
Adobe releases Contribute 4

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Reader Comments (Page 1 of 2)
10-05-2006 @ 8:17AM
Matt Turner said...
I miss Macromedia!! :((
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10-05-2006 @ 8:30AM
Mr Lizard said...
Lack of Intel support is lame, given the size of this company and the financial resources it has.
The only plus side can see is that it runs fairly nippy on a 2ghz MacBook with 2GB ram.
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10-05-2006 @ 8:52AM
HS said...
Adobe is just sloppy, I have started wishing for alternatives to Illustrator and Photoshop when they act like this.. (Meaning not developing Universal apps.)
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10-05-2006 @ 9:05AM
Ted Lee said...
This is why people are mad at Adobe. 16 months after the announcement of moving to Intel, and they release a product that is still not native. They had plenty of time to get this thing native and they chose not to. I've replaced Illustrator with Lineform, Dreamweaver with skEdit. Someone give me a valid Photoshop replacement, and I'll drop that too. My hard earned money will go to developers/companies who listen to their customers and address their needs. Increasingly, that is turning out to be the small developers and not the 800 lb. gorillas.
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10-05-2006 @ 9:23AM
error said...
Maybe they release it in a Universal form when CS3 is released next year. Contribute isn't a heavy app... sonot being Universal isn't a big problem.
I'm truly glad they are still developing this product and did not kill it. A few of my clients use it and it would be bad if they would be stuck with version 3.0 forever.
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10-05-2006 @ 9:48AM
rong said...
Not impressed! Not impressed at all.They raised the price of this
app by $50. Not in and of itself is not a huge deal to me because I
already own it (but sucks for others), BUT, what is really lame is that the upgrade price is now actually more than what I had purchased version 2.0 for about 1 year ago.
I KNEW this buyout would be bad but nobody believed me. Adobe is the new Microsoft and that is not a good thing. I can ignore Microsoft and stay away from their products but I have to use Adobe products as a designer.
Somebody help.
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10-05-2006 @ 9:50AM
rong said...
Ooops! I mean 3.0. Yes I purchased 3.0 about a year ago for $78.98.
Adobe sucks.
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10-05-2006 @ 9:58AM
J.Y. said...
They are still listing Contribute 3 as being bundled with "Macromedia Studio". What are they doing here? So if I upgrade Contribute now (the version that came with my expensive studio bundle). I get to buy it again when the rev the rest of the products and release the next iteration of Macromedia Studio? Or is it no longer going to be bundled with studio? This is very annoying...
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10-05-2006 @ 11:32AM
Isaiah Carew said...
I think I'll still take RapidWeaver for $49 bucks.
Isaiah
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10-05-2006 @ 11:55AM
Tony said...
Isaiah,
Contribute and RapidWeaver are aimed at two entirely different markets. Contibute is great for organizations who have someone else design the site for them, but want a user-friendly client for the content contributors (hence the name.) Since Contribute obeys Dreamweaver template tags/locks, it's very powerful and configurable from an admin perspective. Plus it allows distributed permissions, so you don't have to give everyone their own access to the web server...you send them an encrypted key that gives them whatever access you want, pretty much as granular as you want.
For what Contribute is, and how *most* people are using it (we have 100 licenses), there's absolutely no comparison with RapidWeaver. Two completely separate types of apps...
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10-05-2006 @ 12:04PM
Michael Rogers said...
That's fucked up.
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10-05-2006 @ 12:07PM
thomas_h said...
how can such a big company release an app 9 months after MBP, the first intel mac was released, and it's not a UniversalBinary ?
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10-05-2006 @ 12:12PM
Splashman said...
Thank you, Tony, for actually knowing what the heck you're talking about. Can't say the same for some of the other commenters. And it's hard to tell from Laurie's post whether she even knows what Contribute is. "WYSIWYG web publisher" could be just about anything, and could easily mislead people into thinking it's a DW-lite, which it's not.
I check the TUAW feed just to keep up on what's going on, but frequently have to hold my nose while reading. It would be more palatable and more honest to have a separate section for "recycled press releases for products which we have never used and know nothing about."
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10-05-2006 @ 1:18PM
Brady J. Frey said...
I'll second the opinion that I've been leaning towards Adobe alternatives... hell, it may get me back to Quark Xpress (or maybe not). I'm tired of the weak updates, and the financial drain... nevertheless, I have no interest in Contribute, and I'd much prefer a customized, quality, web based CMS over a desktop app anyday. Contribute is clean, but it's no where near the quality of some of the web CMS' I've used and developed.
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10-05-2006 @ 1:26PM
Laurie said...
