I saw this today too!

I am very curious how this will affect / change Macromedia's product line-up.
Comments, and discussion on this would be great.

Bye bye Fireworks and Freehand?
I wonder what software elements will crossover between Adobe / Macr software.

This will be good for Macromedia & Adobe

I dunno - I think it will ultimately be a good thing - these two have been going at it for YEARS and for them to finally get together and put MICROSOFT in the crosshairs in stead of eachother I think is a good thing...we shall see...

Microsoft is not going to change, sure they're a company who needs to improve their coding practices, but all companies do. Just because computers are faster and have larger hard drives isn't an excuse for the extremely bloated software they keep putting out. The same is of Mac OSX, if not more so. The installation of Mac OS X (at least on my Powerbook) was over a gig where as WinXP was a trim 600+ MB by comparison.

But by teaming Adobe and Macromedia together, they are really positioning themselves well for the next battle of the browsers...if they do it right, they could OWN web based multimedia for the next 10 years.

Oh you mean like Microsoft owns the desktop environment on which 90% of browsers operate? Browser wars aren't what I'm worried about. I'm worried about the idea that companies buying each other in an effort to compete against Microsoft is the wrong one. If you want to switch users, put out good, tight programs that the average person can use. That's why Macromedia developed Contribute, it's like Front Page Express but with less suck. That's why Adobe came out with Photoshop Elements, not only is it cheaper, but easier to use than Photoshop with giving most of the people who buy it a way to do what they need. I love my Powerbook. For over a year it was called "The Precious". But until something major on the CONSUMER end first, the corporate end will not matter enough to see it reflected to the average user. Simply put, it's a nice sentiment, but there is no way Microsoft is going down anytime soon, not even ten years.

Couldn't have put it better myself

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2005/04/19/adobe_and_macromedia_bad_news_for_online_tools/

That's a pretty good article on the merger. [hat tip: http://www.macbytes.com]

Well, it's been said by Macromedia employees that the name Macromedia will vanish, and everything will become 'Adobe' Adobe Flash, Adobe Coldfusion, Adobe Flex... etc. Adobe did this for Flash... it makes sense for that, and really Adobe is goign to really claim the dev and design corder of the internet world for a good 10 at LEAST! Think of this... the only REAL competition Adobe Go Live had was Dreamweaver... they own that now. Adobe wanted to get into 'flash style' animation... whats a better way to do it then to buy whats already there and make it better?! Flash and Flex owned, run, and maintained by Adobe is a dream come true to designs like myself. I never used flash, but you can bet your butt i'm all about it now!

Exactly my point - they are going to own multimedia on the web for a good 10 years I'd say...Avalon or no Avalon

Only thing that'll kill em is if they get too big for their britches and the products suffer...lets hope not...

I personally can't wait for Adobe's next wave of products. I use both Adobe and Macromedia products regularly and I can't wait to see the two integrated.

True, the only competition Adobe's Go Live had was Dreamweaver. Too bad Dreamweaver was the industry standard and a **** of a lot more powerful. As far as I know Go Live couldn't connect to SQL databases, I could be wrong though.

Adobe's Illustrator is the Industry Standard for vector graphics* creation. Nothing anyone else has produced comes remotely close. Macromedia's Freehand was Illustrator's closest competitor and the advantage it had was compatibility with Flash. Adobe fixed that when they introduced (at least in version 10, possibly earlier) was the ability to save your vector graphics in .fla format. Bye bye Freehand's advantage. That being said, you are correct Darrell, the best reason for Adobe to purchase Macromedia was Flash for it's vector graphics animation. Man, is it powerful. I took a one semester course on Flash from Charley Parker and barely scratched the surface. It's kind of like taking a course in Photoshop. I know people who have been using it since versions 2 and 3 (yay introduction of layers) and they are still amazed at the things it can do.

However, and more likely, there are more reasons than we've outlined here as to why Adobe purchased Macromedia. Flash and Dreamweaver are good, surface reasons. Macromedia has been a more innovative company in terms of technology. Coldfusion can run on any server and will interface with anything. ASP (now ASP.Net) can't claim that. It runs on Windows only machines because it is a Microsoft product. Coldfusion handles it's data better yet still manages to suck hind teat to PHP, which, given the right dlls installed on a Windows box, can run on Windows, Linux and OS X Server. I still wouldn't mind being locked in a room with those developers and an aluminum bat, nay, a Louisville Slugger.

They will get too big for their britches and the product will suffer. Adobe is already starting to suffer that. They need to keep inventing little nifty things like the healing brush (boring) for Photoshop 7 to entice people to upgrade legitemately or otherwise. Photoshop CS's big innovation (and it was about time) was it's improved vector art support. CS2 might have something better, but who cares? Unless it's a radical new way the interface runs and is less memory intensive then to the dogs with it, I'll stick with Photoshop 7. I guess I'm just jaded and yes, I would like a little cheese with my whine. I prefer fresh mozzerella. It reminds me of Siena.