One might have thought that the actions of the somewhat recently reformed Microsoft in spacing out its release dates and seeking to ensure product quality is something that other software developers might have taken on board...
At our school, Dann and I have made extensive use of Macromedia products over the past few years as we teach a range of courses.
The school has progressed in the past 4 years through numerous upgrades, initially installing Flash 5, followed by Studio MX and now MX 2004. The pace of change has been truly astounding... and many of the awesome features made available (particularly newish features for PHP development in Dreamweaver and Flash Video in Flash) have been welcomed by students and faculty alike - despite the need for constant re-training.
The recent acquisition of Macromedia by Adobe (whose products we also use extensively in an educational context) has prompted a stack of discussion... mostly around which products will be ditched... Studio 8 has now been released, not 12 months after we outlaid extensive moolah for its predecessor... with Flash 8 described as "Macromedia's biggest Flash release to date."
HUH? What gives? Is this looking after your developer base?
Studio MX & MX 2004 installed across our site with more than a few hassles. For starters, Macromedia don't support its rollout in large Microsoft networks by not providing .MSI files... and the WebDAV features.... don't get me started!
One wonders whether later this year the promise of Adobe-branded Macromedia products will be realised and we'll see yet ANOTHER version of buggy Macromedia goodies...
hmm...
