“During the Adobe Live event, Robert Raiola of Adobe Systems France said that Adobe will halt the development of Freehand and GoLive, according to MacGeneration… Adobe will concentrate all its efforts on Illustrator 13 and Dreamweaver (which will have a new interface similar to other adobe products). The canning of Freehand and GoLive is no big surprise. Since Adobe purchased Macromedia, the company had two illustration packages (Freehand and Illustrator) and two web design apps (GoLive and Dreamweaver) in its repertoire. As these products were previously competitors, it seemed likely only one in each category would survive,” Dennis Sellers reports for Macsimum News.
Full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: Adobe has done a good job by keeping the best apps overall in each category. We would have picked Illustrator and Dreamweaver over Freehand and GoLive respectively, too. Hopefully, Adobe will find ways to take the good ideas in Freehand and GoLive and integrate them into Illustrator and Dreamweaver.
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Related MacDailyNews article:
Buh-bye Freehand? Adobe offers Freehand to Illustrator migration guide – April 26, 2006
Good one MDN:
“good ideas in GoLive”…ROTFL
Sigh, and most of the print shops I go to will continue to hold on to their preference for Freehand files.
Do we get a refund for purchasing Creative Suite that contains a no longer supported package?
Magic Word issue as in this is a real issue unless they will replace it with Dreamweaver for free.
Sad, really really sad if this becomes true.
I like both Freehand and GoLive, think they’re both better than Illustrator and Dreamweaver which are – for me, personally – harder to handle.
Hope this is not the last word spoken in that case.
I’m with Bildad…Dreamweaver better get bundled into CS3, or they’re going to have a (somewhat) angry mob on their hands.
I’ve been using GoLive for years … and, before it, Adobe PageMill.
I wonder if Adobe will allow an upgrade path for GoLive Users to transfer to Dreamweaver when the time comes?
MDN Magic Word: “really” … as in it’s really annoying to have to learn new software.
Dreamweaver is hard. It has a steep learning curve.
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Find new printshops. Incorporate an EPS into a Quark or InDesign file. A “preference” for FreeHand files should not mean they can’t do Illustrator.
I figured this would happen. I’ve gotten pretty much used to Illustrator (although I still pull FH10 out of the closet now and again), but I’ve never liked Dreamweaver much. Here’s hoping that CS3 will feature Frustrator and DreamLiver – new apps with the best of both worlds.
No surprises there. And good riddance, too.
Bildad: “Do we get a refund for purchasing Creative Suite that contains a no longer supported package?” Never buy an application because you think it will be around forever. For most single-user apps, if it doesn’t live up to its value over a year or two, it’s not worth it.
I guess most preferences are formed by whichever package you learned first — I learned Freehand first and have since then preferred every incarnation of it to that of Illustrator.
“I’m with Bildad…Dreamweaver better get bundled into CS3, or they’re going to have a (somewhat) angry mob on their hands.”
I’m sure they just replace GoLive with Dreamweaver in CS3. I can’t imagine they’d do anything different.
Why should they give you anything just because they’ve moved on and replaced some software. Do you think Microsoft are going to refund for every copy of XP when Vista comes out? In fact when has a software company compensated customers because software is no longer developed? What about programs that only ever have one version? Should I get my money for Freehand back?
NOOOO! FreeHand is so much better than crappy old Illustrator.
they picked the best choices by far.
personally i found freehand and golive awkard and non intuitive to use.
but thats just me.
Dreamweaver is best in class and I would have been sad to se it go. I hope they improve performance and usability. It sits here burning 8-10% of one of my CPUs when it is suppossedly idle. That’s more than iTunes does when converting AACs. What’s it DOING?
Of course it’s using Rosetta, but Office:Mac doesn’t do that when hidden.
It would be nice if these apps would have performance enhancements we happy users can download after the initial version comes out. They could have a quick-build version to get the feature set out the door, then a constant stream of improvements as routines are rewritten for performance and resource utilization.
Why not?
Illustrator beat out Freehand for most users just as Dreamweaver beat out Go Live but there’s still one app left to figure out. Are they going to get rid of Fireworks? You can do all that Fireworks does in Illustrator or ImageReady.
cool i always prefer Ilusstrator to Freehand anyway, for the web apps, now Adobe makes my choicemuch easier, hmm, i wonder what name for the newly combined app : DreamLive, GoWeaver… 🙂
It’s still a bit sad to think that GoLive will now GoDead. I began my web development with GoLive when it was Cyberstudio, but moved to Dreamweaver when version 2 came out, as it was much less prone to crashing or rewriting my code!
Very recently I’ve been dabbling with GoLive again, just because there are things about it that are quite nice, and it doesn’t seem as slow as Dreamweaver, but I always bounce right back because of some really annoying things about it.
If they can take some of the great features and make an über-dreamweaver, then in the end we all win, right?
Good riddance GoLive
I just wonder what the upgrade policy will be for those who own the macromedia studio suite.
A large Valesine will be involved I’m certain.
>Illustrator beat out Freehand for most users just as Dreamweaver beat out Go Live but there’s still one app left to figure out. Are they going to get rid of Fireworks? You can do all that Fireworks does in Illustrator or ImageReady.
