January 16, 2001

2:21 PM

Not as sexy as the AOL/Warner combo, but... Macromedia and Allaire to merge.
posted by gluechunk (21 comments total)

So what happens to HomeSite?

And. . . does Flash *really* have 96% market penetration? That seems awfully high.
posted by rodii at 2:25 PM on January 16, 2001

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.
posted by mathowie at 2:36 PM on January 16, 2001

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


posted by bump at 2:48 PM on January 16, 2001

Macromedia - Allaire FAQ

The question about Microsoft's .NET is peculiar. This is frequently asked?
posted by pnevares at 2:52 PM on January 16, 2001

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?
posted by Postroad at 3:12 PM on January 16, 2001

From that FAQ:

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

Not mine (I have a Mac).
posted by rodii at 3:22 PM on January 16, 2001

Don't sweat it, rodii. BBEdit is better anyway.
posted by snakey at 4:00 PM on January 16, 2001

Seconded, snakey: Homesite reminds Windows users just how good BBEdit is. (Then again, I use Emacs across every single platform.)
posted by holgate at 4:56 PM on January 16, 2001

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.)
posted by tamim at 6:50 PM on January 16, 2001

Postroad, the resulting company would hardly be a monopoly. The number of competitors in this field is astronomical.
posted by attitude at 7:19 PM on January 16, 2001

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.
posted by daveadams at 9:35 PM on January 16, 2001

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.
posted by kindall at 10:29 PM on January 16, 2001

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?
posted by DragonBoy at 10:57 PM on January 16, 2001

According to this browser stats page, 68% of browsers had the Flash plug-in installed as of 1/00.
posted by dhartung at 1:22 AM on January 17, 2001

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.
posted by hijinx at 4:16 AM on January 17, 2001

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.
posted by leo at 7:10 AM on January 17, 2001

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.
posted by rodii at 8:24 PM on January 17, 2001

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...
posted by adamsc at 11:15 PM on January 17, 2001

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.
posted by brian at 8:30 AM on January 19, 2001

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.)
posted by adamsc at 10:53 PM on January 19, 2001

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.
posted by baylink at 9:41 PM on January 20, 2001