John's Gotta New Motor

[richmond62]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adobe_Authorware

http://macintoshgarden.org/apps/macrome ... horware-40
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[bogs]

That was an incredibly interesting article, thanks. I especially loved the last 2 paragraphs of the main topic, which seems to be the refrain of every really popular piece of software ...

Authorware became a rapid success in the marketplace, obtaining more than 80% of the market in about three years. Authorware Inc. merged with MacroMind/Paracomp in 1992 to form Macromedia. In December 2005, Adobe and Macromedia merged, under the Adobe Systems name. The most recent version of Authorware is 7.02; version 7 was released in 2003. The Authorware player has some issues with Internet Explorer 7 and later under Windows Vista due to Protected mode as well as runtime errors due to a bug in Authorware's implementation of ReadURL() Javascript function.[1]

It was generally known in the Authorware development community that version 8.0 was in production prior to the merger between the two companies, with 4 beta versions released to external testing shortly before the merger was completed. Among several other features intended for the new version, the ability to publish to Flash's SWF (ShockWave Flash) was at the top of the list. Once production shifted to Adobe's off-shore development facility in Bangalore, India, the free-flow of information that had been enjoyed between Macromedia's engineering team and its beta testers was curtailed. On Friday, August 3, 2007, after several years of keeping the development community in limbo, Adobe finally announced its plans to discontinue development of Authorware.

Was just reading an article on /. about VB, once the most popular programming language on the planet, MS has reduced it to an almost ran in it's current form, I'm guessing the coroners ticket will be coming anytime now.

HyperCard, arguably the easiest programming language ever produced and again, wildly popular, probably takes the record for being killed off time-wise by it's owner.

Just sad.

[richmond62]

This is a reason why LiveCode must never be sold to a big company with multiple interests.

One of my favourite office packages ClarisWorks/AppleWorks, having been hived off from Apple
and become successful was reabsorbed and experienced a similar "Kiss of the Spiderwoman" as
that administered by Adobe, Microsoft and so on to an awful lot of very good software packages
so those "majors" could push their own products into that niche.