But working with slices just drives me absolutely mad! Fireworks is so easy to set up frames, rollovers, slices, etc. One of our designers prefers to build site templates in Illustrator. The trouble is, the nice high-res EPS screen-render of the artwork he sees gets completely mangled when it’s converted to bitmaps. That’s one thing about Fireworks, you get vector tools but you constantly see in ‘bitmap mode’
“Do you think Microsoft are going to refund for every copy of XP when Vista comes out?”
Different story dude. You have a company that has bought out another and the customers that chose Macomedia had better be treated like they would had they gone with Adobe, meaning, getting some sort of a break on an upgrade.
Your Microsoft analogy doesn’t compare in this case. It’s not a simple upgrade from one version to the next
I learned FreeHand first. Version 3 back in 1990. Today, while I own FreeHand MX, I barely use it. Back in the 1990s I was doing a lot of mapping and FreeHand’s stylesheets were a life-saver. I will occasionally pull-out FreeHand for big jobs like that.
But Illustrator handles text better. Illustrator is more stable. Illustrator’s palettes make much more sense. Overall FreeHand’s interface has become much more clunky with each version after 5.5, whereas Illustrator’s polish is improving by leaps and bounds.
FreeHand’s bezier handling is far superior. Hell Photoshop 7’s bezier handling is superior to Illustrator (too bad in CS 2 they took Photoshop BACKWARDS). Being able to set multiple points to curve points automatically in FreeHand is a massive time-saver. I love FreeHand’s “Name All Colors” Xtra (since co-opted by InDesign). FreeHand’s totally customizable keyboard shortcut’s rock.
FreeHand’s 32 ft pasteboard is wonderful, but I’m barely limited by Illustrator’s 22 ft pasteboard.
Contrary to popular opinion, Illustrator does handle multi-page documents, however it is really clunky to do so. Illustrator need to improve a little, but for speeds sake I prefer not to copy the FreeHand interface.
If Adobe could put the FreeHand print dialog in Illustrator that would be the biggest winner of all.
Has no one has considered a possibility the often occurs when a company no longer wants to support or develop a product… They sell it?
What’s to say that Adobe won’t put Freehand and GoLive up for sale?
Ted: “What’s to say that Adobe won’t put Freehand and GoLive up for sale?”
They dont want the competition.
“Frustrator and DreamLiver”
LOL!!!!!!!
“I guess most preferences are formed by whichever package you learned first.”
Or not. I started out with Dreamweaver for my first couple of years of Web design. That’s the graphical design program with which I learned HTML. However, I left it a few years ago. The Mac version was just too slow and too bloated. They boasted features that were worthless to me.
For me, GoLive was a better fit. It was much faster and they had at least some (and later much) native support for Lasso.
Fortunately I rarely venture near graphical Web development software anymore, but I guess I’ll give the revamped Dreamweaver a look when it comes out. If they can get the speed, Adobe interface, and native Lasso support of GoLive into Dreamweaver, it may turn out okay.
I found GoLive to be much easier to use than Dreamweaver. Lets hope the just give dreamweaver the GoLive interface.
Well, a link to this German website http://www.macnews.de/news/76355 shows some other news. They say the news about Freehand are in fact not true. Apparently they are still continuing support for it as a stand alone application, similarly as Macromedia did the last few years, where Freehand also was not part of the Suite anymore.
I guess we’ll have to wait for something official though.
*Taps*
Great I just bought GoLive.
Ugh. DreamWeaver. It’s got the worst interface in the world. Typical Macromedia.
I hope Adobe is successful in replacing it – COMPLETELY. It isn’t intuitive at all. And DreamWeaver’s WYSIWYG layout area is terrible compared to GoLive’s.
Oh well, it was pretty obvious anyway that Dreamweaver would replace GoLive. Adobes perpetual non support of GoLive was just pathetic. I only hope they support Dreamweaver better. Cause that’s’ what I’ll be using – Again.
What about all the great support that GoLive had for native Illustrator and Photoshop files? That’s just awesome. Hope they add that right away.
I just wish that some dedicated company could pick up where Freehand left. It’s still far ahead of todays illustrator as of modeling features. I’m not saying that illustrator completely sucks, it’s just not as intelligent built. Most of the designers I deal with use both apps – since both have their strengths and weaknesses – but I know most of these people agree on Freehand’s modeling superiority. Illustrator still can’t lock single bezier points – nor is it possible to align single bezier points.
I don’t really care which program was better. Personally I work in Canvas, just because that’s what I learned first. Instable as hell, though ..
The only thing that matters is choice. So seeing Freehand go is sad.
I’m just waiting for the OSX port of Xara Xtreme. See what that has to offer.
MDN Word: ‘Choice’, how convenient.
I’ve never used Go Live but I’ve worked on a few sites that were developed with it, it puked out some ugly code. That was a year or so ago, maybe it got better, but I say thank goodness it’s getting ready to flatline. Though not perfect, dreamweaver code is much easier to work with, lets hope Adobe doesn’t muck that up.
