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Adobe Acquiring Macromedia on December 3, 2005

Posted by CowboyNeal on from the done-deals dept.

dennison_uy writes "Adobe Systems Incorporated and Macromedia, Inc. today announced they have either received or been notified they will receive all regulatory clearances necessary to complete Adobe's pending acquisition of Macromedia. The companies expect to close the transaction on December 3, 2005. Does this mean the end for Fireworks and Freehand?"

3 of 262 comments (clear)

  1. Software line-up changes? by Cyphertube · · Score: 4, Interesting

    I have my own personal bets about what will be going, but of course, that's from my own perspective. From what the majority of analysts say, yes, Freehand will likely go, as will GoLive.

    Much speculation exists regarding Fireworks vs. Photoshop. Photoshop will, of course, stay. What I wonder about is whether or not ImageReady will go. If they could merge some of the features of Fireworks into Photoshop, it would be a fabulous product. I've never liked ImageReady to export photos for the web, and I've not liked using Photoshop for creating simple graphic elements for online either. With enough support, Fireworks may stick around by itself, even.

    While I've consistently used products from both companies, and many an employer will likely reap an initial cost-savings from the merger, I am sad to see that competition in this industry has faded. I don't think even a company with as much cash to burn as Microsoft can break in any time soon. However, the tools themselves are pretty well set, so I think the next cool thing will be modifying the user interfaces to be even MORE user-friendly and intutitive. Go GIMP and bring on some competition!

    --
    Linux - because it doesn't leave that Steve Ballmer aftertaste.
  2. The future by NoSuchGuy · · Score: 4, Interesting

    will bring us more:
    - more PDFs on web pages
    - more Flash on webpages
    - more Flash in PDFs
    - more PDFs in Flash

    --
    Grundgesetz * 23. Mai 1949 - 30. November 2007 - http://www.vorratsdatenspeicherung.de/
  3. Re:Farewell Freehand, You'll be missed :( by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Interesting

    FreeHand has been dead for a year now. The entire development team in Richardson. TX was disbanded in March 2003. Everyone was laid off (including me), Development was moved to Bangalore, but that effort was axed after 10 months or so without any results. No wonder, our codebase was exceedingly convoluted.

    A shame really. The FH development process was a fine example of how things were supposed to be done. Proper bug tracking, competent managers (no, I was just a grunt developer), plenty of testers, proper specs. One can argue with the actual features and the archaic nature of the multitude of settings but the process was good. The latest release has unfortunately not held up well on OS X though.