Macromedia
Encyclopedia
Macromedia was an American
graphics and web development
software company (1992–2005) headquartered in San Francisco, California
that produced such products as Flash
and Dreamweaver. Its rival, Adobe Systems
, acquired Macromedia on December 3, 2005 and controls the line of Macromedia products.
) and MacroMind-Paracomp (makers of Macromind Director
).
Director
, an interactive multimedia-authoring tool used to make CD-ROM
s and information kiosks, served as 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. CompuServe
was the first company to integrate Shockwave. In October 1995, Macromedia licensed Sun's Java
; Sun worked with Macromedia to integrate Java in Macromedia's multimedia software. By 2002 Macromedia produced more than 20 products and had 30 offices in 13 different countries.
Corporation after Adobe Systems announced a merger with Altsys’ business partner, the Aldus
Corporation. Altsys was the developer of the vector-drawing program, FreeHand
, which had been licensed by Aldus for marketing and sales. Because of the competition with the similar Adobe Illustrator
, the Federal Trade Commission
issued a complaint of Adobe Systems on October 18, 1994 ordering a divestiture of FreeHand back to Altsys. With Macromedia’s acquisition of Altsys, it received FreeHand thus expanding its product line of multimedia graphics software to include illustration and design graphics software. FreeHand's vector graphics
rendering engine and other software components within the program would prove useful to Macromedia in the development of technologies to support its web strategy.
To jumpstart its web strategy further, Macromedia made two acquisitions in 1996. First, Macromedia acquired FutureWave Software
, makers of FutureSplash Animator
, an animation tool which FutureWave Software had originally developed 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 most users, at the time, 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
. 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 merger and acquisition
trail: in December 1999, it acquired traffic analysis software company Andromedia Corporation. Web development company Allaire
was acquired in 2001 and Macromedia added several popular server and Web developmts portfolio, including ColdFusion, a web application server based on the CFML language, JRun
, a Java EE application server, and HomeSite
, an HTML code editor that was also bundled with Dreamweaver.
In 2003, Macromedia acquired the 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.
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 took place on December 3, 2005, and Adobe integrated the company's operations, networks, and customer-care organizations shortly thereafter.
United States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
graphics and web development
Web development
Web development is a broad term for the work involved in developing a web site for the Internet or an intranet . This can include web design, web content development, client liaison, client-side/server-side scripting, web server and network security configuration, and e-commerce development...
software company (1992–2005) headquartered in San Francisco, California
California
California is a state located on the West Coast of the United States. It is by far the most populous U.S. state, and the third-largest by land area...
that produced such products as Flash
Adobe Flash
Adobe Flash is a multimedia platform used to add animation, video, and interactivity to web pages. Flash is frequently used for advertisements, games and flash animations for broadcast...
and Dreamweaver. Its rival, Adobe Systems
Adobe Systems
Adobe Systems Incorporated is an American computer software company founded in 1982 and headquartered in San Jose, California, United States...
, acquired Macromedia on December 3, 2005 and controls the line of Macromedia products.
History
Macromedia originated in the 1992 merger of Authorware Inc. (makers of AuthorwareMacromedia Authorware
Macromedia Authorware was an interpreted, flowchart based, graphical programming language. Authorware is used for creating interactive programs that can integrate a range of multimedia content, particularly e-learning applications...
) and MacroMind-Paracomp (makers of Macromind Director
Adobe Director
Adobe Director is a multimedia application authoring platform created by Macromedia—now part of Adobe Systems. It allows users to build applications built on a movie metaphor, with the user as the "director" of the movie...
).
Director
Adobe Director
Adobe Director is a multimedia application authoring platform created by Macromedia—now part of Adobe Systems. It allows users to build applications built on a movie metaphor, with the user as the "director" of the movie...
, an interactive multimedia-authoring tool used to make CD-ROM
CD-ROM
A CD-ROM is a pre-pressed compact disc that contains data accessible to, but not writable by, a computer for data storage and music playback. The 1985 “Yellow Book” standard developed by Sony and Philips adapted the format to hold any form of binary data....
s and information kiosks, served as Macromedia's flagship product until the mid-1990s. As the CD-ROM market began to decline and the World Wide Web
World Wide Web
The World Wide Web is a system of interlinked hypertext documents accessed via the Internet...
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. CompuServe
CompuServe
CompuServe was the first major commercial online service in the United States. It dominated the field during the 1980s and remained a major player through the mid-1990s, when it was sidelined by the rise of services such as AOL with monthly subscriptions rather than hourly rates...
was the first company to integrate Shockwave. In October 1995, Macromedia licensed Sun's Java
Java
Java is an island of Indonesia. With a population of 135 million , it is the world's most populous island, and one of the most densely populated regions in the world. It is home to 60% of Indonesia's population. The Indonesian capital city, Jakarta, is in west Java...
