Macromedia Programs for web designs?
 

In a effort to become more independent in the job market , a friend and I are going to start a web design business. What do you guy thinkj of the Macromedia Programs such as Flash, Dreamweaver,Fireworks....

Fireworks is useful but I prefer Photoshop/Image Ready for processing images.
Dreamweaver writes good tight code as I am told and easy to learn.
Flash is indispensible for web work.
Freehand I love but you cannot argue with Illustrator either.

crap. Flash is an industry standard though...but it is crap. Fireworks is not Photoshop. I've tried every version of dreamweaver since v1, and never liked any of them. I code pages by hand using BBEdit. If I want to get lazy I use GoLive.

Macromedia is a lousy company with some idiotic software paradigms. They are in the same boat as MS in my book...

Macromedia is the 2nd worse software company in the history of the world. Please, please do not give any money to those idiots.

I once had to pay $500 for a xerox copy, folded, stapled software manual to those jack-a$$es. The program I bought, Video Works, the precursor to Director, did not come with a manual.

Dreamweaver is the second best HTML editor out there - right behind vi or emacs.

I'm webmaster for one of the largest Agricultural Radio networks in the country, and I use Macromedia's programs all the time.

I use Dreamweaver MX for ColdFusion and Fireworks for images. If you like writing the code yourself it's perfect, but the second you start getting dynamic stuff going on it will totally butcher your code. either do it all by hand or do it all WYSIWYG. Otherwise you'll be frustrated out of your mind.

Fireworks isn't photoshop, but I think it's better. Everyone has their own opinions, but i think its easier to work with layers, slices, and effects than photoshop. Photoshop does seem to have some more intense effects & plugins, but there are a lot of good ones for Fireworks too. Flash got a ton of hype and became waaay overused. It's hard to think of an example of Flash being used in a real useful, classy way.

You can download trial versions of all Macromedia programs and see what you like and dislike.

vi is the very best ever. I've only used 1% of its capability and I love it. I think you have to be a linux/apple guy to appreciate it though... most windows people want a pretty gui with menus and whatnot. lazyness...

So far I like the programs...learning them as I used photoshop , iI get some of the tools and such ..So far this has been taking my time and its addicting and interesting...

For animations, etc... What choice do you have but use flash? Kinda got ya by the shorthairs don't they?

Lendaddy - Animated gifs, Director, animated pings, etc.

depends what you want the animations to do. You can use QT, as it has sprites for interactivity. LiveStagePro is the best app for getting at them. [rant] Apple has yet to leverage the amazing capabilities of QT. Part of the problem is lack of a decent authoring environment]/rant].

imho Flash is only good for things that can't be done by any other means. For instance, check out www.theyrule.net. But I agree that Flash is by and large overused by "designers" that wouldn't know good information architechture or layout if it hit them with a large stick.

My shop uses dreamweaver for ASP development, it's got its ups and downs, definitely better than some on the market for graphical layout (doesn't insert random tags like frontpage, for instance) but still only a tool, ie you're going to create crappy code if you don't have a foundation in hand-rolled development. Not bad for what it is, though.
BTW, totally agree with nostatic's asessment of "designers." Tools like those made by macromedia are not going to make a good developer out of anyone, but they may help a good developer operate a little more efficiently.