word is Windows.

      --
      My other car is first.
    5. Re:Hooray! by ozmanjusri · · Score: 2, Insightful

      Two big multimedia-oriented companies and a pain-in-the-ass-that-just-won't-die video tech company have what influence on Microsoft?

      Take a closer look at what Flash is rapidly becoming. It's a platform-independant development environment which is easily capable of being used to develop productivity apps. It has the capacity (with Flash Remoting and Cold Fusion) of becoming the core of a decentralised Office replacement. No dependance on Windows, no need for MS.

      --
      "I've got more toys than Teruhisa Kitahara."
  11. Normal patterns in a maturing industry by ben_white · · Score: 2, Interesting

    I see this as just normal patterns in a maturing industry. As the technology era matures, the number of significant players decreases. This is happening even faster in the modern era where governments are pulling down barriers to this type of integration in the name of "free trade." There are of course downsides to this pattern. The larger the entity the more difficut true innovation is. True innovation will continue on the fringes of the industry in the smaller startups and by individuals.

    I think our real fear should not be of this kind of commercial merger squashing innovation, but of our screwed up patent system strangling the type of innovation that started the technology and information revolution.

    cheers, ben

    --
    cheers, ben

    Never miss a good chance to shut up -- Will Rogers
  12. And We Shall Call It... by WhiteWolf · · Score: 5, Funny

    ...Macrobe!

    --
    Eye kneed eh Grammer chicken.
    1. Re:And We Shall Call It... by ComputerSherpa · · Score: 1

      Dangit, I guess I'm not as original as I thought. Two independant copies of the same idea, posted at the exact same moment. :-) (see just below)

      --
      Information wants to be anthropomorphized!
    2. Re:And We Shall Call It... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      and they combine illustrator and freehand, thus creating
      Macrobe Frustrator

    3. Re:And We Shall Call It... by WhiteWolf · · Score: 1

      We'll make a drinking game of it - every time someone makes the same joke... ;)

      --
      Eye kneed eh Grammer chicken.
    4. Re:And We Shall Call It... by Vorondil28 · · Score: 1

      Pfft, nobody'll get hammered that way. Now if we started taking a shot for every dupe...

      --
      This sig rocks the casbah.
    5. Re:And We Shall Call It... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Or just, Acrash.

  13. What I want to know is... by ComputerSherpa · · Score: 1

    ...what are they going to call the new company? AdobeMedia? MacroDobe? Macrobe?

    --
    Information wants to be anthropomorphized!
    1. Re:What I want to know is... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Flash Pop-Up Ads Inc.

  14. obFlashBlockLink by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Informative

    ... And we will have one extension to thank for never seeing a Flash ad.

    (OK, maybe two)

    1. Re:obFlashBlockLink by TCM · · Score: 1

      I prefer noscript. Javascript/Java/anything whitelist based on hostname/domainname/url.

      --
      Of course it runs NetBSD. BTC: 1NT7QvbetmANwaMzhpVL6
  15. Re:counterweight? .. or easier target? by dabigpaybackski · · Score: 2, Interesting
    PDF does have a grip on academic publications, but there are other technologies that can duplicate it.

    Perhaps, but PDF is an open standard, and ubiquitous. Search for a document on Google and you get a screen full of PDF links. You want to download a manual for your new sound card? PDF. You want to print up a corporate shareholder report? It's probably a PDF.

    PDF isn't going anywhere.

    --
    "OH SHIT, THERE'S A HORSE IN THE HOSPITAL!"
  16. Insiders report by hobotron · · Score: 4, Funny



    Insiders report they will collaborate on an exciting new standard of interoperability that will lag the complete shit out of your browser.

    --
    There is truth in humor.
  17. Simple by melted · · Score: 3, Interesting

    Adobe vs. Microsoft.

    AFAIK Microsoft is getting their PDF and Flash replacements ready as we speak.

    http://www.actionscript.com/archives/00000587.html
    http://www.pdfzone.com/category2/0,1874,1836049,00 .asp

    1. Re:Simple by zoogies · · Score: 1

      This is terrific. For once, the angry masses can love microsoft. For once, they can trust in Microsoft's ability to outdo, outmanuever, and simply PWNZ0r everyone else in the field. g0z0r microsoft, deliver us from this evil!

