Adobe Vs. Macromedia - Top 10: Surely everyone has heard that Adobe will be buying Macromedia. The real question is, what is this brute going to look like when all the dust settles. Adobe, sit up straight and pay attention, here's my wish list.

1. Please don't get rid of FreeHand. I love this program. Everything about it is sexy: Multiple pages, no switching between direct select and the arrow tool -- trust me, this program is the Swiss Army Knife of vector illustration. The only justificatin for using Illustrator over FreeHand is that most printers don't know what the heck to do with a FreeHand file.
2. If you are going to dump Fireworks, at least incorporate some of the tools into Photoshop. Wouldn't it be great to have the gradient control of Fireworks in Photoshop? Or the vector tools?
3. Let Macromedia use the tabbed panels. Remember when Adobe sued Macromedia to prevent them from using their interface? Hopefully, we can get rid of the God-awful interface that MX+ users are faced with.
4. Get rid of all the garbage that Macromedia spewed out this last year or so: FlashPaper? Contribute? Captivate? Flex? Who cares? Apparently, Macromedia thinks all us freelancers are a bottomless pit of money. Incorporate these tools into Flash and Dreamweaver the way you should have in the first place or get rid of them.
5. Quit pricing upgrades differently. I don't care if I have version 1.0, quit charging me like I never bought anything from you. Let me upgrade if you are offering an upgrade! Hey Adobe, want to make some quick money? Let users of Director 8.0 and prior upgrade. Now that Director supports DVD, there's a legitimate reason for some of us to buy the newest version.
6. Upgrade Fontographer and quit charging so much for Adobe fonts. You'll be making plenty of money now, so cut us a break!
7. It's Dreamweaver, ok? Not GoLive. Don't even think about it. We all switched to Dreamweaver because it didn't muck with our code. Of course, in MX2004 we now get stuff like ">!--DWLayoutEmptyCell--> " in blank cells. Hmmm, wonder if Pagemill is still around?
8. Not every program is worth $400 or more. Sure, Acrobat Professional is a nice program but it doesn't do anything! You can't even create a PDF from scratch using it. It's a plugin, nothing more. Price it accordingly.
9. Please don't get rid of FreeHand.(see #1)
10. More complete manuals with purchase. I hate buying "studio" versions. You get this scrawny little book that doesn't cover half the features. If you want to encourage me to buy the studio, then give me all the manuals. At least in PDF format.

Ok, so it was more of a rant than a wish list. The truth is, I'm hopeful that this merger will bring good things to the community. I really do hope that Adobe will incorporate some of the more useful Macromedia tools. I wish that Adobe will be able to build quality apps with a smaller footprint. I hope that Macromedia's innovation and Adobe's quality will combine to build apps that are superior to what we have today.

And I wish I would have bought Macromedia stock a couple of weeks before the news broke!

Contact MHenry: MHenry@experts-exchange.com

I am hoping this article will help members uderstand a little about the Page Editor's role and motivation. It is just one view of PEs, and other Editors might write the article differently. The reason is that we are relatively independent and centered on out own topics rather than site wide issues.

Why do we have Page Editors and why would an Expert want to be one? The first WHY is easy. Most issues start in TAs. Most are locally resovable if the folks doing the resolution understand the topic and have the tools to do local QA, moderation, and thread managment. The second WHY is more complex, and you will get different answers from different PEs, just as you get different answers to the same question put to Experts. For me, there are three reasons. First, it is an extension of what I already do as an Expert: help members get good solutions. Second, it gives me the tools and authority to have a direct hand in improving the quality going into the PAQ. Finally, it puts me in a position where I can help in the education of new Experts, who may have the technical skills, but need help learning the communication and presentation skills to that will make them successful.

It seems sometimes that members confuse the role of PEs and Moderators. There are some similarities. We have very similar tools that allow us to manage threads; we have the ability to post admin comments; we can post member comments; we have access to some private areas of the site. However, the roles are very different. The Moderators have responsibilty for site-wide enforcement of the MA. Editors can operate site wide but are assigned to one or more local topics where they frequently are also a ranked expert. If they see an MA violation, they may respond with a warning if it is minor but more frequently they simply pass it on to the Moderators after taking some remedial action, such a posting a warning. The PEs are not policemen, and we don't want to be. We operate using our normal expert ID because we are first of all active Experts; we just happen to have some tools that let us do a little more -- AS EXPERTS.

Our reason for being is to improve the EE experience for both users and Experts. That means focusing on PAQ quality and education. The ultimate goal is a PAQ in which every solution is perfect and usable by Googlers looking for the quick answer. To get that, threads have to be managed. Users have to be guided, and Experts (especially newbies) need to be educated.

So how can you help? As a user you can be patient and let Experts give you the best possible solution. Don't just jump on the first partial solution; insist on quality, complete solutions when it is appropriate. On the other hand do not have unreasonable expectations. Sometimes the answer is "no" or "you can't do that". When an Editor indicates you have an anwer, close out the question and move on. If you are not sure about a solution, ask the PE.

As an Expert, expect to see poor quality comments deleted. The PEs are going to be pursuing quality much more agressively, and trash is just going to be taken out. Take the time to produce good solid comments that address the question. If someone jumps in ahead with a fast response that isn't worth its electrons, you will be protected because trash comments will be deleted. In the Javascript topic the top-experts are working with me to improve quality through a set of guidelines we have developed. They are posted at http://cd-eepages.fateback.com/cdeejsgl.html.

We are hoping that these quality-oriented guidelines will become a model for site-wide guidelines as once again the Web related topics take the lead in making EE a better site.

If you want to help improve your TA talk to your PEs; get to know the other Experts in your TAs and most important, learn to work as a team, so we get the best possible PAQs.

Contact COBOLdinosaur: coboldinosaur@experts-exchange.com

Thanks to all of you who wrote in after the last issue telling me about your experiences contacting the White House. I especially liked the one from the gentleman in British Columbia who said that ever since he sent a message, "an outfit called Cyveillance (www.cyveillance.com?), located just outside DC in Virginia, sends its robots through my website every month." Apparently, there are some people who aren't so happy that they get visits like that. Of course, stopping them isn't that difficult.

I also got an email pointing out that Microsoft does have a service to update you about new patches and such, which is true, but that wasn't the point of my item. My point was that Microsoft doesn't send anyone an email about the updates -- it uses services built into its operating system and products.

Special note to Jerry: I'm not a member of the National Athletic Trainers Association and I don't own nata.com either. This is the only site I visit regularly.

On to what's new: Spamhaus, the anti-spam group, actually had some nice things to say about Microsoft, and it blames ISPs who pay lip service to spam gangs who use botnets to send spam. According to Spamhaus, most of the spam comes from hijacked computers -- as many as 100,000 each week -- in the United States.

It's time to bookmark Google, too. f-secure.com reported last week that a minor typo -- hitting the K key just before hitting the L key when you're trying to get to Google -- will send you to a site that downloads dozens of trojans on to your computer. I know I shouldn't say this, because some of you won't listen -- but do NOT go to the website that f-secure tells you not to go to.

New York Attorney General Eliot Spitzer filed suit against ISP Intermix last week, saying that Intermix was secretly installing sypware on its customers computers, and c|net has removed 600 programs from its download.com that do the same thing. It's about time.

Finally, Sophos reported last week about a man who was arrested for sending a worm to a teenaged girl's computer and then spying on her through her own webcame. Sunday, Toshiba's UK lab announced a breakthrough in voice and video files streamed over the net that could make them untappable and ultra-secure. The technology is not yet commercially available.