Macromedia

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Template:Infobox Company$66.4M FY 2005)|

 homepage       = www.macromedia.com

}} Macromedia (formerly Template:Nasdaq) was a 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 former rival Adobe Systems.

Image:Macromedia logo.gif 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.

To jumpstart this 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. 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, 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), and RoboInfo.

Image:Adobe formerly macromedia.pngOn 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 This time Macromedia is called Adobe Systems.(announcement).

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Products

Macromedia Studio - A complete toolset (Dreamweaver, Flash Professional, Fireworks, Contribute and FlashPaper)
Macromedia Flash - An animation tool for rich web content
Macromedia Dreamweaver - An HTML editor, with both visual and code support
Macromedia Breeze - A web conferencing tool
Macromedia Flex - A web application builder
Macromedia ColdFusion - A web server that serves dynamic ".cfm" content. 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 Fireworks - A graphics editor
Macromedia Contribute - A simple visual HTML editor for end user website maintenance
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 FlashPaper - A tool that turns documents to FlashPaper or PDF
Macromedia Fontographer - Type authoring software, now sold 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 Flash Communication Server Server software to deploy Flash Applications. (May no longer be ready to purchase. May be renamed)