    2. Re:Simple by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Visual J++ all over again?

  18. Intrested. by uchihalush · · Score: 1

    I'm just curious, if this article gets duped(which it most definitley will) does that mean there is going to be Like Macrobe and then like Adomedia... two different companies O_O

  19. PDF & flash by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Honestly, I like PDF. It guarantees the exact replication of how a document is intended to apperar. Almost everywhere.
    That's the main advantage of a typographic file format.

    Oppositely, I utterly dislike flash. I consider it just useless to the user. Only eye-candy here. Not much more.
    Yes, it's interesting from the developer side, with its event controlling script engine and the ability to not be obligated to follow a rigid frame order.
    But still, it's just a waste of resources.

    I'm guessing if Adobe and Macromedia will try to join both or just - as written by someone else - keep 'em separated to prevent the Evil from embrace and extend (to be read as: copy and screw).

    1. Re:PDF & flash by timeOday · · Score: 3, Insightful

      I like flash because my kids like to play flash games on sites like miniclip.com. There has to be some alternative to client-side applications other than blindly installing .exe's. I wish Java had won out, but I guess it was too big and heavy, and took too long to implement little web apps.

    2. Re:PDF & flash by AaronLawrence · · Score: 1

      PDF is useful and convenient to the author, less so to an online reader. PDF viewers are invariably clunky and painful compared to a modern web browser (largely because they insist on being different; like having to choose a text selection tool).

      --
      For every expert, there is an equal and opposite expert. - Arthur C. Clarke
    3. Re:PDF & flash by RedHat+Rocky · · Score: 1

      I suppose you like Internet Explorer as well, I mean all websites work well in it, nice to be able to design for just one spec, right?

      PDF isn't portable to all platforms. The typical response to problems with PDFs is "upgrade to latest Acrobat Reader". Guess what, some of us don't use Reader to view PDFs. And there are plenty of folks who can't upgrade Reader for technical or administrative reasons.

      PDF most certainly does NOT guarantee "the exact replication of how a document is intended to apperar". And it certainly isn't web-friendly. Why do I need to download a 6 MB PDF when all I want is the info on page 55?

      The final icing is that the PDF format is controlled by one company, a recipe that has shown time and time again to be undesirable.

      --
      Anything is possible given time and money.
  20. For Firefox... by Iscariot_ · · Score: 1

    Install these:

    pdf download
    https://addons.mozilla.org/extensions/moreinfo.php ?id=636&application=firefox

    flashblock
    https://addons.mozilla.org/extensions/moreinfo.php ?id=433

    --

    Go here for teh [sic] funny.
  21. Re:counterweight? .. or easier target? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    its NOT an open standard...

  22. MACROMEDIA CANT PROGRAM X86_64 (AMD64) THEY SUCK by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Who the hell would want to buy stock in a company that can't even port their flash reader to X86_64 (AMD64)????

  23. Re:counterweight? .. or easier target? by richdun · · Score: 1

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pdf

    Really? You'd think someone would've fixed the Wikipedia article if it wasn't.

  24. Think back... by AdityaG · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Before people rant on how much Flash and pdf's suck, please step back and think.

    Go back to about 5-6 years ago, when CSS and "design" weren't really associated with websites. They mainly consisted of lots of tables and a lot of annoying animated gifs with the occasional embedded music. But there were also the "good" sites that were easy to read, helpful and good on the eyes. If you don't get my point yet.. Flash and the PDF format have a bad name mainly because of their abuse. PDF is really not very bad. If you don't like the firefox plugin, DONT INSTALL IT. Let firefox download the pdf and voila, you have a nice, relatively small and fairly cross platform file. Then we have flash. I have seen Flash being used for a lot of very stupid things, like the ads... but I have also seen it used for some very cool things, like educational games, kiosk presentations and such. They are also being used for things like statistics with things like Flex. And with the new versions, its much easier to make Flash a lot more accessible, including language strings.

    So before you start a large flame... please think of how GOOD these pieces of software are. I am personally very excited about the merger. Maybe they will soon have a Addobe + Macromedia Studio where they will just have Dreamweaver + Flash + Photoshop instead of two incomplete studios (CS and Macromedia Studio)

    Cheers

    1. Re:Think back... by Dachannien · · Score: 1

      There's one important difference between the abuse of PDF and the abuse of Flash: nobody tries to do site navigation entirely in PDF.

