In our first two Design Online columns, we took a look at a couple of individual Web sites. This time out, we're taking a cyberbus tour through the chrome and glass castles of the graphics software developers. This month's column is intended to be used as a tour guide while you travel from tasty site to tasty site.
If you're going to start looking at graphics developer's sites, you can't go wrong by beginning with Adobe Systems, the benevolent giant of the graphic software industry. Together with PageMaker (which they now own), Adobe's PostScript page description language and high-quality fonts fueled the desktop publishing revolution. In the ten years since the advent of PostScript, the print design world has been turned on its ear, and while Adobe's early focus had been on print, they're honing in on everything from digital video to the infobahn.
Adobe's Acrobat technology promises to bring all the scrumptious detail of the printed page to the Web, via the Acrobat PDF file format, in a way that HTML cannot. Acrobat allows you to print your beautiful page layouts to disk—rather than to paper—for the electronic distribution of documents. In all of this summer's hoopla over the Netscape IPO, you might have heard that Adobe owns a sizable portion of Netscape Combinations. This lineage is one of the primary reasons that Netscape is planning on integrating the Acrobat Reader into Navigator 2.0.
Among the bountiful content and links on Adobe's Web site, you can download a free copy of the Acrobat Viewer. The wizards from Mountain View market a host of programs of interest to Web publishers. These programs run the gamut from vector-based drawing (Adobe Illustrator), to photo retouching and manipulation (Adobe Photoshop), to movie making (Adobe Premiere). And let us not forget the latest version of PageMaker (6.0), which can write directly to either HTML or PDF files.
A trademark of Adobe's tools is that they work in harmony with each other. Photoshop, for example, can open up and rasterize vector drawings from Illustrator, while Premiere can use Photoshop plug-ins. The company is not one to rest on its laurels. Recently Adobe acquired Ceneca, developer of the much-acclaimed Mac-based Web apps, PageMill and SiteMill. These programs promise drag-and-drop Web page and site editing, respectively. Adobe released PageMill for sale through the Web on November 2, and packaged versions may be hitting retail stores by the time you read this.
Macromedia is best known for their interactive software development tool, Director. In fact, a good portion of commercial games and edutainment CD-ROMs were developed with Director. And, like Adobe Acrobat, the Director player will soon be integrated into Netscape Navigator.
Recently, Macromedia began branching out into other graphic apps. When Adobe acquired Aldus (the original developer of PageMaker), Macromedia wisely chose to acquire Altsys (the original developer of Aldus FreeHand). Altsys had retained the rights to FreeHand—one of the most popular vector-based drawing packages—and was ready to market the program on its own. Macromedia's latest acquisition is Fauve Software, developers of Matisse and XRes.
Macromedia's site is very well designed and features a host of content. It offers goodies to download and demos to play with. The colors are bright, the layout logical, the graphics crisp, and navigation is straightforward.
You can also find Morph's Outpost on the Digital Frontier on the Macromedia site. Morph's Daily is a very cool online trade for the interactive community and, as such, is similar in intent (though different in content) to the PrePRESS Main Street Gazette section of PrePRESS Main Street. If you're involved in the multimedia-infobahn world, Morph's is a great place to stop by every day to catch up on the buzz.
Quark is best known for their popular page layout program, QuarkXPress. The company—long a one-pony developer—is also diversifying, although they face tough competition from the likes of Adobe and Macromedia. Quark has announced XPosure, an image editing application, and a new multimedia application based on the XPress workspace.
The Quark Web site is a relative newcomer to the Web, having only surfaced in late summer. One of Quark's strengths has been its extensibility through small helper applications known as XTensions. Web workers will be pleased to hear that AstroByte markets an XTension known as BeyondPress, designed to export QuarkXPress page elements to HTML files. BeyondPress converts text style tags to HTML tags, and converts print graphics into GIFs or JPEGs.
Another newbie on the Net, MetaTools, used to go by the name of HSC. Interestingly, they changed their name just as their site came online. You might be familiar with Kai's PowerTools (KPT), their wildly popular Photoshop plug-in filters. Those who have experienced the world of KPT will immediately recognize much of the MetaTools site to be the work of Kai himself. One either loves Kai's psychedelic fractal twisting artwork, or one doesn't. I happen to be (happily) in the former category. When you travel to MetaTools, be prepared to spend some time. The graphics are amazing, and the text ain't half bad, either.
Okay, so you've read through this whole column, you don't use a Mac (our deepest condolences), and have seen nary a reference to CorelDRAW!, the unwieldy behemoth of all PC graphics programs. Well, fear not, you can stop by Chris Dickman's CorelNET for all the latest flames on the biggest-selling graphics application of all. Chris' forum covers every possible aspect of CorelDRAW!, and offers expert help in the form of a number of popular authors and designers (myself included), in addition to Chris' own legendary Corel prowess. Topics include Web page design, output strategies, and the lowdown on the latest releases.
Thanks for riding with us, and don't forget to visit the concession stand!
There's tons more information on Web graphics and design coming your way, but we've got to save some goodies for the next trip (by which time there will be an exponential increase in the number of design sites up on the Net). We take requests, so feel free to email us with your comments, questions and suggestions!
This month's truisms: surfing with a 14.4 baud modem, in the words of the immortal Bart Simpson, sucks. Get yourself an ISDN line, or at least a 28.8 baud modem, and hook up with a decent provider. Using a browser other than Netscape can be hazardous to your graphical viewing pleasure. If your browser doesn't support tables, backgrounds, inline JPEGs and the like, ditch it! And if you're using Lynx, put your Roy Orbison glasses back on, go lock yourself in the basement, and hide behind Grandma's old sofa.
Watch that last step, folks—it's a doozie.