When
· Naughties
· · 2005
· · · April
· · · · 18 (1 entry)
Adobe + Macromedia = ? · Seems straightforward to me. Adobe is in at the center of print production (PhotoShop & friends, InDesign, PDF), while Macromedia’s DreamWeaver is the single most important Web-design product. Dave Shea says this might be about Flash, but let me suggest exactly the opposite: if you’re hitching your career to Flash, it might be a good time to look at alternatives. Why’s that? Because, near as I can tell, Macromedia has never made any serious money with Flash. They’ve accomplished one of the great, heroic, marketing coups of all time, getting the plug-in onto substantially every desktop on the planet; and this bought them, uh, what exactly? They sell authoring tools, but seriously, how many Flash designers does the world need? Anyhow, most of the good things you can do with Flash, you can do about as well with DHTML (oops that’s called AJAX now) and your “back” button still works. I guess there’s no reason to actually shut Flash down, the tool revenue must about cover the engineering costs. But Adobe, historically, has been good at focusing on what works and dropping the distractions. (Can you remember PageMill?) Flash is a distraction. [Update: Smell something burning? That would be me, sizzling in a torrent of Flash-flavored flame.] ...