      On the other hand, you'll see sites chock full of Flash widgets that form the navigational structure of the entire site. Some use a zillion widgets, each of which has a stupid animation when you mouse over it and which only does one other thing, namely, send you to a particular URL when you click on it. You can do the same thing with an animated GIF and a Javascript function, if you really need to do it at all. And some of them use one gigantic widget that loads everything into one place. That means that you are stuck using whatever Flash navigation they provide, rendering basic browser functions like Back, Forward, Reload, and View Source completely useless.

      I'm probably just as entertained as you are by the Flash widgets that serve a useful purpose (whatever the latest Flash meme is, etc.). But the misuses of Flash are so egregious that I cringe at the thought of what this new company will do to "enhance" the functionality of a perfectly good program like Acrobat.

    2. Re:Think back... by shutdown+-p+now · · Score: 1

      PDF is a fully open standard, which is why it doesn't suck - just look at how many PDF viewers are out there, many of them OSS. Flash, on the other hand, is a closed proprietary format with no working 3rd-party implementations, and for this alone it deserves to die.

    3. Re:Think back... by RedHat+Rocky · · Score: 1

      BULLSHIT.

      An open standard is not "a standard controlled by one company"

      Yes, you may be able to VIEW the standard, that does NOT make it open.

      I suppose Microsoft is open source by your definition, since under the right conditions and legal filings, their source is viewable.

      Please stop spreading this.

      --
      Anything is possible given time and money.
    4. Re:Think back... by shutdown+-p+now · · Score: 1
      An open standard is not "a standard controlled by one company"
      Open standard is the one which is freely available on request and does not require you to pay any royalties or licensing fees for implementation. Whether it's written by a company, a committee, or just by collaboration of several individuals is irrelevant.

      And of course, open standard is not the same as open source. Never said such a thing.

  25. SVG by chri · · Score: 2, Interesting

    My hope is that this merger does not weaken Adobe's support for SVG.

    --
    greetings earthlings
    1. Re:SVG by adamclarke77 · · Score: 1

      Me too!

      SVG is the standard for vector based graphics. Adobe provide a half decent plug-in and it works in both IE and Firefox. Anyone know what Macromedias attitude to SVG is?

    2. Re:SVG by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      those Flash vectors are bound to hamper whatever technology SVG uses

    3. Re:SVG by chri · · Score: 1

      I don't understand why my comment was rated as "offtopic"... Adobe has been one of the most heavyweight proponents of SVG... they will now have controll of SVG's main competitor, Flash. The potential loss of Adobe's support for SVG is, to me, the biggest issue in this merger. Or was I replying to an article about something else?

      --
      greetings earthlings
  26. Who said it? by RM6f9 · · Score: 1

    "Greed is good!"

    --
    Take the 90-Day Challenge! http://rwmurker.bodybyvi.com/
  27. ONE WORD by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    FLEX ....

    Do some research !!!!

  28. Re: Dreamweaver by onlyjoking · · Score: 1

    You forgot the rest of the Dreamweaver crap: it can't display floated elements, code view loses focus when launched and the lousy layout update, especially with tables.

  29. Good for Adobe by N8F8 · · Score: 0

    Maybe those Macromedia folks can teach them how to make a browser plugin that doesn't hang or kill the browser!

    --
    "God fights on the side with the best artillery." - Napoleon, Marshal of France - speaking truth to power
  30. should save both companies a lot of money by Scudsucker · · Score: 2, Funny

    ...if only because this means they wont be suing eachother on a quarterly basis.

  31. FlashPaper by PhYrE2k2 · · Score: 1

    Now Adobe can make a reader in Flash (using new Flash APIs) similar to how Macromedia did Flashpaper... which is surprisingly decent if you don't need to get the data OUT of Flash.

    -M

    --

    when you see the word 'Linux', drink!
  32. Hooray for Macrodobe! by PocketPick · · Score: 1

    Or is it Adobomedia? Macrodobedia? AcroMacrobe?

