Adobe discusses PageMill's fate

Responding to an initial report on British Mac site Macworld UK, Raine Bergstrom, group product manager for Adobe's Internet Products Group, told MacCentral that Version 3.0 is indeed the end of the road of the consumer product.

The San Jose, Calif., company will instead focus its development and marketing efforts on the next version of GoLive, the high-end Web-authoring application Adobe (adbe) acquired in January 1999. (Both packages include Mac and Windows versions.)

"We feel that the GoLive code base is one that's more a 2000, a millennium, code base, and this is what we've been focusing our development efforts on," Bergstrom said. "The professional audience is the one that we've had the most success with. But we're not abandoning our PageMill users. PageMill 3.0 will still be offered, and we'll continue to support it."

According to Adobe's Web site, PageMill is no longer available from the company's online store.

Bergstrom said Adobe hopes that longtime PageMill users are ready to move up to a higher-level product, specifically the upcoming GoLive 5.0. He said the company has made a number of interface changes intended to make GoLive seem more like an Adobe product and render it more appealing to PageMill users.

Adobe (adbe) In addition, Bergstrom said, special pricing for GoLive 5 will be offered to PageMill owners (even those who got the product bundled with an iMac).

"PageMill users will be treated just as if they had purchased GoLive in the past," Bergstrom said. "We're treating all our Web authoring customers the same. For those who got PageMill with an iMac, it's a great deal because GoLive is a $300 product."

GoLive 5.0 is due in the second quarter of the year for about $300. It will introduce new features such as an on-board interactive editor for editing multimedia, "360Code" that enables control over any Web design source code, beefed-up site planning and management, asset check in and check out through WebDAV support, and "smart links" that provide drag-and-drop object sharing with other Adobe products.

A Dynamic Link feature will simplify incorporation of dynamic database and e-commerce capabilities.

The departure of PageMill, like Claris HomePage before it, seems to leave a sizeable hole in the market for consumer-focused Web building applications.

Bergstrom said all users who develop Web pages for business purposes and "more than once every few months" will eventually use a competitive tool such as GoLive or Macromedia Dreamweaver.

Bergstrom said he feels consumers who simply wish to produce personal home pages will create them with the tools provided by other programs such as Microsoft (msft) Word or AppleWorks, and through online building tools such as Apple Computer Inc.'s (aapl) HomePage, a component of its iTools services.

"Consumers want to share their memories online, show their pictures to friends, talk about their hobbies, that sort of thing," Bergstrom said. "You may see consumer Web building tools offered as a bundle, but I really don't see many being offered as shrink-wrapped solutions anymore."

For up-to-the-minute Mac news, check out MacCentral.com.

Adobe Systems Inc. this week acknowledged that it has pulled the plug on development of PageMill, its consumer-level Web site-creation tool. Nevertheless, Adobe said it hopes to make PageMill fans an upgrade offer they can't refuse.

Responding to an initial report on British Mac site Macworld UK, Raine Bergstrom, group product manager for Adobe's Internet Products Group, told MacCentral that Version 3.0 is indeed the end of the road of the consumer product.

The San Jose, Calif., company will instead focus its development and marketing efforts on the next version of GoLive, the high-end Web-authoring application Adobe (adbe) acquired in January 1999. (Both packages include Mac and Windows versions.)

"We feel that the GoLive code base is one that's more a 2000, a millennium, code base, and this is what we've been focusing our development efforts on," Bergstrom said. "The professional audience is the one that we've had the most success with. But we're not abandoning our PageMill users. PageMill 3.0 will still be offered, and we'll continue to support it."

According to Adobe's Web site, PageMill is no longer available from the company's online store.

Bergstrom said Adobe hopes that longtime PageMill users are ready to move up to a higher-level product, specifically the upcoming GoLive 5.0. He said the company has made a number of interface changes intended to make GoLive seem more like an Adobe product and render it more appealing to PageMill users.

Adobe (adbe) In addition, Bergstrom said, special pricing for GoLive 5 will be offered to PageMill owners (even those who got the product bundled with an iMac).

"PageMill users will be treated just as if they had purchased GoLive in the past," Bergstrom said. "We're treating all our Web authoring customers the same. For those who got PageMill with an iMac, it's a great deal because GoLive is a $300 product."

GoLive 5.0 is due in the second quarter of the year for about $300. It will introduce new features such as an on-board interactive editor for editing multimedia, "360Code" that enables control over any Web design source code, beefed-up site planning and management, asset check in and check out through WebDAV support, and "smart links" that provide drag-and-drop object sharing with other Adobe products.

A Dynamic Link feature will simplify incorporation of dynamic database and e-commerce capabilities.

The departure of PageMill, like Claris HomePage before it, seems to leave a sizeable hole in the market for consumer-focused Web building applications.

Bergstrom said all users who develop Web pages for business purposes and "more than once every few months" will eventually use a competitive tool such as GoLive or Macromedia Dreamweaver.

Bergstrom said he feels consumers who simply wish to produce personal home pages will create them with the tools provided by other programs such as Microsoft (msft) Word or AppleWorks, and through online building tools such as Apple Computer Inc.'s (aapl) HomePage, a component of its iTools services.

"Consumers want to share their memories online, show their pictures to friends, talk about their hobbies, that sort of thing," Bergstrom said. "You may see consumer Web building tools offered as a bundle, but I really don't see many being offered as shrink-wrapped solutions anymore."

For up-to-the-minute Mac news, check out MacCentral.com.