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Macromedia :: Macromedia_Flash :: Macromedia_Director :: Macromedia_Authorware :: Macromedia_Dreamweaver
 

Macromedia was an American graphics and web development software house. Their signature products include the Macromedia Studio, currently in version eight. Macromedia was formed by the 1992 merger of Authorware, Inc. (makers of Authorware) and MacroMind-Paracomp (makers of Macromind Director). Its headquarters were in San Francisco, California. Macromedia is now a part of their former rival, Adobe Systems.

Director, an interactive multimedia authoring tool widely used to make CD-ROMs and information kiosks, was Macromedia's flagship product until the mid-1990s. As the CD-ROM market began to decline and the World Wide Web gained in popularity, Macromedia created Shockwave, a Director viewer plugin for Web browsers, but decided it also needed to expand its market by branching out into web-native media tools.

Acquisitions

First, Macromedia acquired FutureWave Software, makers of FutureSplash Animator, an animation tool originally designed for pen-based computing devices. Because of the small size of the FutureSplash viewer application, it was particularly suited for download over the Web, where at the time most users had low-bandwidth connections. Macromedia renamed Splash to Macromedia Flash, and following the lead of Netscape, distributed the Flash Player as a free browser plugin in order to quickly gain market share. The strategy was a success; as of 2005, more computers worldwide had the Flash Player installed than any other Web media format, including Java, QuickTime, RealNetworks and Windows Media Player. As Flash has matured, Macromedia's focus has shifted from marketing it as a graphics and media tool to promoting it as a Web application platform, adding scripting and data access capabilities to the player while attempting to retain its small footprint.

Also in 1996, Macromedia acquired iBand Software, makers of the fledgling Backstage HTML authoring tool and application server. Macromedia developed a new HTML authoring tool, Macromedia Dreamweaver, around portions of the Backstage codebase, and released the first version in 1997. At the time, most professional web authors preferred to code HTML by hand using text editors, because they wanted full control over the source. Dreamweaver addressed this with its "Roundtrip HTML" feature, which attempted to preserve the fidelity of hand-edited source code during visual edits, allowing users to work back and forth between visual and code editing. Over the next few years Dreamweaver became widely adopted among professional web authors, though many still preferred to hand-code, and Microsoft FrontPage remained a strong competitor among amateur and business users.

Macromedia continued on the M&A trail, and in December 1999 it acquired traffic analysis software company Andromedia. Web development company Allaire was acquired in 2001, and Macromedia added several popular server and Web development products to its portfolio including ColdFusion, a web application server based on the CFML language; JRun, a J2EE application server; and HomeSite, an HTML code editor that was eventually bundled with Dreamweaver.

In 2003, Macromedia acquired Web conferencing company Presedia and continued to develop and enhance their Flash-based online collaboration and presentation product offering under the brand Breeze. Later that year, Macromedia also acquired help authoring software company eHelp Corporation, whose products included RoboHelp & RoboDemo (Now Captivate). Many of the developers of RoboHelp went on to form MadCap Software which is a competitor in the help-authoring space.

On April 18, 2005, Adobe Systems announced an agreement to acquire Macromedia in a stock swap valued at about $3.4 billion on the last trading day before the announcement. The acquisition was consummated on December 3, 2005, when Macromedia was finally called Adobe Systems *.

Products

For the future of Macromedia please look to Adobe Systems for more information about the new structures of Adobe/Macromedia.

See also

External links

Defunct software companies | Defunct computer companies of the United States | 1992 establishments

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This article is licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License. It uses material from the "Macromedia".

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