  33. This could be good by Tanmi-Daiow · · Score: 1

    To all of you conspiracy theorists and such, this could actually be good. Think beyond the "replacement for Microsoft" argument. Seeing as how Google is expanding and Microsoft if just Microsoft. The more companies that become bigger means the more threat to Microsoft, and even Google to a certain degree. As long as there are companies who can threaten such giants, be they other giants or just small groups (Mozilla Foundation). Competition is exactly what a capitalist society needs to thrive, otherwise it gets stale. This could cause an improved product from everybody. So dont get worried when another merger happens, just be happy that this means more competition for everbody.

    --
    "Of all tyrannies, a tyranny sincerely exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive." - C.S. Lewis
  34. Re:counterweight? .. or easier target? by timeOday · · Score: 0, Flamebait
    PDF does have a grip on academic publications, but there are other technologies that can duplicate it.
    Like what?
  35. Re:Graphic Designers are all wondering what it mea by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    I think your site needs more tables...

  36. Macromedia and Adobe in bed by cnerd2025 · · Score: 1

    Amid Microshaft battling Google and Apple, this quitely slips under the radar. The shareholders approved it 10 fipping days ago. We must really be on edge about the three aforementioned. I can only think positively about this, something that I rarely do with an acquisition. I see it can only be good for web standards and web development. Dreamweaver + Flash meet SVG + PDF. Great vector graphics, web publishing tools, and document formatting.

  37. Re:MACROMEDIA CANT PROGRAM X86_64 (AMD64) THEY SUC by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Funny

    Can't you just run two instances of the 32-bit version?

  38. Re:counterweight? .. or easier target? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Flash? lol

  39. Re:Graphic Designers are all wondering what it mea by jonwil · · Score: 1

    Perhaps things will go the other way with all the good things about Photoshop etc going into Flash/Director and Dreamweaver.

  40. How ironic... by aussiedood · · Score: 1

    ... not so long ago these 2 were duking it out in court over interface similarities. Now the offending apps will likely have more in common in terms of interface.

  41. Flash Commoditizes Windows by vw_bob · · Score: 2, Insightful

    One thing that surprises me is how most people miss the point that flash isn't just about animation any more. It's a platform! Consider this, ActionScript is a full featured OO language. Flash is installed on almost any computer. Wouldn't this begin to suggest that you could use Flash to create truly platform agnostic web-distributable applications?

    Screw web "pages", the future of the web is about web "applications". Cross platform web applications marginalize (actually commoditize) Microsoft's operating system (and a big portion of it's business model.

    Why do you think MS is working on Avalon?! To tie "rich" internet applications to windows, and not to other OSes like Mac or Linux.

    Perhaps we should all learn Flash and start writing applications in it... this might do something to help knock MS off it's thrown. (Not that I care, but it's something a lot of Slashdotters do care about.)

    1. Re:Flash Commoditizes Windows by dodobh · · Score: 1

      Flash is _not_ cross platform. Lots of operating system/hardware ombos without a flash player.

      The point of HTML is that it _is_ cross platform, and standardised (FSVO standardised)

      --
      I can throw myself at the ground, and miss.
    2. Re:Flash Commoditizes Windows by hjoelr · · Score: 1

      Bob has an excelent point. Flash is not just for advertisement. It can be used to create applications that can communicate with a server. Instead of having HTML webpages that require refreshes, you can use flash to do the same thing with even more control and flexibility. Flash is definitely a thing to consider learning.

    3. Re:Flash Commoditizes Windows by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Wonderful idea! Can you get me a link to an IDE that runs on my Ubuntu Hoary box?

    4. Re:Flash Commoditizes Windows by Bernie · · Score: 1

      Perhaps we should all learn Flash and start writing applications in it...

      Er, no.

      Perhaps we should be looking at real standards such as CSS, E4X and SVG. Furthermore, we need to lobby certain people to implement such standards in their browsers.

    5. Re:Flash Commoditizes Windows by vw_bob · · Score: 1

      Open soure flash development: (I havn't tried, it but a quick googled turned this up)

      http://www.actionscript.com/index.php/fw/1/towards -open-source-flash-development/

      There's also Laszlo, which generates Flash documents. Oh yea. That's open source and runs on J2EE servers.

      I almost forgot, IBM made an eclipse plugin for laszlo too! http://alphaworks.ibm.com/tech/ide4laszlo

      Now, you truly can make flash content on you Ubuntu Hoary box.

