Misc

What a bombshell!

Somehow I managed to be suprised, to the point where I couldn’t explain why I felt sick, and my heart was racing.

Adobe buying Macromedia? But yet, we live in an industry where the shelf life of certain electronics has a maximum of ten years, and that is always shortening. Change is inevitable, I just never would have guess this. Not in a million years. But when I read the stats, I guess it made more sense.

Last year, I read that Macromedia made somewhere in the neighborhood of $370 million. Pretty darn good. But low. Adobe, who owns the print industry, I figured would be a little higher. But to the tune of $1.7 billion in revenue? Wow! That is quite a difference between two companies that I figured were on a level playing field.

When the merger was approved by both boards late Monday, they released statements that involve vague plans on what will be done when the moguls combine, like increasing support for development on a wireless environment and how stockholders came out of the deal. If you want, go and read Macromedia’s release or Adobe’s release. Either way, I was sick to go to Macromedia’s site and see the Flash banner there, which I posted above, about the two “joining” forces.

But obviously my biggest concern, is what will happen with the software. Nothing. At least not for awhile. The merger should wrap up in the fall, like the press release claims.

Adobe does print. But they design their layout programs for web, like print is just like web. And it isn’t. It is all about drag and drop for Adobe, making this poorly coded websites, and it makes me nervous. Let’s run down each program.

Adobe Illustrator vs. Macromedia Freehand

I use Freehand heavily because you can trace something really quick, copy, and drop it into Fireworks, no problem. You can’t do that with Illustrator to Fireworks. But, I will say hands down, that Illustrator is a better program because it is broader and facilitates print better. I have had my problems trying to create complex documents in Freehand for print publications.

Verdict : Adobe WILL drop Freehand. It may incorporate some of it’s automated vector creation tools into Illustrator for the web, but I wouldn’t hold my breath. Will I lament this change? Only briefly.

Adobe Photoshop vs. Macromedia Fireworks

This is not really a logical matchup. Photoshop is this amazing program that you can never learn enough about, it bounds are limitless. Fireworks, is geared specifically to making webpages, and it is an awesome program. Editable raster graphics, easy export options, everything you need to pump out something fast. Photoshop feels just like the situation it was in, an awesome program that had to go back and work in Web tools that just aren’t as easy, and don’t make as much sense.

You may be able to create more detailed masterpieces in Photoshop, so in that case, you should, and then bring them into Fireworks and incorporate them into your design. But these are seperate programs with only a handful of overlapping ideas. Both do their jobs in a great way, and are geared at seperate things.

Verdict : Adobe WILL do away with Fireworks. This is what I fear. They shoudn’t. They should just make it better for web prep, and take all the web crap out of Photoshop, or stop adding more to it. This will be a long change though. I fear they would piss more consumers off by completely ditching this product sooner than later than they would with Freehand. I just hope that if they incorporate it’s features into Photoshop, they make it just like Fireworks.

Adobe GoLive vs. Macromedia Dreamweaver

Dreamweaver has a stranglehold on the market, and this will be an interesting battle to say the least. How long do they develop for both? Do they make their decision swift and just piss everyone off now, or piss them off later?

I have seen GoLive’s capabilities in demostration on the CS Tour. I have even thought about switching (which may now, not be a choice) because of some of the neat features, like zooming in on a layout in development, and making a PDF of the layout in development. Having said that, they claim great support for CSS layout, but that is only if you use “layers” not write div tags from scratch. There is no GUI in GoLive to do that, nor Dreamweaver, but at least Dreamweaver claims display support, not a full CSS building machine. Golive also adds all this extra commented crap for those developers who embrace their drag and drop ideals.

From InDesign to Illustrator, you can drag your layouts into GoLive, and it will insert exterraneous commented code so that the two programs can communicate. Granted you can take that out, everytime you put it in, but then you can’t update the source file and have it make the changes automatically. So a double edged sword that has me asking, “What is the damn point.” Stop making a tool for hack print designers just to offer a crappy service and flood the internet with bloated page design.

Verdict : I just don’t know with this one. I hope they drop GoLive and add all of their good standards compliant type ideas to Dreamweaver. You have to hope that will happen, as the brains behind Macromedia are coming over to Adobe. But the idea of Adobe keeping Dreamweaver just doesn’t seem likely either, so this will be the matchup to watch.

However, not everything is bad and horrible.

Now, all doom and gloom aside, I am pretty pumped to see what they will be able to do with the new Adobe Flash (God that hurts to say that) integrated with the awesome capabilities, and platform independence of PDF’s. I have seen how you can incorporate Flash in PDF’s and I think it is amazing.

Plus, now that I have had time to set, I am a little excited to see what they can do for wireless development, as I see that as a highly technical market, and Adobe does have a way of making everything a little more graphical and user friendly when it comes to development.

Either way, a landmark in my career. I will probably always look back on this entry and laugh, and talk about this as one of my design “war” stories. But only time will tell what they future holds, and I will be right here, to comment on it when it does.

A .atm file stands for “Adobe Font Metrics”. Here is a definition that I found on this site called faq.org. Basically an .atm file is for storing readable data about the font metrics that a regular person can understand. Kind of like a structural guideline for how the makeup of the font should appear.

Here is what that link says…

AFM is Adobe’s ASCII-based file format used for storing font metric data as human-readable data. AFM is the standard Adobe font file format. This format is also known as the Adobe Multiple Font Metrics (AMFM) and Adobe Composite Font Metrics (ACFM) file formats.

In fact, AFM, AMFM, and ACFM are actually three variations of the same format. AFM files contain base or composite font information. One AFM file is used per master design of a font. AMFM files store control and global font information for a group of AFM files.

And ACFM files contain the global metrics of the composite font program. The specification for the AFM format is: Adobe Font Metrics File Format Specification (Version 4.0), Adobe Developer Support, 14 February 1992, P/N LPS5004. This document available via FTP as a Tech Note in PostScript format, or as hardcopy when obtained directly from Adobe (see the PostScript section for information on how to contact Adobe Systems, Inc.).

I posed the question of, “How do I make PDF’s using Microsoft Word” today to my fellow developer. He said, go to PDF 995 and you can download a plugin for Word that allows you to do just that.

When you get to the site click on downloads. Make sure that you download both the PDF995 Printer Drive and the Free Converter Version 1.0.

Once they are finished downloading, double click the installers from wherever you chose to save the file. These should pretty much auto configure.

Then, when in Microsoft Word, when you want to save a file as a PDF, just go up to File > Print and select PDF995 as the option to print. This will open a dialog box that will ask you where you want to save your file, and presto, you have a Word converted PDF.

.xlr,I found out today, is the extension for a Microsoft Works file.

Read about a program by chance today online called Creative House, which was bought by Microsoft in September of 2003 and is now called Expression 3.Hailed in one article as the vector program to finally displace Flash and expose it’s weak vector creation toolset, I was surprised after a 57 MB download that the program was only a vector program and not animation or timeline based at all.

With a very brief jaunt through the program, it just seemed like a more advanced controllable vector program for the illustrator in you. For those you who want to create textures and line weights, and have it be vector, then try it out. The program is very intuitive and flexible for creation of vector in every sense and knowing Microsoft’s reputation for taking a good product, making it the best, and displacing everyone else, if I was Macromedia Freehand, I would be worried. It could even give Illustrator a run for its money.