OT: Adobe kills mobile Flash

[Richard Gaskin]

Alejandro Tejada wrote:

> Richard Gaskin wrote
>>
>> Alejandro Tejada wrote:
>>> If they keep acting in that way, I foresee a future without
>>> Adobe software in ANY platform.
>>
>> That future has been my present for the last several years. I had
>> enjoyed GoLive and LiveMotion, and they way they OEL'd those has
>> prompted me to spend my money elsewhere.
>
> That transition should have been difficult, at least in the
> beginning.

Only a little, and far less effort than dealing with the runaround from 
Adobe (don't get me started; suffice to say I've never seen a product 
OEL'd as carelessly for customers as GoLive and LiveMotion were).

There are some conveniences in Fireworks that I haven't yet built my own 
replacements for, but for the features I use in the rest of Adobe CS 
I've found suitable replacements:

Dreamweaver, and really any WYSIWYG web tool, is of ever-decreasing 
value as Web designs take on more application-like appearances, with 
regions dynamically created and adjusted on the fly in code.  Most of my 
work for the Web is now done in a plain text editor, where I have the 
freedom to work as I need without wondering how the tags will be 
generated.  These days I use mostly JEDit, because once you take the 
time to set up its extensive preferences the way you want you can get a 
nice environment on both Mac and Ubuntu, for the unbeatable price of 
zero.  I'll probably get back to finishing my own text editor some day, 
but JEDit does a competent job that's nicely consistent across platforms.

For the rare moment when I do want to use a WYSYWIG Web tool for a quick 
throw-together page, Kompozer is quite adequate.

GIMP does everything I've ever used in Photoshop, and with its two 
scripting languages perhaps a bit more so.

Flash is dead.  Not completely dead, by dying so fast that by the time I 
finish typing this sentence another hundred Web sites will have replaced 
their Flash media with an open alternative.  It was a beautiful thing in 
its day (thanks to Charlie Jackson and the others on the original team), 
but that day was long ago.  And like so many other acquired software, 
once it got to Adobe it just became a mess.  RIP.

I've never done enough serious print publishing to need a tool like 
InDesign, but for my modest needs I can get everything I need done in 
either Libre Office or Scribus.

Most of my vector art is done in LiveCode, but when I need something 
more I use Inkscape.

All of these tools are cross-platform, a must in my work environment. 
They're all just one click away in the Ubuntu Software Center, and extra 
bonus points that every one of them is both free as in beer and free as 
in freedom, so my software costs have dropped and I have confidence in 
their long-term viability because the community can maintain them if the 
core team ever decides to drop them.



>> I still prefer this list for the old-timer comaraderie and experience,
>> but the forums are quite the place for meeting the new generation of
>> LiveCoders.
>>
>
> Ah... The forums.
> I rarely find enough time to read and post in the forums.
> Does exists a stack to download and read offline every
> post in the Forum? This would be really useful.

I have something in the works for that, but there's really too much 
stuff there to ever want to read all of it anyway.

What I do is click the "New Posts" link in the morning, and just read 
the latest.  This way I get the current conversations without having to 
wade through the past.

--
  Richard Gaskin
  Fourth World
  LiveCode training and consulting: http://www.fourthworld.com
  Webzine for LiveCode developers: http://www.LiveCodeJournal.com
  Follow me on Twitter:  http://twitter.com/FourthWorldSys