“Several online Web sites have posted information in the past couple of days stating that Adobe Systems will discontinue development and support for two of its products: GoLive and Freehand. Adobe says the reports are not correct and the products are not being discontinued,” Jim Dalrymple reports for Macworld. “‘Adobe plans to continue to support GoLive and Freehand and develop these products based on our customer’s needs,’ an Adobe representative told Macworld in a statement. “‘Clearly Dreamweaver and Illustrator are market leading when it comes to web design/development and vector graphics/illustration,’ said the Adobe statement. ‘Customers should expect Adobe to concentrate our development efforts around these two products with regards to future innovation and Creative Suite integration.'”
Full article here.
[Thanks to MacDailyNews Reader “Brooklyn NYC” for the heads up.]
MacDailyNews Take: Okay, so for how long will GoLive and Freehand development continue? Through lunchtime, next week, into the summer? This still sounds like a “withering on the vine” scenario to us. We expect Adobe to support any redundant apps they have due to their purchase of Macromedia for a reasonable amount of time, but it makes little sense to waste development efforts on them. Dropping GoLive for Dreamweaver and Freehand for Illustrator only makes sense.
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Related articles:
Adobe sentences GoLive to death – May 30, 2006
Buh-bye Freehand? Adobe offers Freehand to Illustrator migration guide – April 26, 2006
It’s easy. The new products will be called “Freehand Illustrator” and “GoLive Dreamweaver.” Everyone wins!
GoLive and Freehand will now go into the PageMaker development category. They will disapear for two or three years, then suddenly Adobe will come out with a x.5 version (with only slight improvements) for all the people who still use them to buy.
Adobe will then be able to show their stockholders that they can still make money off of legacy programs. They are still there to buy, but Adobe doesn’t have to spend money to market them.
Oh, if only Director were so lucky. Some of use still use that app daily for our livelihoods. Not enough, though. Sigh.
This may be the same scenario as with PageMaker. How long did PageMaker stay around even while InDesign was available? PageMaker didn’t die until InDesign CS2 came out. With InDesign CS there was the PageMaker plug-in on the resources cd which you had to install separately.
However, since Adobe isn’t rolling out the new bundles until spring 2007 things can change and reports will continue to go back and forth. There will probably be a soft transition between the products.
The comments made by Adobe could just be their way of calming down all of the Freehand and GoLive users. By the time the new bundles come out there should be considerable changes. If you go to the products section on Adobe’s site there is a rediculous amount of software – but all of it necessary? IMHO Adobe needs to clean house with their software. I don’t know of anyone – and I belong to the Acrobat Users Group of NYC – who uses or has even heard of Acrobat Messenger.
Without taking sides in the Freehand/Illustrator battle, this is what I do know:
I started out using Freehand back in the days when it was an Aldus product and I absolutely loved it – top application and easy to use but could be a little quirky. Back then, I was anti Illustrator after trying it a few times and thinking it could be hard to use and was somewhat limited.
Then Macromedia took over Freehand. My times of spending hours down at the bureau trying to sort out postscript faults became more and more frequent and frustrating. Then I started working for a company that only used Illustrator. At first, I loathed using it but gradually, I noticed that my overall frustrations were down as my files sailed through the print process. You could even paste clipped paths inside of clipped paths and amazingly, there were no outputting problems. So I grew to like and respect Illustrator even though I still missed Freehand.
I now work for a company that uses both apps. Macromedia has ruined Freehand though. Some of my files won’t even go through a laserwriter without problems – the frustrations are back. In an ideal world, I would have the ease and likability of Freehand with the back end professionalism of Illustrator in one application. Maybe Adobe will achieve this but I will never forgive Macromedia for ruining a once brilliant product.
Mac Zealot: Doesn’t the latest version of Flash do pretty much everything that Director did? I mean, you can use Flash to create platform independent, multimedia, interactive content — same as Director, right?
Distant Thunder,
Flash do what Director can do? Not a chance. We’ve already contacted Adobe about this because we develop huge enterprise presentation applications with Director. Flash can do some of the things that Director can, but I would peg that at about 60% , give or take. The problem is Adobe is trying to make Flash and PDF compete with Microsoft Office, and as a result they are letting Director fall by the wayside. Well, we hope not but definitely have been having some restless nights over this.
To Dirty Pierre Le Punk: You appear to be a person qualified to answer this question:
When I create a colored graphic in Illustrator, and save it as an eps file, the colors get muted (changed) when that eps is placed in InDesign and printed.
What happens to the PS code to allow this? Any suggestions?
If not Pierre — anyone else?
Bonkers.
That’s an easy one. You don’t actually see the .eps file when you place it in another app – you see a PICT or jpeg or tif preview of it (at lower resolution).
That’s why the colours are muted – and they will print that way – in proofing stages – if your proof printer is non-postscript.
The final printing stage – to a postscript output device, will render the file correctly and the colour will be as defined.
Adobe will alter fonts slightly with some eye candy effects in the GoLive and Freehand application menus, move some tools around and change a few key commands. Then, they’ll announce a point upgrade and charge a few hundred dollars for it. Proof that development continues.
mrmikey: Thanks for your clear expanation! That clears it up — I’m using a non-postscript inkjet at home!
Bonkers.
No problem.
Here’s a possible solution (or workaround). Export your file from Illustrator as a .tif at a good resolution (300 dpi or so). Place the .tif into InDesign.
It will work on both Postscript and will print better (better, not perfect) to non-postscript printers.
mrmikey: Thanks again!
“Adobe plans to continue to support GoLive and Freehand and develop these products based on our customer’s needs…”
I suppose that means that we’ll continue to see point upgrades for the next couple years and then they’ll quietly disappear after CS3 drops GoLive for Dreamweaver.
I’m not too terribly upset. I’ve already switched to Illustrator for 99% of my vector work, and, while I like GoLive better than Dreamweaver, GoLive is far from perfect. The main thing I disliked about DW was the interface and that’s one of the things Adobe is going to change, so I have high hopes for it.
I’m happy if FH runs on my next intel mac. If Illustrator passes FH in terms of modeling (speed, workflow and accuracy) within the next 3 years I’d be very surprised. I work with both anyway, and yes, in most cases ai is the better print app. But as already mentioned, Macromedia severely fucked FH up since 5.5. Version 5.5 was amazing, close to bugfree and shitfast. And there were lotsa very cool plugs that for unknown reasons have disappeared since.
Director does about 10x what Flash does, and Flash can be incorporated right into it. If all you need is Flash that’s fine. But some people need Lingo!
The good news is Adobe has NOT said anything either way about Director. So contact them and let your voice be heard.
Director is a great way to make Mac apps for certain purposes, including casual games and Shockwave 3D. Tell ’em we want a Universal version! Director in Rosetta is OK, not great.
Yeah, development will continue. Remember Adobe LiveMotion? They drew a big 5 beta testers for version 2 (my friend/colleague was one of them). They fired the whole LiveMotion 2 team, and only the beta testers knew about it at first. They assured users that they would “continue development.” LiveMotion 2 was eventually killed, and all of the LiveMotion files we had could not be opened in Flash (obviously) so we had to rebuild those projects in Flash once the updates to the projects came along. They will not continue development. You can count on it. The products will be killed by the time Adobe CS3 is released.
just call the new apps “Frustrator” and “Dreamliver.”
lol.
Apple should buy Freehand and GoLive from them, and then re-make them as Pro apps the Apple way.
GoLive could be renamed Web Pro to match iWeb.
Apple would finally have Creative products in all major markets.