Macromedia
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| Macromedia Inc. | |
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| Type | Defunct (Part of Adobe Systems, Inc) |
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| Founded | San Francisco, USA (1992) |
| Headquarters | San Francisco, California, USA (incorporated in Delaware) List of Macromedia locations |
| Key people | N/A |
| Industry | Computer software |
| Products | Macromedia Flash Macromedia Fireworks Macromedia Dreamweaver several others |
| Revenue | $436.2 million USD ( $66.4M FY 2005) |
| Employees | 1,445 (2004) |
| Website | www.macromedia.com |
Macromedia was an American graphics and web development software house headquartered in San Francisco, California producing such products as Macromedia Flash. The line of Macromedia products is now controlled by its former rival, Adobe Systems, which acquired Macromedia on December 3, 2005.
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[edit] History
Macromedia was formed by the 1992 merger of Authorware Inc. (makers of Authorware) and MacroMind-Paracomp (makers of Macromind Director).
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.
[edit] Acquisitions
To jumpstart its web strategy, the company made two acquisitions in 1996. 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. 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[citation needed]. As Flash matured, Macromedia's focus 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.
[edit] Purchase
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, and the companies' operations, networks, and customer care organizations were integrated shortly thereafter. [1].
[edit] Products
- Macromedia Studio - A complete toolset (Dreamweaver, Flash Professional, Fireworks, Contribute and FlashPaper)
- Macromedia Dreamweaver - An HTML editor, with both visual and code support
- Macromedia Fireworks - A graphics editor
- Macromedia Contribute - A simple visual HTML editor for end user website maintenance
- Macromedia FlashPaper - A tool that turns documents to FlashPaper or PDF
- Macromedia Flash - An animation tool for rich web content
- Macromedia Breeze - A web conferencing tool
- Macromedia Flex - A web application builder
- Macromedia ColdFusion MX - Coldfusion is a scripting language and an Application Server Software. Similar to ASP and PHP
- Macromedia Director - A multimedia authoring program
- Macromedia Authorware - A visual authoring tool for creating e-learning applications
- Macromedia FreeHand - A vector graphics editor
- Macromedia SoundEdit - A audio waveform sound editor (Mac only)
- Macromedia RoboHelp - A tool to build help systems
- Macromedia Captivate - Formerly Robodemo, a screen recording device that creates interactive demos
- Macromedia Shockwave - A media player that plays content made in Macromedia Director
- Macromedia JRun - A J2EE server
- Macromedia Flash Media Server - A server platform for realtime Flash client/server communication (audio,video,and data)
- Macromedia HomeSite - A code based HTML editor
- Macromedia Fontographer - Type authoring software, now owned by FontLab
- Macromedia Central - A crossplatform Flash application platform
- Macromedia FlashCast - A Flash platform for mobile devices
- Macromedia Web Publishing System - A complete software suite for building and running web pages
- Macromedia Sitespring - Web-based project management system
- Macromedia Action! - Presentation software
- Macromedia Shockmachine - A standalone application that lets users collect Macromedia Shockwave and Flash titles and play them offline.
- Macromedia Drumbeat - A web application & web interface builder.
- Macromedia Aftershock - Software utility that creates HTML files with Director and Flash movies embeded.
- Macromedia Likeminds - A personalization server based on collaborative filtering and market basket analysis.
For the future of Macromedia please look to Adobe Systems for more information about the new structures of Adobe/Macromedia.
[edit] Location
Macromedia is present in many parts of the world:
- Newton, Massachusetts
- San Diego, California
- Bethesda, Maryland
- Toronto, Canada
- Longueuil, Canada
- Berkshire, United Kingdom
- Dublin, Ireland
- München, Germany
- Vélizy Villacoublay, France
- Barcelona, Spain
- Sesto San Giovanni, Italy
- Utrecht, Netherlands
- São Paulo, Brazil
- Minato, Tokyo
- Singapore
- Sydney, Australia
- Bangalore, India
- Mumbai, India
- Beijing, China
- Hong Kong, China
- Taipei, Taiwan
- Seoul, Korea
- Manila, Philippines