; Sun worked with Macromedia to integrate Java in Macromedia's multimedia software. By 2002 Macromedia produced more than 20 products and had 30 offices in 13 different countries.
Acquisitions
In January 1995, Macromedia acquired AltsysAltsys
Altsys Corporation was a Texas-based software company founded by James R Von Ehr II. It was an early Apple Macintosh developer and publisher.Three major products from Altsys for PC / Macintosh and NeXT were:*Fontographer for Windows and Mac OS - font editor...
Corporation after Adobe Systems announced a merger with Altsys’ business partner, the Aldus
Aldus
Aldus Corporation, named after the 15th-century Venetian printer Aldus Manutius, was the inventor of the groundbreaking PageMaker software, a program that is generally credited with creating the desktop publishing field. The company was founded by Jeremy Jaech, Mark Sundstrom, Mike Templeman,...
Corporation. Altsys was the developer of the vector-drawing program, FreeHand
Macromedia FreeHand
Macromedia FreeHand is a computer application for creating two-dimensional vector graphics that are oriented primarily to professional illustration, desktop publishing and content creation for the Web. FreeHand is similar in scope, intended market, and functionality to Adobe Illustrator, CorelDraw...
, which had been licensed by Aldus for marketing and sales. Because of the competition with the similar Adobe Illustrator
Illustrator
An Illustrator is a narrative artist who specializes in enhancing writing by providing a visual representation that corresponds to the content of the associated text...
, the Federal Trade Commission
Federal Trade Commission
The Federal Trade Commission is an independent agency of the United States government, established in 1914 by the Federal Trade Commission Act...
issued a complaint of Adobe Systems on October 18, 1994 ordering a divestiture of FreeHand back to Altsys. With Macromedia’s acquisition of Altsys, it received FreeHand thus expanding its product line of multimedia graphics software to include illustration and design graphics software. FreeHand's vector graphics
Vector graphics
Vector graphics is the use of geometrical primitives such as points, lines, curves, and shapes or polygon, which are all based on mathematical expressions, to represent images in computer graphics...
rendering engine and other software components within the program would prove useful to Macromedia in the development of technologies to support its web strategy.
To jumpstart its web strategy further, Macromedia made two acquisitions in 1996. First, Macromedia acquired FutureWave Software
FutureWave Software
FutureWave Software was a software developer and publisher based in San Diego, California. The company was founded by Charlie Jackson and Jonathan Gay in early 1993. VP of Marketing was Michelle Welsh who also came from Silicon Beach Software, then Aldus....
, makers of FutureSplash Animator
FutureSplash Animator
FutureSplash Animator was a vector-based animation editor written by Jonathan Gay for this company FutureWave Software. The company and the product were later bought by Macromedia then Adobe Systems, and became Adobe Flash ....
, an animation tool which FutureWave Software had originally developed 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 most users, at the time, had low-bandwidth connections. Macromedia renamed Splash to Macromedia Flash
Adobe Flash
Adobe Flash is a multimedia platform used to add animation, video, and interactivity to web pages. Flash is frequently used for advertisements, games and flash animations for broadcast...
, and following the lead of Netscape
Netscape
Netscape Communications is a US computer services company, best known for Netscape Navigator, its web browser. When it was an independent company, its headquarters were in Mountain View, California...
, 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
QuickTime
QuickTime is an extensible proprietary multimedia framework developed by Apple Inc., capable of handling various formats of digital video, picture, sound, panoramic images, and interactivity. The classic version of QuickTime is available for Windows XP and later, as well as Mac OS X Leopard and...
, RealNetworks
RealNetworks
RealNetworks, Inc. is a provider of Internet media delivery software and services based in Downtown Seattle, Washington, United States. The company is the creator of RealAudio, a compressed audio format; RealVideo, a compressed video format; RealPlayer, a media player; RealDownloader, a download...
and Windows Media Player
Windows Media Player
Windows Media Player is a media player and media library application developed by Microsoft that is used for playing audio, video and viewing images on personal computers running the Microsoft Windows operating system, as well as on Pocket PC and Windows Mobile-based devices...
. 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.
HTML
HyperText Markup Language is the predominant markup language for web pages. HTML elements are the basic building-blocks of webpages....
authoring-tool and application-server
Application server
An application server is a software framework that provides an environment in which applications can run, no matter what the applications are or what they do...
. 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
Hand coding
In computing, hand coding means editing the underlying representation of a document or a computer program, when tools that allow working on more sophisticated representation also exist. Typically this means editing the source code, or the textual representation of a document or a program, instead...
, and Microsoft FrontPage
Microsoft FrontPage
Microsoft FrontPage was a WYSIWYG HTML editor and web site administration tool from Microsoft for the Microsoft Windows line of operating systems. It was branded as part of the Microsoft Office suite from 1997 to 2003...
remained a strong competitor among amateur and business users.