Apparently, MDN doesn’t really understand the differences between Illustrator and Freehand, judging by its take.
Illustrator’s one advantage is integration with Photoshop. It’s limited to ONE PAGE, even in the 21st century.
Freehand has had multiple page support for ages. It has search and replace font and graphic styles.
Illustrator’s code base would need major reworking to bring forth all of Freehand’s capabilities. This is a BIG LOSS, just due to Adobe politics. They won’t get all of Freehand into Illustrator for 3 versions, if ever, unless they do a MAJOR rewrite.
Over the years I am becoming more and more frustrated with Adobe and its various products, and marketing tactics. I would really love to see more/any competition in these areas. Maybe Open Source will eventually begin to provide real alternatives.
Adobe is a software behemoth and real competition would do nothing but good for it and us.
Whatever it takes to keep you upgrading Creative Suite.
Be ready: The “software features” aquired from Macromedia will be slowly “included” in 6 successive versions of CS over the next decade, where they’ll ask 60% of the original investment price for each upgrade, all at the expense of actually innovating. Word to the wise: Don’t let anyone in your team upgrade to a CS version unless you’re willing to drop enough cash for all users to upgrade. If the move between CS1 and CS2 was any measure of “the new” Adobe’s intentions, then keep your people on whatever version they’re all on, and hold out as long as you can (until enough features that are important to you have been added and sucessfully tested to ensure a smooth transition).
MW:However can we keep our shareholders happy?
Illustrator SUCKS.
(have been working all week end with the p.o.s. and just had to get it out)
Dreamweaver sucks, I have over the years tried over and over to look at it, I coudnt get myself into it more than 15 minutes and gave up.
Sad news when big companies buy up software and then F*CK it up relly good.
Thanks Af*%ckindobe
Expected. And for good reason. I prefer the interface of GoLive to Dreamweaver – it just seemed that all of Macromedia’s interfaces were very not very “professional-looking” – for lack of a better word. Illustrator is the king of the illustration apps – not apologies to all of you Freehanders – it’s just the truth.
I hope Adobe will do the same with Photoshop vs. Fireworks. I’d love to see some of FW integrated into PS especially the pop-up menu creator. Fireworks is another academic program.
Maybe the Omni group can pickup freehand and continue development yea! right. Other than Indesign and the pdf format Adobe is starting to piss me off.
What does some Frod flack know about what Adobe in California is deciding to do?
There’s no way he knows what he’s talking about.
GoLive is for designers. Dreamweaver is for codeheads. Let them use BBEdit!
Er, Frog.
I have worked in Illustrator and FreeHand. Illustrator now is at least a generation ahead of Freehand in user interface and overall “feel”.
And being a GoLive user since version 1 I have tried to learn Dreamweaver recently. One word: Dreamweaver sucks! Its CSS implementation sucks, it is slow like molasses, its interface sucks big time and its file management is ridiculous compared to GoLives Finder-like solution.
What’s the point of buying a great software like GoLive only to kill it some years later? I could understand buying crappy software like freehand to reap some code out of it before killing it…
Good one MDN:
“good ideas in GoLive”…ROTFL–
There were a lot of things to like about GoLive. I began with CyberStudio and Dreamweaver 2 demos after giving up on PageMill and it took all of 5 seconds to buy Cyberstudio (By GoLive). Mainly because of interface. Dreamweaver is code first layout and design second, the exact opposite of GoLive. I gave up GoLive when Adobe axed the dynamic content module and have been using Dreamweaver since.
Here are ‘good ideas’ I’d like to see make it to Dreamweaver:
Site management – just blows DW away
Interface – it’s subjective but I hate DW’s office looking palettes even though Adobe sued them for their tabbed interface
I liked the Live Source elements in GoLive – MM tried this with DW and I think they fell short.
And using the open and save dialog boxes – GL gave you a button to take you to the root of the current site. I think this is very handy, there are many times I had to navigate file structures because DW couldn’t remember what site I was working in. Although SpotLight has alleviated this a bit.
Better Mac development – How long did it take MM to get tabbed windows to Mac. MM really did not develop for Mac as much as window$.
I think there is quite a bit DW could learn from GoLive. I really look forward to seeing how it turns out.
Freehand. it’s a shame. I learned Illustrator first but when to Freehand when v 10 came out. Illustrator 10 probably made this happen. It just did not select shapes I wanted selected or point’s or paths. I still see a bit of that in CS2. The way Freehand uses the white and black arrows is fantastic. When using the white (direct select?) tool, why does Illustrator force you to click a shape on it’s path, remember where the points are, deselect then click the points. Freehand did a MUCH better job at handling shapes and points.
Also I’d like ImageReady to DIE DIE DIE. I never liked that app and I think Fireworks is a great. It is sooo much better at compressing jpgs. Since getting StudioMX it even took time away from Photoshop.
Lots of interesting remarks.
There seems to be an assumption that elements from GoLive will find their way into Dreamweaver. For some reason I’m not holding my breath.
I guess it’s a good thing that GoLive WILL keep functioning on my G4 Powerbook for years yet … I can wait until an acceptable alternative come out … be it Dreamweaver or some other app.