The proven, effective components of Adobe's UI should be able to be incorporated into other tools. The users are the ones who get hurt via Adobe's actions here, I think.

Posted by: jonathan on May 3, 2002 11:22 AM

 

Both companies have borrowed each other's features. I am in favor if it enhances the usability and feature set of the products I use.

Speaking of usability, looking at both company's flagship products, Photoshop has better usability and reliability than Dreamweaver 4. The only major thing I dislike is that the Undo key also changes which layer is selected.

Dreamweaver, on the other hand, has too many usability and reliability issues to even list. If you paste a chunk of HTML into the graphical view, DW thinks it's text and ampersand codes whatever it can. Apparently, it thinks I'm teaching an HTML class. I changed this by editing the menus.xml file, but of course this will have other odd side effects. Since I've hand coded HTML since the early 90s, I'm using DW less and less.

I feel like overall, Adobe gets usability much more than Macromedia (Illustrator being the major exception). The Photoshop 6.01 patch fixed a couple of minor usability issues, among other things.

Anyone else have opinions on which company places more importance on usability?

Posted by: Chad Lundgren on May 3, 2002 01:21 PM

 

I normally don't curse, but...GODDAMN Patents!
THis is a prime example of the absurdity of patents, how they stifle business, and end up hurting consumers. Software pantents are good-for-nothings.

Posted by: on May 6, 2002 12:32 PM