Ah... it's good to be back. I missed these scathing comments. Thank you, Splashman, for such a warm "welcome back" :)
Contribute is, in fact, a wysiwyg web publisher. It's many other things, and could be described many other ways, but I felt that "wysiwyg web site editor that most people don't use to design pages, but instead to collaborate on page updates and such" was just a bit too clunky for early in the morning. And since you care, I am very familiar with Contribute and have been a licensed user since its inception with Macromedia. I use it often on several of my own sites and deploy it regularly for my own clients who want an easy way to keep their sites up to date.
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10-05-2006 @ 2:21PM
Splashman said...
Laurie, the only words I directed to you, personally, were "it's hard to tell from Laurie's post whether she even knows what Contribute is. "WYSIWYG web publisher" could be just about anything, and could easily mislead people into thinking it's a DW-lite, which it's not." You think that's "scathing"? Uh, okay. The rest of my comments were directed to TUAW as a whole; there are far too many blog entries which are obviously re-worded press releases. I didn't know for sure whether your Contribute post was one of them, and that's why I stated it the way I did ("It's hard to tell...").
Here's a thought: How about taking my comment as constructive criticism? Unless there's an electron shortage I didn't hear about, you could easily have added a few words to clarify: "A WYSIWYG web publisher for non-technical users, set up by an admin using Dreamweaver." That would give your readers what they *need* to know -- i.e., it isn't the same animal as Rapidweaver or other web publishers, as some commenters concluded after reading your post.
Photoshop could be described as a photo editor, but if I were writing a blog entry on it, I'd probably expand on that. Y'know, maybe just a little bit? So readers would understand that it's a teensy bit different than EZ Foto Editor Lite?
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10-05-2006 @ 2:41PM
Laurie said...
Splashman, you're obviously a bright guy and feel passionately about what and how we post here. We're hiring more bloggers - you should apply. Seriously.
Point taken, however. The thing is, our readership runs the gamut so we don't even try to hit the mark for all of them with every post. We couldn't possibly. My colleagues will confirm that I dislike rehashing news as much as you dislike reading it. The difference is that I have a much wider audience to cater to than you do so it comes with the territory. And as far as the post being more informative - that's what the links are for. If someone doesn't know a lot about the subject, there are references they can follow to get more detailed info. Every post can't be a full page feature. And we're damned if we do, damned if we don't. if we get too specific or too technical, we're accused of ignoring the "power users" and catering to novices. if we go the other way we're accused of being over the heads of half our readers.
I hope this clears things up a bit. It's not that your opinion isn't valid - it's just that for every one of your opinions there are so many others to consider. Which means someone is going to be annoyed with us no matter what.
Thanks for listening.
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10-05-2006 @ 4:52PM
Ryan said...
A comment for the guy who asked for a Photoshop replacement, Google "Pixel image editor" and see what you think. It's not finished yet, it will be by the end of the year and it's a nice little program. Runs on OS X (Intel/PPC), Linux, Windows. And if you get it before it goes to 1.0 it's only 32 bucks. That includes all updates until it goes to 2.0.
(sorry for the advertising just want people to see one alternative to PS, and see that it has merit and value.
Adobe is very stupid for not releasing this or any software from this point forward as a Universal.
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10-05-2006 @ 5:28PM
Splashman said...
Laurie, I appreciate your straightforward reply. I'm not applying for a job; I'm providing some constructive criticism. I won't bother with credentials; suffice to say that communication is my thing, and that's why I'm investing my time, rather than just rolling my eyes and clicking away. One last comment, and I'll let it go.
I understand perfectly that you must write for a wide audience, but that makes my point for me. In this case, there are three groups of readers: (1) Those who know what Contribute is, (2) those who don't know what Contribute is and aren't remotely interested in anything related to web publishing, and (3) those who don't know what Contribute is but might possibly be interested, depending on what exactly it is. Groups 1 & 2 take care of themselves; unless you decide to limit your audience to those two groups, Group 3 is what you should be thinking about as you write.
So, Group 3 looks at your post and sees "WYSIWYG web publisher". They stare at that for a second. "Another web publisher," they say to themselves. "Any reason to believe it's any different than any other web publisher, including the one I already have? Not really. Not worth my time to click through. Next post."
Someone who doesn't know about the slick DW/Contribute combination won't get any clue from your post. Again, I'm not talking about seven paragraphs plus a feature list; I'm talking about 14 words instead of 3, so that a reader can take a quick look and accurately judge "this is something I might be interested in" or "meh." Yes, you can argue that the reader can always click through to read the details, but the reader won't waste his/her time if your post has led them to believe it's not of interest.
Bottom line: If you're going to spend your valuable time posting, it makes good sense to take an extra 30 seconds to help readers separate the wheat from the chaff.
Thanks for your consideration.
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10-05-2006 @ 6:02PM
Laurie said...
Splashman - thanks for stating your case rationally and intelligently. I'm afraid we're going to have to agree to disagree on many of these points, but I'll take a well thought out and well written comment that I disagree with over some of the alternatives any time.
And now we can both move on. I have no doubt we will spar again in the future and I even look forward to it :)
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