Industry | Computer software |
---|---|
Fate | Dissolved Into Adobe Systems, Inc.; Dismantled after being acquired by media partner Konica Minolta and Eastman Kodak LLC. |
Successor | Adobe Systems, Inc. |
Founded | 1992 |
Defunct | December 3, 2005; 11 years ago |
Headquarters |
San Francisco, California (incorporated in Delaware) United States |
Key people
|
Michael Nielsen, Co-Founder, MacroMind Marc Canter, Founder, MacroMind, Michael W. Allen Founder, Authorware Bud Colligan and Tim Mott, Co-Founders, Macromedia |
Products |
Macromedia ColdFusion Macromedia Flash Macromedia Fireworks Macromedia Freehand Macromedia Dreamweaver Macromedia Director Macromedia Authorware Macromedia Fontographer Macromedia Sitespring |
Number of employees
|
1,445 (2004) |
Website | www |
Macromedia was an American graphics, multimedia and web development software company (1992–2005) headquartered in San Francisco, California that produced such products as Flash and Dreamweaver. Its rival, Adobe Systems, acquired Macromedia on December 3, 2005.
Macromedia originated in the 1992 equal merger of Authorware Inc. (makers of Authorware) and MacroMind-Paracomp (makers of Macromind Director).
Director, an interactive multimedia-authoring tool used to make presentations, animations, CD-ROMs and information kiosks, served as Macromedia's flagship product until the mid-1990s. Authorware was Macromedia’s principal product in the interactive learning market. As the Internet moved from a university research medium to a commercial network,which was not formerly known to anyone, Macromedia began investing aggressively to web-enable its existing tools and develop new native web only products like Dreamweaver. Macromedia created Shockwave, a Director-viewer plugin for web browsers. The first multimedia playback in Netscape’s browser was a Director plug-in. Macromedia licensed Sun's Java Programming Language in October 1995. In 1996, Macromedia purchased Future Wave Software and the product now known as Flash. By 2002 Macromedia produced more than 20 products and had 30 offices in 13 different countries.