    6. Re:Flash Commoditizes Windows by vw_bob · · Score: 2, Insightful

      Frankly, I could care less about standards. What I want is reliablity. It's obvious that CSS, E4X, SVG and the rest of that gang havn't met that promise. I'm not saying they won't, but I'm saying that, as a business, I'm not going to wait for things to change.

      I say give me something that works consistently over something that's a "standard" but hardly ever works consistently, or takes so much time to implement consistently that I've already lost the race by the time I finish my application.

    7. Re:Flash Commoditizes Windows by the+eric+conspiracy · · Score: 1

      Wouldn't this begin to suggest that you could use Flash to create truly platform agnostic web-distributable applications?

      I work for a company that delivers Flash based thick web applications. Unfortunately we have found that there are some pretty severe limitations in using Flash this way. Some of the worst are that Flash is not multi-threaded, and that there are no automated testing tools. Also, if you are approaching Flash from a programming background you will find the IDE is oriented towards animators rather than programmers. We also have concerns that Flash is not all that robust compared to other cross platform solutions, and that there is a history of limited support of the Flash player outside of Windows. For example even today there is no player for 64 bit Linux.

      Flash Remoting applications are also pretty non-performant over WANs - fortunately what we do is aimed at intranets; I doubt if the stuff we deliver would be acceptable at all over the general internet.

    8. Re:Flash Commoditizes Windows by Joe+U · · Score: 1

      You want to replace Microsoft with Adobe-Macromedia?

      ARE YOU OUT OF YOUR MIND?! If you think Microsoft does damage to the industry, think of what AdobeMedia would do.

    9. Re:Flash Commoditizes Windows by mad.frog · · Score: 1

      Sure.

      http://www.osflash.org/

    10. Re:Flash Commoditizes Windows by mad.frog · · Score: 1

      Aw, c'mon, SVG renders just as reliably as SWF.

      Just check out the comparisons at http://www.linuxrising.org/svg_test/test.html and you'll see that...

      umm....

      nevermind.

    11. Re:Flash Commoditizes Windows by Snaller · · Score: 1

      One thing that surprises me is how most people miss the point that flash isn't just about animation any more. It's a platform! Consider this, ActionScript is a full featured OO language. Flash is installed on almost any computer.

      Yeah, and on how many is it blocked? It is on mine, if I come to an empty website (ie, one written in flash) I assume they are unprofessional amateurs and move on.
      Usually it takes long to long, makes a lot of noise, is slow to navigate (because they have to include a lot of crap animation) and worst of all they tend to use very small graphics which is unreadable (unless you are 18 like the designer) - and while flash tend to have a "zoom" menu which might actually make things readable most twits disable that. Flash sucks, and I hope they go out of business, damn discriminators.

      --
      If Google really cared they would fix Android Chrome to reflow text, instead of discriminating
  42. Re: Dreamweaver by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    No, I didn't forget anything - I just omitted including the other 6000 pages of issues with it. I just love the MM_crap garbage pretend code it generates too. It's just lovely being stuck fixing someone else's work that was done this way - it's usually a horrible mess (it's quite unefficient, too).

    Another big issue with it is that too much PHB's have been contracting n00bs to make stuff for them (which turns out to be broken and extremely buggy - if it works at all!), and then once you've fixed their job (with real hand-coded stuff), then they complain it's "not [easily?] maintainable" because DW doesn't understand anything that wasn't created by itself. Tons of stuff doesn't show up on the preview pane, so to them it sucks. They'd rather have that garbage generated by DW than nice C# code-behind asp.net pages, multi-tier architecture, using stored procedures, with an MVC and everything. Everything's gotta be point-and-click, brainless, GUI oriented stuff. Really sad. I blame it on all these idiot self-proclaimed "web designers" (they're the only ones who seem to care about DW really).

    I'd like to understand what they actually like in DW, as it makes no sense to me. Those toolbars at the top that take forever to navigate to generate tags for you? It's much faster to type them (especially with something like intellisense or macros). If they can't remember simple markup they're in the wrong business.

