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Macromedia have announced Studio 8, their new release of their suite of applications.... and missing from the lineup is Freehand.
Illustrator has not stepped in to take its place, there is just a hole. Dreamweaver 8, Flash 8, Fireworks 8 and then the makeweights of Contribute 3 and FlashPaper 2 complete the set.
A strong US bias in the pricing sees UK customers being charged much more than those in the US before tax (more after): UK's price of an upgrade at £299 isn't the same as US's price $399: £299 = $530 at today's exchange rates!
Hopefully Xara can capitalise on Freehand's demise with a new release of Xara X¹ which can open all Freehand and Illustrator files :P
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Daniel
My guess is that Adobe will position Illustrator as their vector drawing program and drop GoLive in favor of Dreamweaver. Flash, Fireworks will remain the the web publishing group.
Freehand could never compete with Illustrator even though for many years it was a better product. During those same years, CorelDRAW was far better than Illustrator or Freehand. And for that matter, so was Canvas.
But the professional design market does not view software with the same reverence that we do. And so an art director or designer, unless there is a bit of the geek in her or him, is going to stick with the applications they know and feel most comfortable using.
But there is definately a bit of the pie here for Xara.
Gary
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Like most people who have spent years trying to master all of Illustrator many design teams will not relish trying to learn the new software.
I agree with your comments Gary, FH when it fitted its new text engine was far better in many respects than AI although its bevel and shadow tools were really crude and not many users bothered with them not like Xara.
