OMG, Adobe buys Macromedia for 3.4bn

[Jon P. Inghram]

In Ars news discussion I saw this is already being worked on, but didn't follow links.

What would be more interesting would be lean unobtrusive flash plugin being able to display .pdf files in browser instead of readers.

Ick, I was only kidding about that, but looks like it's too late.

Adobe seems to be very good at bloating software, so I wouldn't count on any Flash based Acrobat plugins to be "unobtrusive."

I've got Acrobat set to not load inside the browser window already, and have FlashBlock active after I got tired of ads that slowed the system down noticibly. I guess they think everyones got "fast" systems now, a 1.4 GHz P3 isn't good enough to browse the web apparently.

[Nowhere]

Ick, I was only kidding about that, but looks like it's too late.

Adobe seems to be very good at bloating software, so I wouldn't count on any Flash based Acrobat plugins to be "unobtrusive."

I've got Acrobat set to not load inside the browser window already, and have FlashBlock active after I got tired of ads that slowed the system down noticibly. I guess they think everyones got "fast" systems now, a 1.4 GHz P3 isn't good enough to browse the web apparently.

If you move all (apart from search and ewh32) plugins in reader directory from plug_ins to optional (so they are loaded only when needed) it's quite fast (dual pII266 here and it's ok)

[Jessterw]

Adobe has released a FAQ (as a pdf of course):

http://www.adobe.com/aboutadobe/invrelations/pdfs/AdobeMacromediaFAQ.pdf

[Jon P. Inghram]

I think the pointy-haired boss wrote that release: "enable the deployment of a more robust cross-media, rich-client technology platform."

[Jessterw]

Agreed. What he really means is: "enable the deployment of far more bloated applications and plugins to enable the viewing of bloated documents and..."

[Jessterw]

John Gruber has a nice English translation of Adobe's FAQ on the matter:

http://daringfireball.net/2005/04/adobe_translation

[Claymonkey]

This whole thing makes baby jebus cry.

[Claymonkey]

John Gruber has a nice English translation of Adobe's FAQ on the matter:
http://daringfireball.net/2005/04/adobe_translation

A very nice translation of the legal speak. Sigh, who wants to make a Freehand style program and form a company with me so Adobe can buy us out for a lot of money?