  43. Re:Adobe & SVG by mpapet · · Score: 1

    Adobe's Strategy:

    1. Force propreitary technology, discredit open standards. "Who's going to support it?" they tell their customers.
    2. Open standards winning, so embrace & extend standard to make it proprietary.
    3. Launch overpriced under-featured Adobe application.
    4. Make software easy to pirate.
    5. Destroy competitors with lawsuits and loss-leader pricing.
    6. Merge overpriced software into Photoshop.
    7. Profit.

    --
    http://www.maxineudall.com/2010/02/should-economists-be-sued-for-malpractice.html
  44. PDF itself doesn't suck by Overly+Critical+Guy · · Score: 1

    PDF is a subset of Postscript with extensions like font embedding and compression. It's a description model, which is why it's so cool that it can be used to store documents that appear the same everywhere and have it printed to look just like it is on screen (and that OS X's Quartz is based on the PDF model).

    What sucks is Adobe Acrobat. PDF is just fine. Try any lightweight PDF viewer.

    --
    "Sufferin' succotash."
  45. Re:counterweight? .. or easier target? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Interesting

    TeX, maybe...?

  46. Acrobat "light" is ok by Kristoffer+Lunden · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Actually, if you just don't install the plugins package Acrobat is both really snappy and well behaved (this is on Ubuntu). That's why there are tutorials all over the web on how to remove most plugins from Acrobat on Windows. The actual reader is lightweight and nice, it's all those unnecessary extras (including DRM and privacy-invading javascripts that some are so afraid of) that's the bloat.

    It's actually pretty funny that they've designed the application in a good way so things can be removed and added like this, but at the same time seems to want this to be a secret and prefers to tell the users that they need it all. Of course, this is probably just sound marketing strategy from their point of view, and the average user probably rather waits a bit than for something not to work. Not having those plugins installed means that URLs aren't clickable for instance, but I can live with the occassional copy/paste instead - and if I really wanted to, I could manually get that plugin.

    So, Acrobat is really the choice as far as I can tell, even though it's not a good moral or political choice. Sure, there are plenty of other alternatives to choose from under Linux, but so far I've found none that's actually useable unless you only do sequential reading - page by page, from start to end. The few PDF:s I use are usually references and manuals of some sort, or sometimes large design documents. I need the ability to navigate these quickly. Search, bookmarks, ToC, and thumbs all those things are either missing or seriously hobbled in all the alternatives I've tried at least.

    Feel free to inform me of the one I've missed. I can live with crappy rendering, if needs be, but I do need a good UI.

    --
    Spine World
  47. Re:counterweight? .. or easier target? by Stupendoussteve · · Score: 0

    Why... the Microsoft Office Document Image Writer, of course!

  48. pdfs and firefox by zoogies · · Score: 1

    PDFs are so much of a pain that someone went out to make a javascript script that, inserted into each document, puts a little icon of warning indicating file type next to each link that could potentially lock the browser, your computer, and life in general (link preview)

    But yeah, PDFs are annoying to no end. I see that they're useful, but why must they freeze my browser with such alarming consistency? Another curious note, whenever I close a PDF file in Firefox, adobe acrobat doesn't exit. It sits there taking up 30 megabytes of memory. I have to go control+alt+delete on its ass before it shuts down. Why's this?

  49. Good! by Guppy06 · · Score: 2, Funny

    Now I only have one corporation to hate on instead of two. This frees up hatred for new and upcoming businesses.

  50. One more acquisition...Reality. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Complaining about buffering, is like complaining that water is wet. Don't like it? Get broadband. The laws of physics are more accomodating there.

  51. Re:Hooray for Adobe! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Take note: Historically, whenever Adobe has interacted with another company, as it has many times, the formula for the name change has always been the same. This makes it easy to predict the new company name.

    Extrapolating past trends to current developments, we can probably say with certainty that the new company name will be...

    Adobe.

  52. No surprise here, but... by Regnard · · Score: 1

    I can see it now: A few month from now, Slashdotters will rant on a post about how Adobe mangles the Macromedia brand.

    --
    Need a color? Try 100 random colors
  53. PDF and Flash, argh by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    It takes forever to load up a PDF document, and it makes the computer slow.

    I hate flash banners and such, they annoy me when I try to read information on the webiste, which is why I probably came to the website. I also dislike propiertary file formats.

  54. Re:Graphic Designers are all wondering what it mea by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    As somone who refuses to install flash, I'm wondering if I might be stuck with the ghostscript viewer for PDF's on windows.

