33 thoughts on “Adobe Acquires Macromedia”

  1. Funny, I was just wondering the same thing. Do you have any thoughts or insight Nick?
    Do you even view HomeSite as a competitive product?

  2. Oh, I’m sure they’ll kill it off, once and for all. A sad, sad day for our industry, IMHO. Well, I’m downloading a copy of RealBASIC and coding my own solutions from now own. Barring sleep, I should have you all open source versions of the MX suite by 2007 :)

  3. I’ve never given much credence to homes made of sun-dried clay/ straw bricks myself :)

  4. I wouldn’t doubt if Adobe comes knocking on nick’s door in the future… I mean he has a great product…

  5. “what will happen to HomeSite now that Adobe owns it?” ?
    “Now” is months away.
    “The deal, set to close in the autumn, would likely yield cost savings, said Adobe Chief Executive Bruce Chizen, without giving further details.”

  6. Guy, you’re right – I’ve updated my post to read “once Adobe owns HomeSite” instead of “now that Adobe owns HomeSite.”

  7. If Macromedia’s treatment of HomeSite is any indication, it will slowly fade into oblivion. Sadly it’s still my number 1 choice for doing ASP pages and I haven’t found another editor that has the same features.

  8. I have a feeling it will get killed off should the merger happen (I gather their respective shareholders need to approve it first). I’m guessing that there’s no way that you’ll be able to ‘reclaim’ HomeSite as a Bradbury Software product? Would be a shame to see a perfectly good product killed off like that.

  10. Despite being deprived of care and attention, by people who seem to have no empathy with the product, HomeSite is still insanely great.
    It’s really addictive. (I’ve even resigned myself to repairing *.vtm files that were botched up in the distribution.)
    Sometimes takeovers, ownership and what passes for business management are a real hinderance to human progress!!
    At least HomeSite is not aimed straight at the heart of an Adobe cash stream like Font Chameleon was. Adobe drove a stake through the heart of that product when they bought the company!! Very sad.

  11. Adobe will ensure that it acquires around 120 DLLs that must load while the splash screen is displayed, thus making you wait at least 90 seconds before you can actually start using the program.

  12. Since Homesite will be an Adobe product, my prediction is that they will raise the price by $700.

  13. The past and future of Homesite

    I’ve been using [Homesite][1] as my primary HTML/PHP/JavaScript editor for nearly ten years. I think I bought it in 1995 or 1996. [Nick Bradbury][2] was a one-man business at the time and Homesite was advertised on CompuServe. I think it was version 1…

  14. A definitive agreement is not always a done deal. The stockholders AND the regulators have to approve the deal.

  15. Adobe To Buy Macromedia

    Holy kitchen-appliances. I didn’t see this coming. But I can’t say that it will be that bad of a thing (we’ll just have to wait to see what Ken says)….

  16. As hard as I’ve tried to switch to TopStyle (and mostly succeeded), I’ve never really been able to let go of HomeSite. I suspect this will be the final, final straw since HS has effectively been dead for a while…

  17. how will they call it ??? Adobe, Dreamweaverand how about…
    imageworks, fireready, image fireworks or fireworks/ready…..
    lets just hope they dont take away the extensions/page

  18. Hello, longtime Homesite user here.
    Quoting Pearl Harbor, this will be a “day that will live in infamy”… Today I have witnessed how an entire conspiracy against my very working tools has been unveiled, for Homesite and Fireworks are two of my most beloved apps that will likely get Adobe’s axe now that they bought MM’s lock, stock and barrel. Sad. And no, I don’t want to use DW instead – too bloated a product for coding, thank you very much.
    However I must say I couldn’t live without TopStyle for CSS editing. I haven’t used TopStyle for tasks other than CSS though – perhaps if we could hve a Homesite-Style Quick Bar? That would make my day. Guess I better start using TopStyle even more…

  20. Maybe you should try and get homesite back Nick, set up a team and start developing on it again ;), there’s plenty ‘o delphi programmers who’d be more then happy to help you (hint hint, notch notch).

