FlashICT.net

I admit it now - I was wrong about Adobe. I was worried that they would completely destroy everything that was great about Macromedia - that they would remove, limit and discourage the Macromedia community, that they would throw popular products out, that they would produce some horrible combined version of Flash and Acrobat.

I was completely wrong - and I hope that I continue to be. Adobe have made some great progress recently and I don’t think we would be wrong to say that it is largely because of Macromedia! Nevertheless, Adobe’s willingness to take Macromedia ideas on board is clear to see. In some ways, one might even speculate that Macromedia seem to have taken Adobe over, rather than the other way round.

The Adobe.com website is basically the old version of the Macromedia site. It isn’t quite as good, but very nearly is. It works, and it works well. All the tutorials, guidance and support seems to have been ported across to the ‘new’ Adobe site so nice one Adobe. The new Flash Player 9 has been released, but without any huge additional payload forcing users to download Adobe Acrobat or suchlike. Nevertheless, Adobe haven’t changed the way it is released or made up some ridiculous marketing ploy to claim the enormous advances that have been made since Adobe took over. Instead, Adobe have continued in exactly the same way as Macromedia did.

Yet the most singificant positive point is Adobe’s continuation with the Macromedia, or rather Adobe labs. This is fantastic. Recently Adobe have released an alpha version of Flash Professional 9. You have to have a valid Flash Professional 8 licence but this is a great way of showing support to previous Macromedia customers, allowing said customers to begin experimenting with Actionscript 3 but, most importantly, it means that Adobe are continuing to have faith with the ‘Labs concept’. This is the best way of beta testing software and it means, or at least openly suggests, that Adobe are listening to the most important people - the users.

So - well done Adobe - keep it up!