“ What are you work on ? ” my wife take just as the clocks were strike midnight on the East Coast this morning .
“ I ’m update the News page so that it ’s further the annunciation about Macromedia Studio , ” I replied .
Which is when my wife , for reason known only to her , set about to sing in her bestPhil Collinsimpression , “ Stu , Stu , Studio . ”
( Anyone in Macromedia ’s marketing section who wind up using that little ditty in future promotional materials , you know where to send the check . )
But the unveiling of Macromedia Studio 8 does something more significant than inspire masses to break out into rendering of 1980s Top 40 hit from former Genesis drummers ; it also gives us our first good look at what might pass off to Macromedia ’s assorted programs once Adobe envelop up the $ 3.4 billion purchase of its one - time software package competitor . Back when the buy - out was announced in April we could all make our best guesses as to what the future held for Adobe ’s software library . ( My fellow , David Sawyer McFarland , did just that , with most of his prognostication await pretty office on at this level . ) But now that we can see what ’s included in Studio 8 — and what ’s miss — those guesses can become a piddling bit more enlightened .
Macromedia vice president of production direction Jim Guerard tells our Jim Dalrymple that it ’s inconceivable to speculate on how the Adobe deal is going to bear on Macromedia ’s stable of intersection . Actually , it ’s outstandingly easy to speculate about that . Speculating correctly — now , that’sthe trick . But I ’m unforced to be as wrong in public as the next cat .
• yield the scope of the change introduce in Dreamweaver 8 , it ’s a fairly good wager that the Web - page authoring program will exist long after Macromedia is subsume into Adobe . This just does n’t feel like a procurator update . In fact , given Dreamweaver ’s spot as the broadcast of choice for the majority of vane designers , I ’d bet that if any vane computer program were to disappear , it would be the underwhelming GoLive . Maybe the programs get merge together under a new name — let me shake off a voter turnout right now for GoWeave — but any result hybrid will most likely resemble Dreamweaver .
• David Sawyer McFarland was onto something when he advise last April that Flash was probably the impetus for Adobe ’s purchase of Macromedia . And there ’s nothing in Flash Professional 8 that would paint a picture that app is get going to go away anytime shortly .
• I ca n’t say the same for Fireworks . The change introduce in Studio 8 , while interesting enough , do n’t strike me as particularly earth - shattering . ( Fireworks users , sense destitute to counterbalance me . ) I conjecture the product could continue to survive in a post - merger world , but integration with another app seems a more likely route — at least it does from the base hit of my keyboard .
• So Macromedia dropped FreeHand from the Studio suite , huh ? Well , that ’s not an encouraging foretoken if you occur to be a buff of the illustration app . Even less supporting is Guerard ’s command that the broadcast “ continues to be an important and successful product for the society , and we will continue to sell , sustenance , and keep it as a standalone intersection , ” since it go an awful lot like the things Adobe used to say about PageMaker or the Mac reading of FrameMaker before those apps were put out to pasture . ( perhaps software party require to find a new way of life to talk about obviously doomed programs—“FreeHand and I have agreed to see other masses , ” “ FreeHand is going to go live on a farm out in the res publica with other illustration program , ” or something along those lines . )
Obviously , Mac users may have some reservations about promote to Studio 8 : why should I pony up a twain hundred dollars for a political program that may be dropped the second Adobe take over?Just as obviously , neither Macromedia nor Adobe can really comment definitively on post - merger plan until the deal give out through . But in a agency , the additions to both Dreamweaver and Flash are enough of a definitive comment about the future of those ware .
