Dead On

This post from Daring Fireball nails the dynamic of the Adobe/Macromedia merger. I’m still wondering how much longer Fireworks has. It’s my favorite Macromedia product. Nothing touches it from any other vendor and I fear it will die soon. Adobe, please don’t kill Fireworks.

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  • http://bachelorchronicles.blogspot.com the bachelor

    Just out of curiousity, why do you like Fireworks so much? What do you use it for? Do you have Photoshop?

    I always struggle with buying Photoshop, but for editing pictures it seems way better than Fireworks, while Fireworks has a much easier to understand UI.

  • http://www.ascendtraining.com Gretchen

    We have this same conversation on a daily basis. We hope that Adobe keeps Fireworks. There is absolutely no interest from the corporate world for ImageReady. I get calls on a daily basis looking for Fireworks training. One can only hope that Adobe will recognize the superiousness of the MM web products.

  • http://www.blurbomat.com blurb

    I have Photoshop. I don’t use Fireworks as an image editor. I use it as a quick comp maker for anything to do with web projects; email, web pages, buttons, banners and microsites. Imagine Illustrator and parts of Photoshop mixed together. Fireworks makes a lot of work happen much more quickly.

    It’s vector and bitmap at the same time, with a pretty good optimization engine. It has a better slicer than the Adobe products (more intuitive) and I use it’s frames to do different comp versions or multiple page layouts of a site, e.g., homepage, secondary level page, sign-in page, etc. It’s Frames to Files export is a godsend.

  • Gidget

    I also use Fireworks all day long, every day, in exactly the way you describe and more. I literally do not know how I would function without it. Unfortunately, I had to learn these things existed through experimentation, as Macromedia does very, very little to showcase just what a great product this is. If it’s Macromedia’s stepchild, god knows what Adobe will do with it.

    I wish there was something that could be done about this. If more people truly understand how easy and efficient it made life, it would be much more widely utilized.

    I noted that both Andy Clarke – All That Malarkey and Jon Hicks – Hicksdesign have both mentioned their use and support of Fireworks on their blogs in the past. Perhaps there is some rallying around the flag that could happen here?

  • http://www.noun.ca Oliver

    Yes, Fireworks must live. Yes, working in Frames is awesome. Yes, Frames to Files makes me happy. For me though, the vector/raster combo is THE biggest feature that cannot be underscored when talking about productivity. Using an image-editing application like Photoshop is kinda like using Illustrator to layout a book. It can do it, but it’s clunky.

  • http://battybeyond.blogspot.com Tammy

    I don’t necessarily LIKE Adobe… it’s a little too flash-bang-wiz for the itty bitty bit of editing I actually do, but it’s f-r-e-e through work. Fireworks and Macromedia and added feature happiness would be pleasing unto me, but only if they idiot-proof the interface for lazy-asses like me. D’ya think that’s possible?? (I love wishful thinking)

  • http://whfropera.com whfropera

    that article was insightful, although a little too narrow-minded in its focus. – I agree with it in spirit, though. It is as if someone at Adobe realized that they missed the gravy train of the 90′s, and they want to play catch-up. I haven’t even touched CS yet – I’m perfectly happy with Photoshop 7.0 and Fireworks for web work. I’m fine with Image Ready going away also. I say jettison Image Ready, Freehand and Contribute, and maybe InDesign – I don’t use it, but know many who do, so I can’t speak with any authority on it as yet.

  • http://www.blurbomat.com blurb

    InDesign will not be scrapped. Adobe has begun to steal marketshare from Quark. And nothing makes better PDFs than InDesign.

  • http://www.kineticmuse.com Scott

    Fireworks has always scared and frightened me. Then again, Illustrator is like stepping into a room of bear traps, and at the other side is Kate Winslet wearing nothing but strategically-placed sushi, smoking a Gitane, motioning me towards her and as soon as I do it’s all blood and carnage and needless to say I can’t do anything with Illustrator.

  • hmm

    I’m intrigued by that article. While it makes many good points (it’s unacceptable for badly formatted PDF documents to be released by Adobe, for example), it also seems to say that Adobe shouldn’t pursue any new business ventures, and should just stay happy being the top of the creative professional field. Well, if that were the case, the creative professional field never would have happened, because they’d still be stuck in being the best at PostScript.

  • http://www.blurbomat.com blurb

    I don’t think it’s saying Adobe shouldn’t pursue new business ventures. It’s saying that Adobe hasn’t pursued those ventures successfully because it’s being run by sales people.

    It’s a bit of a reach to suggest that the “creative field” would have “never happened” if Adobe stayed solely with PostScript. Creatives existed before Adobe and they’ll exist after this acquisition.

    Adobe bought Aldus, maker of Pagemaker and Freehand. It let Freehand go as part of the deal, and Macromedia picked it up. Adobe also bought Framemaker.

    What’s interesting is that Adobe’s best products; PhotoShop, InDesign and Illustrator are all homegrown. Their history with acquisitions is so so. Maybe it will be different this time, but it doesn’t look so good for products like Fireworks.

  • hmm

    Just to clarify – Chizen is the CEO and he, yes, is from a sales background. But he’s just one guy. The President and COO (Narayen) is from a completely technical background; out of the SVPs in charge of development, one is a bithead (Koon) and the other is from a marketing/sales background (Lamkin). With the Macromedia acquisition, their CEO (Elop) will likely be going in to a salesy role, but they have a ton of technical people running the show who will more than likely be integrated into the “new” company, if the company has any sense at all. But I guess that’s the question..