StarDestroyer.Net BBS

What's the deal with Adobe Flash? Am I reading this wrong, or does it cost $699, while competing Flash authoring programs tend to cost well under a hundred bucks? What's special about it?

Flash Professional used to be bundled with Macromedia Studio (which is now Adobe Creative Suite Web or somesuch). Macromedia Studio 8 was $999 and also contains Dreamweaver, Fireworks and Contribute, which collectively would cost quite a bit more.

I think the primary reasons to use Flash Professional are simply the rich feature set and assured compatibility with Adobe flash players. You may or may not get that with a third party tool. Flash Professional also is designed with some degree of sensitivity to the needs of professional graphic artists, animators and web developers, which can be both good and bad (for the typical consumer, the UI might seem rather hostile, but for the seasoned pro, things will, in general, make sense).

Of course, if your post was intended as commentary on the absurdly high price of most proprietary business software, you're entirely correct. The prices for software such as Adobe Creative Suite and AutoCAD are absurd. Fortunately, the open source equivalents are looking better all the time.

RThurmont wrote:Of course, if your post was intended as commentary on the absurdly high price of most proprietary business software, you're entirely correct. The prices for software such as Adobe Creative Suite and AutoCAD are absurd. Fortunately, the open source equivalents are looking better all the time.

Which ones would you recommend?