The Internets are a twitter with talk of the now finalized merger of Adobe and Macromedia. Now can I get an answer to the question I’ve wanted to ask, but knew no one would answer:
What’s going to happen to Flashpaper?
I get that pdf is the defacto standard for sharing documents. However, Acrobat Reader is such overkil for reading documents on the web. On the other hand Flashpaper is such a fast, lightweight, and effective way of consuming specially formatted documents on the web. Up until yesterday, I assumed that Adobe would incorporate a superior product into the fold, and make a Flash version of Acrobat Reader or something for consumption on the web. But after Coke broke my heart yesterday, I’m not so sure that superior products win out.
Now that forward looking statements are no longer prohibited, somebody out there better spill it.
I don’t have hard info yet… if you’ve been following the Macromedia-oriented weblogs, you’ve seen how the businesses need to set up a “clean room” for any planning, in case political permission was not given and the businesses needed to compete separately. It will take awhile for internal briefings, then the holidays… I wouldn’t realistically expect much in the way of explicit roadmaps until January.
I pretty much agree with you, though, that the lightweight profile of FlashPaper for documents seems compelling. There are already profiles for archiving, exchange, and engineering… seems reasonable to me, but I’ve got no inside info yet on this subject.
jd/mm
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Wow. I never expected a response from anyone at Macromedia/Adobe. I’ll keep my eyes open in January.
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