Comments on: Comments on 5306

Post number 5306

gluechunk — Tue, 16 Jan 2001 14:21:39 -0800

Not as sexy as the AOL/Warner combo, but... Macromedia and Allaire to merge.

By: rodii

rodii — Tue, 16 Jan 2001 14:25:11 -0800

So what happens to HomeSite? And. . . does Flash *really* have 96% market penetration? That seems awfully high.

By: mathowie

mathowie — Tue, 16 Jan 2001 14:36:06 -0800

There's always been dreamweaver->homesite integration (you used to get the current version of homesite free with dreamweaver), and there has been some coldfusion tags for dreamweaver, but I really hope they don't try to merge coldfusion studio (just homesite with extensions) with dreamweaver ultradev. That would be a mess.

By: bump

bump — Tue, 16 Jan 2001 14:48:32 -0800

In my opinion, the real value in this merger is not in the authoring tools, but in the combination of Flash technologies with Allaire's server product line. They were already collaborating on this(see link below). The harpoon project

By: pnevares

pnevares — Tue, 16 Jan 2001 14:52:15 -0800

Macromedia - Allaire FAQ The question about Microsoft's .NET is peculiar. This is frequently asked?

By: Postroad

Postroad — Tue, 16 Jan 2001 15:12:36 -0800

Somehow, in my modest thinking, I had never imagined two super companies merging for a still bigger monopoly as being "sexy." Is my view of sexiness perhaps kinky?

By: rodii

rodii — Tue, 16 Jan 2001 15:22:11 -0800

From that FAQ:

HomeSite has been included in every full copy of Macromedia Dreamweaver and UltraDev ever shipped.

Not mine (I have a Mac).

By: snakey

snakey — Tue, 16 Jan 2001 16:00:57 -0800

Don't sweat it, rodii. BBEdit is better anyway.

By: holgate

holgate — Tue, 16 Jan 2001 16:56:50 -0800

Seconded, snakey: Homesite reminds Windows users just how good BBEdit is. (Then again, I use Emacs across every single platform.)

By: tamim

tamim — Tue, 16 Jan 2001 18:50:59 -0800

Macromedia is the worst possible merging company with questionable "merger culture." They bought Drumbeat and just slaughtered it. They snuck in the "dreamweaver ultradev" and left a lot of Drumbeat customers out in the cold. These people can't merge technologies. And I love homesite. Have been using it since version 1.x (the original freeware). (As a matter of fact, I still have that installed on my comp.)

By: attitude

attitude — Tue, 16 Jan 2001 19:19:59 -0800

Postroad, the resulting company would hardly be a monopoly. The number of competitors in this field is astronomical.

By: daveadams

daveadams — Tue, 16 Jan 2001 21:35:45 -0800

does Flash *really* have 96% market penetration? That seems awfully high. In the market of annoying, useless vector animation for the web, I'll bet that it does.

By: kindall

kindall — Tue, 16 Jan 2001 22:29:26 -0800

I worked on the user manual for one version of Drumbeat and it always struck me as pretty dang cool, for a Windows program. ;) Since Macromedia has built their company largely on software acquired from others (Flash, FreeHand... anyone remember XRes?) I had high hopes for what they might do with a combination of Dreamweaver and Drumbeat. Bummer that it didn't go anywhere.

By: DragonBoy

DragonBoy — Tue, 16 Jan 2001 22:57:58 -0800

Other than Director are there any of Macromedia's original products still sold by them? They killed off the 3D stuff and SoundEdit16 is gone. Hmmm, innovation through exploitation?

By: dhartung

dhartung — Wed, 17 Jan 2001 01:22:57 -0800

According to this browser stats page, 68% of browsers had the Flash plug-in installed as of 1/00.

By: hijinx

hijinx — Wed, 17 Jan 2001 04:16:10 -0800

I had high hopes for what they might do with a combination of Dreamweaver and Drumbeat. Bummer that it didn't go anywhere. What of UltraDev? I'm just now digging into it and finding it to be a rather nifty tool.

By: leo

leo — Wed, 17 Jan 2001 07:10:54 -0800

What of UltraDev?... Yeah, I was thinking the same thing. I kind of wish they hadn't done this. Tying MM to Cold Fusion may not sit right with those who don't code in CF.

By: rodii

rodii — Wed, 17 Jan 2001 20:24:40 -0800

I have a copy of xRes around. It was pretty interesting in an unusual uh interface sort of way. Seems to have beome the basic painting engine of Fireworks, so it's not totally lost.

By: adamsc

adamsc — Wed, 17 Jan 2001 23:15:37 -0800

We were discussing this today. The "Project Harpoon" stuff sounds interesting but probably won't amount to much - Flash just isn't a good tool for building interfaces beyond basic presentations. The only thing I can see as at all useful would be merging Generator into Cold Fusion and thus catching up a little with PHP (which is giving Allaire a tough time by being superior on price/performance/features/portability/support). JRun has it's points, but it doesn't seem to do anything remarkable and has the disadvantage of being somewhat cumbersome to install. The last major Java app I installed came with instructions for using JRun but recommended Apache JServ even under Windows. This was not the case with earlier versions...

By: brian

brian — Fri, 19 Jan 2001 08:30:27 -0800

Most of you are giving Macromedia an undeserved hard time. Dreamweaver is the best thing that has come along in a long time for web developers and anyone that doesn't think so hasn't used it.

By: adamsc

adamsc — Fri, 19 Jan 2001 22:53:33 -0800

brian - Dreamweaver offers at best adequate HTML generator, the same sort of editing capabilities offered by most HTML editors (= less flexible / capable than most programmer's editors), expensive and marginal file managment abilities. Definitely an improvement over FrontPage / Composer, but barely even a blip for professional web develoers. (And yes, I have used it.)

By: baylink

baylink — Sat, 20 Jan 2001 21:41:06 -0800

Am I the only one who thinks that "President of Products" is the dumbest ass title they've ever heard? You can't be President *of* something. You're either President, or you ain't.