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25 Years of Adobe

25 Years of Adobe
Written By
eWEEK EDITORS
eWEEK EDITORS
Dec 13, 2007
2 minute read
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25 Years of Adobe

25 Years of Adobe

John Warnock and Charles Geschke leave Xerox Parc Labs in 1982 to work on what would become PostScript.


25 Years of Adobe – The First Product

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Apples Steve Jobs works with Adobe to create the first PostScript-based printer, the Apple LaserWriter, in 1985.


25 Years of Adobe – Prelude to a Program

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That same year, Aldus creates the first desktop publishing program, PageMaker. It first runs on Macs and depends on PostScript.


25 Years of Adobe – Adobe’s Own

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Adobe moves into making its own end-user programs with the release of Adobe Illustrator in 1987.


25 Years of Adobe – Adobe Photoshop

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Adobe Photoshop, perhaps the most successful application of all time, was released in early 1990. Other photo programs come and go, but photographers, designers and publishers—then and now—rely on Photoshop.


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25 Years of Adobe – Adobe PDF

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In 1993, Adobe introduces its popular device- and resolution-independent document exchange format, PDF. By 1995, Netscape had integrated PDF via a plug-in, and PDF was on its way to becoming an important Web format.


25 Years of Adobe – Aldus and Adobe Merge

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Adobe and Aldus merged in 1994, giving Adobe its first desktop publishing program.


25 Years of Adobe – Adobe Tries Web-publishing

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Until 1996, Adobe developed primarily for the desktop screen and the printed page. With PageMill 1.0, it took its first steps into Web publishing. While it was an attractive, light-weight Web-authoring tool, PageMill didn’t make a big splash.


25 Years of Adobe – Adobe Goes After the Desktop

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By the late ‘90s, it had become clear that Quark, not Adobe, was the desktop publishing program vendor of choice. Adobe responded by taking the best of PageMaker and FrameMaker, which Adobe acquired in 1995, along with its own ideas, to create In


25 Years of Adobe – Photoshop for You and Me

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Adobe released its first easy-to-use digital photo program, Photoshop Elements 1.0, in 2001.


25 Years of Adobe – Adobe Acquires Macromedia

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In 2005, Adobe acquired its greatest rival, Macromedia, for $3.4 billion. With the deal, Adobe acquired the industry-standard Web site design program, Dreamweaver, and the very popular multimedia Flash family.


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25 Years of Adobe – Adobe Ventures into Linux and Open Source

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By 2007, Adobe had released Acrobat and Flash Player for Linux. In 2007, Adobe announced that it would be open-sourcing Flex, its Web development framework, in answer to Microsofts Silverlight.


25 Years of Adobe – Adobe Goes High Def

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In late 2007, Adobe released Adobe Flash Player 9 Update 3, one of the first multimedia programs capable of showing streaming HD content over the Web.


25 Years of Adobe – See More Slideshows Like This One

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