Yesterday I completely forgot to mention Macromedia and Adobe GoLive, both website development tools. I forgot partly because I’ve never used GoLive (so it isn’t at the forefront of my mind) and secondly I no longer use Dreamweaver. I’ve taken a shining to the excellent TSW WebCoder, which to my mind does everything that a web developer needs.
However this Adobe/Macromedia merger/aquisition – I’m not sure what the proper legal terms are – continues to get people chatting. I was happy to see that someone else agree with me about Fireworks, but there remains fair amount of uncertainty regarding what’s going to happen.
Update: More doom and gloom prophecies for web people
In other news: after a discussion with a collegue last week about Fred Dibnah and other fans of older technology I’ve been thinking there aren’t too may people that we could call “craftsmen” around nowadays. At one time craftsmen in a variety of fields could be found on every street corner – jewellers, steam engine mechanics, watch makers etc. But with the advent of a much more centralised outlook to technology – the internet being the epitome of this view – these people are growing less and less.
That’s a great shame, after all the machine and constructions these people made last for far, far longer than our modern efforts, even with the advances in technology we pride ourselves in. Why else would tower blocks put up in the 70s and 80s need to be demolished because of dodgy building practices, yet churches from three hundred years ago can still be found in regular use in many UK towns?
I’m not a Luddite, after all I work with the internet for my job, and it’s my hobby and passion as well. However I’d like to see a return to the traditional craftsmen values of reliability, understanding, patience and above all a well-designed output. In a world of fast-food, mass-production and international travel let us not lose site of the fact that just because the tools of our trade might be a keyboard and mouse rather than a hammer and chisel, we should continue to strive to produce items that will last.
I’m very tempted to put “web craftsmen” on my business cards :0)