291–300 of 1001 posts
It’s a shame that the competition authorities don’t seem to have any interest in these type of acquisitions which destroys competition and harms consumers. Same thing happened with Architecture software eg when Autocad bought Revit - end result is extortionately priced software that many architects cannot afford because they are paid so poorly. Same will happen for graphic designers.
Many years ago, when Adobe bought Macromedia, they acquired a tool called Fireworks[1]. This was a combined bitmap and vector editor that was incredibly well-optimised for user-interface and web design, at a time when most designers were paying exorbitant license fees to do such work painfully and slowly in Photoshop and Illustrator. Fireworks was cheap, powerful, and hugely ahead of its time. Many of the features an…
I used Fireworks for years for web design stuff - it was simple to use, but fully featured, a real joy to use. As soon as Adbobe bought Macromedia, I knew they would shitcan it because of Photoshop and Illustrator. And I knew other nice Macromedia tools, like Dreamweaver, would have a similar fate. Such a shame, and buying a competitor just to kill it feels so wrong :( I'm not totally sure if Figma will suffer a simi…
I strongly suspect not. It's in a lot more use than Fireworks (which was cool -I used it- but was always a bit "niche").
If they play their cards right, they can use it to leverage their way back into many designers' good graces (who had been leaving the Adobesphere for the Figmasphere). They would probably add ways to leverage their cloud storage and other apps.
That said, it's pretty much a textbook "buy the competition" move, and the kind of thing that's getting a lot of scrutiny from regulators, these days.
But $20B is a lot of yachts. I don't blame the Figma people for selling out.
My heart plummeted when I read this headline. I've done UI design work in some capacity for 18 years, and have always dreamed of design software with the thoughtful UI and features of Figma. When I realized Figma was that software, it was like experiencing a miracle. Software like this doesn't exist . It was the first design software I paid for (yes, in 18 years). And now it's going to die. I almost feel like crying.
What is the great feature of Figma? I tried to use it for illustration and it did not feel great at all compared to software like Affinity Designer. How were you using it that it feels like such a great loss to you?
Edit: As others have pointed out, it's not so much the existence of a feature that's missing from other software - it's the design and implementation of features.
Edit: Their autolayout implementation is incredible. And their tutorial videos! My god, they're incredibly discoverable and informative and SHORT. I'm going to stop because I could keep coming back and adding edits to this comment all day.
My heart plummeted when I read this headline. I've done UI design work in some capacity for 18 years, and have always dreamed of design software with the thoughtful UI and features of Figma. When I realized Figma was that software, it was like experiencing a miracle. Software like this doesn't exist . It was the first design software I paid for (yes, in 18 years). And now it's going to die. I almost feel like crying.
Figma was really one of a kind. Back to Sketch I suppose.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I used Fireworks for years for web design stuff - it was simple to use, but fully featured, a real joy to use. As soon as Adbobe bought Macromedia, I knew they would shitcan it because of Photoshop and Illustrator. And I knew other nice Macromedia tools, like Dreamweaver, would have a similar fate. Such a shame, and buying a competitor just to kill it feels so wrong :( I'm not totally sure if Figma will suffer a simi…
> I used Fireworks for years for web design stuff I still use it as my primary web/ui design tool and in fact am stuck on MacOS Mojave because I'd have to say goodbye to it forever if I upgraded.
If true, congratulations for Figma founders, and a bad day for designers that were looking for a way to escape from Adobe. I don’t think that in the long term this will give Figma as an ecosystem any benefit — unless Adobe will keep it separate from the main Creative Cloud. This reminds me of the Trello acquisition. As a loyal Figma user I’m pretty sceptical of the future. Hope to be wrong. UPDATE: Looks like it is i…
UPDATE n. 2: Dylan Field (CEO of Figma) has addressed these kind of concerns on their public disclore of the fact: https://www.figma.com/blog/a-new-collaboration-with-adobe/ Citing him: > Adobe is deeply committed to keeping Figma operating autonomously and I will continue to serve as CEO, reporting to David Wadhwani. As others have said, there’s really a missing OSS version out there that can compete feature-by-feat…
You don't drop 20bn on something to let it sit at it's current level.
They'll be integrating creative cloud and making it part of the subscription. I dare say they'll close the loophole on the free plan as well that lets you have unlimited designs.
I'm dismayed by this acquisition but glad to see the near-universal dislike towards Adobe in this thread. How can a $150B+ company exist with this much disdain for its business practices and products? I'm guessing Adobe's primary customer base is large corporations who don't care rather than individual users?
But for two: "How can a $150B+ company exist with this much disdain" -- Have you looked at Oracle lately?
Many years ago, when Adobe bought Macromedia, they acquired a tool called Fireworks[1]. This was a combined bitmap and vector editor that was incredibly well-optimised for user-interface and web design, at a time when most designers were paying exorbitant license fees to do such work painfully and slowly in Photoshop and Illustrator. Fireworks was cheap, powerful, and hugely ahead of its time. Many of the features an…
We still use Fireworks! I open it every day, and it remains a decent vector and simple image editor. Back in the day we used to create our web designs in Fireworks and then (before we knew better) "slice" them to HTML and export using Fireworks. Even after we transitioned to building by hand, we still used Fireworks for things like creating mouseover menus. Bad news for Figma.