  21. I just hope that Nick never lets go of control on Topstyle Pro.
    It´s a sad thing that Homesite might die, but I wouldn´t want to see the same happen to Topstyle Pro in any near or far future!

  22. The end of Homesite?

    As questioned in a lot of places (here (Nick Bradbury), here) the recent anouncment on the aquisition of Macromedia by Adobe makes the future of Homesite very uncertain.I used Homesite when I started with Webdev (1999), and at that time it seemed like a g

  23. HomeSite 3.0 was the last version that I was really happy with. HomeSite 4.0 was a disaster and although some progress was made in getting some major problems fixed in 4.5, I quickly lost interest. I never even managed to get version 5.0 to run properly on my ageing Win98 system and would have to go searching the Macromedia site to find the latest version number.
    Although TopStyle is missing some of HomeSite’s features it’s a much better program than HomeSite was or will ever be especially after Allaire and Macromedia got hold of it.

  24. I’m wondering that too. No info out of MM or Adobe yet on that of course. If they kill it I guess I’ll finally have to make the jump to TS for HTML/ASP stuff too. (I’ve always used it for CSS of course!)
    I hope the combined company shows some interest in HS though. In any case, I’ll keep asp4hs/php4hs going until the last user turns off the lights ;-)

  25. I only came to HomeSite in version 5, but it grew on me *real* fast! Head and shoulders above Dreamweaver for fast, clean coding.
    If Adobe were smart, they’d keep HomeSite–besides being such a great program, it has its own unique user base (read: new customers for Adobe!)
    If Adobe were *really* smart, they’d get TopStyle Pro included with Dreamweaver or GoLive (or GoDream, or LiveWeaver, or whatever they’ll call “it”). Then, if HomeSite were dropped, TopStyle would neatly fit into the missing niche as the “included coding editor,” thus providing a first-rate coding tool and, of course, best of the best CSS–(again, new customers for Adobe-and Bradsoft!).
    Maybe this will prove to be a good thing for you, Nick? :-)

  26. Nobody else has mentioned this aspect of the deal so I thought I’d chime in…
    Both Macromedia and Adobe have been pretty successful on the Apple Mac and Windows. Since Homesite only runs on Windows it will probably be ditched for this reason. In fact, both companies are pretty much committed to cross-platform- even with Linux support.
    It’s a darn pity that Borland doesn’t have a Delphi compiler for the Mac… then it wouldn’t be too hard to move Homesite and Topstyle to that platform.
    Cheers,
    Kevin.

  27. Nick, please, DON’T sell Topstyle to Adobe. It’s sad to see how great programs (like Fireworks, for example, at light years far away with some of its features compared with Photoshop, starting with its UI) will be dead on a couple of months after Macromedia’s adquisition approval.
    A sad, sad day. As someone says: less companies, less products, more expensive ‘bloatware’, less choice of decission.
    Time to start thinking into change to Gimp & NVU?, don’t know.

  29. I FEEL OLD!
    After seeing the news of the Macromedia buy-out, my first thought was with Homesite.
    I used it back in its pre-Allaire days and was *stunned* to see they bought it in 1996. That means I’ve been using it for at least 10 years!
    But I have it open right now, and still use it daily. I don’t think I’ve stuck with any programme in quite the same way.
    Nick, can’t you buy back Homesite or start up a NEW HTML editor? We need you!

  30. Anthony, TopStyle is essentially Nick’s replacement for Homesite. It is focussed on CSS editing but it is capable of editing HTML in much the same way that Homesite did. You may want to download the eval version and take a look for yourself…
    Cheers,
    Kevin.

  31. Nick, perhaps now would be a good time to write up a feature comparison of HomeSite vs TopStyle, to show how good TS is as a HS replacement.
    Frankly I’d be interested to see what all is there in TS vs what might be missing that HS does. (I’m still only using TS for CSS, HS for the rest) What’d ya think?

  32. Really? I thought TopStyle was just CSS, and I’ve never really used it to be honest! I will take a new look.

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