Hopefully this isn’t a sign of things to come. The wonderful Macromedia site is now the site formally known as Macromedia. The carefully crafted menu bar is a rather ugly grey, the background has turned white and the Adobe logo is now clearly displayed at the top of the site, accompanied by an ugly badly aliased Macromedia graphic:
It just all looks rather clunky and thrown together :(. You can read more about the actual design changes here. I guess it all makes sense as Adobe has to demonstrate how all the Macromedia content is now part of Adobe. I also suppose the fact that the main business has related to the company takeovers rather than any huge investment in stylistic changes. However, it is beyond doubt that the Macromedia website in recent years has been an excellent example of brilliantly crafted and user orientated web design. It will be an immense shame if the Macromedia design disappears and is replaced by a bland Adobe design.
Having said that, the new look of the Adobe website has also been rather messed up – looking even worse than the Macromedia one.
Both sites have the same Flash-based presentation but at least it fits into the design of the Macromedia site. On the Adobe site it doesn’t even seem to fit properly. Both sites are looking very cobbled together. Surely we are viewing merely stop gap websites before something new and incredible appears.
What I hope will happen is that the creative skills behind the Macromedia brand will be given new roles within Adobe, and will thus produce a dynamic new solution improving on both Macromedia and Adobe’s past efforts. Thus an amazing new Adobe website will be produced that takes the best of both companies and is something setting new standards.
I really hope that Adobe don’t start to asset strip, grabbing Flash and Dreamweaver, simply plugging them into the existing Adobe portfolio of products and then integrating them into a non-descript website.
I certainly have nothing against Adobe, and if they can develop a Flash-based Adobe Acrobat that has right-click functionality – i.e. the best of Acrobat and FlashPaper – it will be an amazing plugin. However, at this current stage it is rather disconcerting. Surely Adobe haven’t purchased Macromedia with any plans to mess things up? Surely anyone with the sense to purchase Macromedia will continue to encourage the Macromedia spirit to develop? All we can do is wait and see.
Or you could read what the CEO of Adobe has to say ;). Interesting, he talks about ‘combining companies’ rather than taking over.
4 responses so far ↓
1 Andrew Field // Dec 7, 2005 at 3:29 am
Obviously there are many, many posts all over the internet about this issue. However, the following ones are those which I’ve personally found the most sensible and appropriate:
Dave Shea: Anything that isn’t Flash or Dreamweaver to go?
http://www.mezzoblue.com/archives/2005/12/05/macromedia_n/
FlashGuru.co.uk’s concerns - especially over a massive Acrobat / Flash plugin:
http://www.flashguru.co.uk/adobe-macromedia-2/
Further concerns from Timothy M. Gray:
http://www.timothymartingray.com/2005/12/05/adobe-wins-you-lose/
and there are a whole load of alternative viewpoints at http://digg.com/software/Macromedia.com_updated_ - pretty much diametrically opposed to what I’ve said above, stating how ‘lovely’ the new Macromedia site is.
All we can really do is wait and see what happens once the Adobe dust has settled. I’m more hopeful than not that they’ll take the best of Macromedia - which is pretty much everything isn’t it?
2 Andrew Field // Dec 8, 2005 at 11:38 am
Additional similar views are also now appearing.
Community MX’s newsletter summed it up nicely:
“It’s official and it looks odd”
Adobe’s logo is currently resting awkwardly at the top of Macromedia’s website. Adobe and Macromedia’s websites are sharing the same banner that dramatically explains how “Adobe and Macromedia are One”, before transforming quickly into the Adobe logo. The acquisition is final, and Adobe is wasting no time in connecting their brand to the “brand formerly known as Macromedia.” While a lot of good could come out of the acquisition, many folks are only cautiously optimistic. It’s definitely the end of an era, but at Community MX we’re looking forward to a lot of exciting opportunities for us and our subscribers. Stephanie Sullivan has more to say on this topic on our blog.
http://www.communitymx.com/blog/index.cfm?newsid=635
3 Carl // Dec 8, 2005 at 8:23 pm
Such a shame
I really used to like the Macromedia website too.
I do like use of whitespace, but the Macromedia site worked really well. I am not really a fan of Adobe products - I have the reader and Photoshop 7 which I do not like at all.
Adobe also announced there new bundle Macromedia/Adobe products earlier this week:
http://www.adobe.co.uk/products/bundles/main.html
4 Toby C ope // Dec 17, 2005 at 10:46 pm
It is a real shame about the Macromedia website. I was shocked when I went onto Macromedia.com the other day.
Adobe have pulled apart an incredibly accessible and stylish website, stuck their logo (…in the wrong place on the page!) and then sellotaped it all back together!
Pathetic, even a 2-year old could do better!