Text Size

Adobe to phase out Freehand, GoLive

updated 09:00 am EDT, Wed May 31, 2006

Freehand, GoLive dropped

Adobe said that it will discontinue Macromedia Freehand illustration and and its own GoLive web design product, as the company simplifies its product line following the recent purchase and aquisition of Macromedia. Speaking at Adobe Live Conference in London, MacGeneration reports [report in French] that Adobe representatives told attendess that it will phase out the popular Macromedia FreeHand package in favor of its own Illustrator application---although another report says otherwise; the company, however, said it will continue to support the products for an unspecified period of time, but that it would focus its development on Adobe Illustrator 13, which is expected to ship next year as part Adobe Creative Suite 3--the much anticipated first native version of the professional suite for graphic artists and designers.[updated]

The report also notes that Adobe recently a published a guide to transfer the Freehand documents to Illustrator.

In addition, Robert Raiola, Adobe's Director of European Marketing, also said that the company would abandon development of the Golive web-design product in favor of Macromedia's popular Dreamweaver. The next release of Dreamweaver, expected to be release as part of Creative Suite 3 next year, will feature an updated interface to integrate with other applications in Adobe's Creative Suite.

Update: Another by German Mac site Macnews.de says that Freehand will remain a standalone product and that the company has scheduled a maintenance release of the product for later this year. Alexander Hopstein, Adobe's PR manager for central and Eastern Europe, said that product would remain available as a standalone solution.

 
Previous Comments

Ah c***...

05/31, 09:17am reply

I know it's a ways away, and obviously Dreamweaver is more popular, but being a GoLive user, well, I suppose I should've realized this day would come...

g4zilla

Fresh-Faced Recruit

Joined: Jun 2000

0

no surprise but...

05/31, 09:26am reply

Hopefully the freehand folks can talk some sense into the illustrator team..and do a nice upgrade cost...

jeph4e

Fresh-Faced Recruit

Joined: Dec 2005

0

Go and Stay

05/31, 09:32am reply

Go live was always convoluted, and not nearly as good as dreamweaver

Freehand was a very poor product and should go.

Fireworks will replace ImageReady (never one of Adobe's better offerings) and may be phased into photoshop (but I like the separation).

I actually sort of liked the concept of Flash Paper, BUT I am sure that will die.

Just my too sense (sic).

dynsight

Fresh-Faced Recruit

Joined: May 2005

0

Flash Paper

05/31, 09:35am reply

Flash and PDF will merge into a single crossplatform, multimedia format.

siMac

Mac Elite

Joined: Aug 2004

0

say it's not so...

05/31, 09:40am reply

I prefer Golive over Dreamweaver 10 to 1, never a fan of Macromedia's programs interface. I also learned on Golive and will miss a lot of the drag and drop (very Mac) way of getting things done. I wish they could meld the two instead of just dropping one for sake of the other. This might be the first time since GoLive 3 that I do not upgrade.

kerryb

Fresh-Faced Recruit

Joined: Aug 2001

0

Goweaver

05/31, 09:47am reply

kerryb: expect there to be a "melding" of the two programs. just maybe not as quickly or complete as you may want. but make no mistake; while Adobe has acknowleged Dreamweaver as the superior of the two, some of the features that made GoLive pleasant to use will get rolled in.

stainboy

Fresh-Faced Recruit

Joined: Sep 2005

0

No more FreeHand?

05/31, 10:00am reply

f***.

neely

Junior Member

Joined: Mar 2001

0

stinks

05/31, 10:01am reply

That's too bad. FreeHand used to be a much better product than Illustrator but Macromedia took it in the wrong direction. I still prefer the FH way of doing things over the Illustrator way. I guess it's the Adobe way or the highway.

Are there any Aldus products left now?

f1rehead

Fresh-Faced Recruit

Joined: Nov 2006

0

Drat...

05/31, 10:13am reply

I too prefer GoLive to Dreamweaver. I tried to use Dreamweaver on several occasions and always returned to GoLive's more intuitive interface. Hopefully the next Dreamweaver will be less source code and more WYSIWYG - I hate working with code.

Aeolius

Fresh-Faced Recruit

Joined: Feb 2006

0

Great...

05/31, 10:14am reply

So they buy GoLive, s**** it up, and then abandon it.

Before Adobe acquired GoLive CyberStudio, it was an outstanding product, and the first release under Adobe was still decent... after that it's been a downhill run.

Maybe Andrea Poliza et al. will be afforded the opportunity to resurrect GoLive as the excellent application it once was... but this seems unlikely.

Guess I need to start adapting to Dreamweaver ASAP.

lockhartt

Fresh-Faced Recruit

Joined: Apr 2000

0

Popular News