    And WTF is up with windows acrobat reader prompting me to enable javascript every time I close the app?

  55. Re:counterweight? .. or easier target? by Cabewse · · Score: 1

    Who the hell wants to write TeX?

    PDF has a grip, because Adobe and Quark have a grip on the publishing industry. It's along the same lines as to why most home computer users run Windows, because it's been around, and peopple are used to it.

  56. Re:counterweight? .. or easier target? by WWWWolf · · Score: 1
    Who the hell wants to write TeX?

    You forgot the "grip on academic publications". Hard science folks just love to use tons of equations and cite millions of sources, and don't care particularly about cool visual look as long as formatting looks really tidy, so LaTeX definitely isn't going away any time soon in those circles.

    And (La)TeX to PDF conversion is easy, which means that they're both used extensively. =)

  57. Why is one company stronger than two? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    How will this merged company have greater leverage against Microsoft than Adobe and Macromedia have, in sum, as separate companies? It's still just Acrobat and still just Flash. And a number of products like Freehand and GoLive are likely to fall by the wayside. How will any of this hurt Microsoft or stave off their advances?

  58. Wake up and smell reality... by WrongByDefinition · · Score: 1

    Perhaps you should just educate yourself then.

    Instead of wasting your time with convoluted, non-friendly DHTML/Javascript (read: AJAX) applications that are not cross-browser/cross-platform friendly by any measure, you take a look at what Flash can do in the way of RIA development. Easier to develop, cleaner, better user experience, more accessible, far fewer incompatibility issues, looks better, WTF else do you need? If it slows your computer down, thats down to shit-poor programming, not Flash itself.

    Blaming Flash because a bunch off A$$holes design annoying ads and cheesedicks who think Flash is an excuse to create useless splash screens is like blaming your Television for bad commercials and movie cameras for Ben Afleck.

    Or am I wrong? Maybe we should start slamming GIMP for all the tasteless JPEG advertising and GIF animations? Those bastards! 'course, only decent folk use OSS, so those guys must be using PhotoShop...

  59. Given my experience with mergers... by rthille · · Score: 0

    This will be the end of both companies. Luckily I don't really care about the software from either. PDFs are nice, but since it's an open standard I don't need Adobe for it. Macromedia just makes annoying advertizing enabling software as far as I can tell. I guess if I can't get a 'modern' copy of Photoshop (OSX-intel say) because the company has cratered that might be an issue, but I don't use is professionally, and I imagine other companies will setup up to fill the void.

    --
    Awesome furniture, accessories and cabinetry in Santa Rosa, CA: http://humanity-home.com/
  60. I don't think so by melted · · Score: 1

    They're betting their entire printing system on Metro. So either it works, and works well, or they simply won't ship it.

  61. MOD THIS UP, not offtopic by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    As SVG is an open standard for vector graphics, the way the merger will affect is very important to any of you, Slashdotters. And to all people who care about open standards.

  62. Re: Dreamweaver by onlyjoking · · Score: 1

    Dreamweaver used to be the last app keeping me tied to XP since font sizing on DW-OS X was so lame. Not that I needed it as an editor since I use Emacs for everything. It was just the templating, crude as it is. When I discovered Perl's Template Toolkit that was all I needed to ditch both DW and XP. Now I code websites while viewing in Mozilla and only right at the end will I boot XP to view in IE6, 5.5, 5.0 to fix CSS bugs. Works like a dream unless a client insists on messing with the templates and has heard of DW's "amazing" features.

  63. I just found Evince by Kristoffer+Lunden · · Score: 1

    Heh. What do you know. I just stumbled upon Evince, which is a part of Gnome, a fork/replacement of GPDF. I'm not sure if it's generally available yet, but it (version 0.4.0) was possible to install in Ubuntu Breezy. This might just be the Acrobat killer I am looking for, it seems very promising at least.

    Being a general document viewer, it shows not only PDF but several other formats with more coming, like ppt and OpenOffice.org formats if I read it right. It's also supposed to preview supported docs in Nautilus, but that doesn't work for me (I guess that will be in 2.12, I've seen screenshots though).

    It seems to have everything I need in form of navigation, search and so on, looks real nice. And it feels fast too.

    --
    Spine World