MS and Graphic Design?
No serious graphic designer has dealt with MS software voluntarily. Yes, we’ve all had to make a letterhead template in MS Word, or a PPT presentation for the suits, but given a choice, we typically prefer to stay away from MS.
They’ve always skirted with graphic and web design applications, mind you. MS Publisher has been around forever. Word is a wannabe page layout application. Front Page has been a mainstay of corporate IT web designers for a while now. But, in the end, they are all sub-par applications.
Well, a few years ago, Microsoft bought Creature House Ltd. They were the developers of the graphic design application Expression, which, MS is now giving away for free on their website.
Whether or not it was planned prior to the Macradobe union is not know, but it appears that MS is now gearing up to compete head-on with this technology. They’ve recently renamed the new version of the application to ‘Acrylic‘ and are offering a beta version on their web site for us to try out. Windows only, of course, but certainly an interesting development.
2 Comments
No serious corporate IT shop uses Frontpage. Sure, maybe in some small to medium sized businesses you’ll see FP…but most sizable companies are using Dreamweaver, Contribute, or other tools. Folks that do lots of web work tend to use an IDE…not a WYSINWYG tool.
I’m assuming you *do* use MS software when it comes to basic “office” kinds of stuff like basic word processing.
I should have clarified. Corporate IT people that build occasional web sites tend to still use FP quite a bit. Web designers tend not to. ;o)