Macromedia continued on the merger and acquisition
Mergers and acquisitions
Mergers and acquisitions refers to the aspect of corporate strategy, corporate finance and management dealing with the buying, selling, dividing and combining of different companies and similar entities that can help an enterprise grow rapidly in its sector or location of origin, or a new field or...
trail: in December 1999, it acquired traffic analysis software company Andromedia Corporation. Web development company Allaire
Allaire Corporation
Allaire Corporation was a computer software company founded by Jeremy and JJ Allaire in Minnesota, later headquartered in Cambridge, then Newton, Massachusetts...
was acquired in 2001 and Macromedia added several popular server and Web developmts portfolio, including ColdFusion, a web application server based on the CFML language, JRun
Macromedia JRun
JRun is a J2EE application server, originally developed in 1997 as a Java Servlet engine by Live Software and subsequently purchased by Allaire, who brought out the first J2EE compliant version. It was acquired by Macromedia prior to its 2001 takeover of Allaire, and subsequently by Adobe Systems...
, a Java EE application server, and HomeSite
Macromedia HomeSite
HomeSite was an HTML editor owned by Adobe Systems . Unlike WYSIWYG HTML editors such as Microsoft FrontPage and Adobe Dreamweaver, HomeSite was designed for direct editing, or "hand coding," of HTML and other website languages...
, an HTML code editor that was also bundled with Dreamweaver.
In 2003, Macromedia acquired the web conferencing company Presedia and continued to develop and enhance their Flash-based online collaboration and presentation product offering under the brand Breeze
Macromedia Breeze
Adobe Connect is software used to create information and general presentations, online training materials, web conferencing, learning modules, and user desktop sharing. The product is entirely Adobe Flash based...
. Later that year, Macromedia also acquired help authoring software company eHelp Corporation, whose products included RoboHelp
RoboHelp
RoboHelp is a help authoring tool created by eHelp Corporation , acquired by Macromedia, which itself was then acquired by Adobe Systems.- Features :Technical writers use RoboHelp to create the following help files:...
& RoboDemo (Now Captivate). Many of the developers of RoboHelp went on to form MadCap Software
MadCap Software
MadCap Software is an American computer software firm headquartered in La Jolla, California. The firm is best known for producing various help authoring tools...
which is a competitor in the help-authoring space.
Purchase
On April 18, 2005, Adobe SystemsAdobe Systems
Adobe Systems Incorporated is an American computer software company founded in 1982 and headquartered in San Jose, California, United States...
announced an agreement to acquire Macromedia in a stock swap
Stock swap
A stock swap, also known as a share swap, is a business takeover or acquisition in which the acquiring company uses its own stock to pay for the acquired company. Each shareholder of the newly acquired company receives a certain number of shares of the acquiring company's stock for each share of...
valued at about $3.4 billion on the last trading day before the announcement. The acquisition took place on December 3, 2005, and Adobe integrated the company's operations, networks, and customer-care organizations shortly thereafter.
Lawsuits
On August 22, 1997, stockholders filed a class-action lawsuit in the California Superior Court in San Francisco, "accusing Macromedia and five executives—including chairman, CEO, and former president, John Colligan—of misleading stockholders on the company's product success and financial health and of engaging in insider trading during the class period of April 18, 1996 to January 9, 1997". A similar suit had been filed in July.Leadership
- 1992: Bud Colligan is co-founder and CEO of Macromedia, a position he held until 1997; he served as Board Chairman 1992-1998.
- 1994: Altsys Corp and CEO James Von Ehr becomes a Macromedia vice-president, a position he held until 1997.
- 1996: Robert K. BurgessRob BurgessRob Burgess is a Canadian businessman in the computing industry.Burgess graduated from McMaster University with a Bachelor of Commerce degree in 1979....
is hired as CEO of Macromedia, a position he held until 2005; he served as Board Chairman 1998-2005, a position he held when the company was acquired by Adobe. - 1997: Betsey Nelson becomes Chief Financial Officer, a position she held until Macromedia was acquired by Adobe.
- 2004: Stephen ElopStephen ElopStephen Elop is the chief executive officer of Nokia Corporation. A Canadian citizen, Elop is the first non-Finn to be named CEO of Nokia. He replaced Olli-Pekka Kallasvuo in this position on September 21, 2010.- Career :...
becomes Chief Operating Officer. - 2005: Stephen ElopStephen ElopStephen Elop is the chief executive officer of Nokia Corporation. A Canadian citizen, Elop is the first non-Finn to be named CEO of Nokia. He replaced Olli-Pekka Kallasvuo in this position on September 21, 2010.- Career :...
had been CEO for three months when Macromedia announced it would be acquired by Adobe.