I should n’t have felt stupor , but I did . This morning as I amble over to my desk , I hear the buzz about Adobe grease one’s palms Macromedia . I felt a penetrating twinge of nostalgia , follow by regret . I remember Macromedia ’s Dreamweaver 1 and Adobe ’s Pagemill 1 — and the turmoil surrounding the release of these product around the mid-1990s for people who wanted to start building Web site but who did not do it , and had no desire to memorise , HTML . I was not one of those citizenry , but I could vastly appreciate the construct of draw Web layout on a blank page , fill it with text and images , and even audio and video , and upload it to the waiter . At that metre , Symantec also had a product in this class , as did the now - defunct Claris . On the horizon was a product call CyberStudio , a Mac - free-base Web invention and management program with professional programming feature , from a fresh party call GoLive that was headed up by an extremely wizardly German engineer key out Andreas Poliza . While I continued to hand computer code Web sites , I often came to trust on one of the visual designers to aid me rough out web design concept quickly and easily . As the ’ 90s melt into the new century , I notice that , one - by - one , all the mid - level Web design apps that I had used and enjoy ( and go over ) were being quietly phase out . In their place were few but larger , more luxuriant , and more professional packages such as Adobe GoLive ( the resultant of Adobe ’s 1998 accomplishment of GoLive ) , Dreamweaver , and to a lesser extent , Freeway ( a very good tool specifically design for desktop publisher who wanted to branch out into Web publication ) . These modern new program were still classified as visual design dick , but they were heavily oriented toward World Wide Web service of process and programming . What bothers me about Adobe ’s Macromedia buyout is that it further narrow choice in a marketplace that already had too few choice . Now there is one less commercial web pattern curriculum to choose from . And it ’s not just vane design — Macromedia has built up a suite of products to play with Dreamweaver that often rivaled Adobe ’s oblation in capability and usability . While Flash has an excellent chance of survival , I enquire what will become of Macromedia ’s FireWorks , that playfulness , spunky upstart that managed to capture the affection of so many World Wide Web and print creative person despite their devotion to Photoshop . I do n’t have to inquire about the circumstances of Dreamweaver , GoLive ’s lineal competitor . It ’s on the track to extinction , and that makes me distressed .