Adobe Clarifies GoLive & FreeHand Position; Neither Discontinued

May 31st, 2006 at 3:00 PM - Reports by Bryan Chaffin

Adobe has no direct plans to discontinue its GoLive and FreeHand applications, contrary to statements attributed to French Adobe officials published Wendesday, May 31st. According to a statement given to The Mac Observer, Adobe plans to continue support for both products, as well as to continue development of both, though with a caveat.

"Adobe plans to continue to support GoLive and Freehand and develop these products based on our customeris needs," the company told TMO. "Clearly Dreamweaver and Illustrator are market leading when it comes to web design/development and vector graphics/illustration. Customers should expect Adobe to concentrate our development efforts around these two products - with regards to future innovation and Creative Suite integration."

Accordingly, neither product is slated for end-of-life status as of yet, but continued development will likely depend on customer interest. How that might be measured is only Adobeis to know.

At issue is the overlap between Adobeis GoLive Web development application and Macromediais Dreamweaver, which Adobe acquired when it acquired Macromedia itself. Dreamweaver has long been the dominant of the two apps in the Web development space. Conversely, Adobeis Illustrator has been the market leader in the illustration space in which it competes with Macromediais FreeHand.

With Adobe and Macromedia merged, all four products have been watched by the industry, as such mergers usually result in the disappearance of some products. GoLive and FreeHand are both the most logical choice for the chopping block considering their respective market shares.

On Wednesday, such speculation seemed to be borne out when officially of Adobeis French arm announced they would be phased out. If one follows Adobeis statement, that announcement was either premature or a miscommunication between the US and French arms of the company.

Also, it is worth noting that neither FreeHand nor GoLive are listed on Adobeis home page, though both can be found on Adobeis product page. This is, however, in keeping with Adobeis position that both products will be supported, while development will be "based on customeris needs."