Can someone explain Macromedia products to me?

zoozx27

I have never used any of their programs and have been using GoLive for building and maintaining a website.

I'm a total novice but would like to build a more sophisticated web site as I see others have done or probably had done and thought using macromedia was the way to go. I may be wrong?

I see there are so many programs that they offer and I don't know what is needed. could someone explain in brief what is needed and what these programs do? Also any training programs to recommend for them.



http://www.macromedia.com/



Studio MX 2004

Flash MX 2004

Dreamweaver MX 2004

Fireworks MX 2004

FreeHand MX

ColdFusion MX 7

Central

RoboHelp X5

Web Publishing System

Director MX 2004

Flex 1.5

Breeze

Contribute 3

Authorware 7

JRun 4

Captivate

FlashPaper 2







thank you

geekdreams

Dreamweaver is most likely what you'd want to use, coming from GoLive (which is similar). A lot of the other products are for things not directly related to web design, i.e. vector-based graphics, animation, application scripting, content delivery, etc.

alliancep.s.i

Dreamweaver is pretty much the standard for web design and web based programming. I have never used Adobe Golive but i heard its similar.



Fireworks is to be used hand in hand with Dreamweaver for image manipulation but I much prefer Photoshop. It doesnt have nearly the power os PS and reminds me of GIMP.



Flash MX 2004 is for making animated gifs, flash sites, etc.





Freehand is for drawing vectors but I dont use it.



Hope I helped a little.

chappysinclair

I bought Macromedia Dreamweaver a few months ago and just started learning about it. I bought a book (I forget the name but it's pretty dense, $29) that has tons of tutorials on it.



As I am only in the first few chapters of this book does anyone have any advice on using Dreamweaver? I am a relative novice to this software but am interested in creating a few different websites for fun as well as maybe the future more professional ones.



Also, what would happen to Macromedia's Dreamweaver now that Adobe has purchased Macromedia? Do you think it is still worthwhile to learn about this software? From the book I am reading there is a lot to creating a website but it seems like Dreamweaver is relatively easy (speaking as a novice).



Thanks for your help.

macrules101

This is a little off topic, but how long until adobe kills all the macromedia apps?

alliancep.s.i

Quote:

Originally posted by ChappySinclair

I bought Macromedia Dreamweaver a few months ago and just started learning about it. I bought a book (I forget the name but it's pretty dense, $29) that has tons of tutorials on it.



As I am only in the first few chapters of this book does anyone have any advice on using Dreamweaver? I am a relative novice to this software but am interested in creating a few different websites for fun as well as maybe the future more professional ones.



Also, what would happen to Macromedia's Dreamweaver now that Adobe has purchased Macromedia? Do you think it is still worthwhile to learn about this software? From the book I am reading there is a lot to creating a website but it seems like Dreamweaver is relatively easy (speaking as a novice).



Thanks for your help.

I would learn to use hand coding and the design view together.

curiousuburb

Considering DreamWeaver is/was the industry standard Web Design tool if not the 800 pound gorilla...

while GoLive has always been the bastard stepchild of the Adobe family,

(long known for proprietary code and buggy layout until CS1/CS2)



I'd actually suspect that it's GoLive that will be killed and DW that will survive.



YMMV

onyx-pb

Quote:

Originally posted by ChappySinclair

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Also, what would happen to Macromedia's Dreamweaver now that Adobe has purchased Macromedia? Do you think it is still worthwhile to learn about this software? From the book I am reading there is a lot to creating a website but it seems like Dreamweaver is relatively easy (speaking as a novice).



Thanks for your help.

Dreamweaver is just a tool to help you write HTML and code (ASP, PHP whatever), it will generate some things for you, others you have to code from scratch. If you make use of the Code and Design view then you'll see whats been generated and eventually you'll hit the point where you spend more time in the code view... At this point you could easily swap to another product (I quite like VI and a terminal session).



Keep working through the tutorials and good luck.

chappysinclair

Thanks -- I thought learning about web design would be boring, but it's actually a lot of fun. I still am learning so don't know a lot of code, but I'm learning. I like the interface of Dreamweaver a lot and I was just curious what Adobe's purchase means.