|
| |
|
| |
Private
|
| |
|
| |
California ( 1992 )
|
| |
Headquartered in , Massachusetts <br /> San Diego , California <br /> Bethesda , Maryland <br /> Toronto , Canada <br /> Longueuil , Quebec <br /> Berkshire , United Kingdom <br /> Dublin , Ireland <br /> München , Germany <br />Vélizy Villacoublay, France <br /> Barcelona , Spain <br />Sesto San Giovanni, Italy <br /> Utrecht , Netherlands <br /> São Paulo , Brazil <br /> Minato , Tokyo <br /> Singapore <br /> Sydney , Australia <br /> Bangalore , India <br /> Mumbai , India <br /> Beijing , China <br /> Hong Kong , China <br /> Taipei , Taiwan <br /> Seoul , Korea
|
| |
N/A
|
| |
1,445 ( 2004 )
|
| |
Computer Software
|
| |
Macromedia Flash <br /> Macromedia Fireworks <br /> Macromedia Dreamweaver <br />Much more
|
| |
$4362 million USD ($664M FY 2005 )
|
was an
American 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 .
Director , an interactive multimedia authoring tool widely used to make
CD-ROM s 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 application server; and
HomeSite , an HTML code editor that was eventually bundled with Dreamweaver.
In , RoboDemo (Now
Captivate ), and
RoboInfo .
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 This time Macromedia is called
Adobe Systems .(
announcement ).
