Ok Jack, I agree with you 100%. this thread is for people who want Adobe to
upgrade Freehand. Personally I am getting out of the design business and going
to open a store that sells eco-friendly products. I am frustrated that Adobe
turned the computer assisted art world into a monopoly with little choice. As
an artist I can use different mediums, but now as a computer artist I have to
use what Adobe produces. I also find AI to be a bulldozer, my beef about it was
that it felt more scientific and less artistic, Freehand just flowed, Illy kept
coming at me with dialog boxes that either told me I couldn't do something or
made me calculate my next tiny move. Freehand has ease of use, is logical and
user-friendly, not to mention fast and does everything I need. Thanks to Adobe
I will focus my artistic talents on helping the environment.
dg

Come on Adobe! Give us an upgrade to Illustrator which lets us customise the
actions and workings of Illustrator to work like Freehand.
One day Microsoft, Corel or someone else will backward engineer Freehand and
we will all jump ship! My god, jumping ship to Microsoft. What a sad day that
will be!!!

[q]I remember an argument occurring once between a lecturer friend and her boss
about what software should be bought and taught...it was settled by opening the
media pages and counting the instances of when they were mentioned.
Illustrator, Quark and Photoshop were on almost every ad. Freehand got about
10% of the ads, at best. The older dinosaurs among you will point out some
industry wide conspiracy towards hugging Adobe products but it's not true...it
is simply that professionals follow their own path and collectively it led them
towards towards the "industry-standard" Illustrator.[/q]and most people still
use peecees, NEXT!

[q]I remember an argument occurring once between a lecturer friend and her boss
about what software should be bought and taught...it was settled by opening the
media pages and counting the instances of when they were mentioned.
Illustrator, Quark and Photoshop were on almost every ad. Freehand got about
10% of the ads, at best. The older dinosaurs among you will point out some
industry wide conspiracy towards hugging Adobe products but it's not true...it
is simply that professionals follow their own path and collectively it led them
towards towards the "industry-standard" Illustrator.[/q]and most people still
use peecees, NEXT!

've been a dedicated FreeHand user since 1992. Yes, I would upgrade -- but only
if they went back to FH9 for the design and functionality of the panels. This
may sound nit-picky but in my opinion FH went downhill in many ways after
version 9 as far as the GUI is concerned. If they did an upgrade but kept the
poorly designed GUI we find in FH10 and MX, I personally would see no reason to
upgrade.

I continue to use FH9 all the time, and use a special OS9 Mac-machine to make
my work daily, but to me it's worth it.

YEEEESSSSS! I love Freehand, especially the multi page function - who has time
to create a new file for each page in a calendar, booklet, brochure,
newsletter, etc. And the page tiling in Illustrator is not the same. PLEASE
Adobe, one more upgrade so we can at least use Leopard. Argh! I use InDesign
for some things, and Illustrator when I need to convert some files - but for my
really creative work - it's Freehand!!

Yes! Our company made money on FRH 8 till today. We play in OSX internet,
music, mailing, etc, anyway FRH 8 is fastest solution for graphic design,
especially for brandbooks, ads and leaflets. I try many times Illustrator, but
click - on klick - click for taking objects and no pages, I always go back. In
our comany half of staff use Freehand 8, because its more stable than other
verions. We have FrH9, MX - Freehand 8 is the best! I think lot of my fiends
work in some way - two systems, but basic jobs on Freehand!

Would I pay for a FreeHand upgrade? Hell yes! I would even pay if they'd just ported it to Universal Binary, even with the old bugs it's the best vector app...

> music, mailing, etc, anyway FRH 8 is fastest solution for graphic design,

If FH8 is better for you than any other version of FreeHand I doubt that any upgrade made by Adobe, Macromedia or even Aldus would be an improvement.

Jukka

I've been using FreeHand for many years and have five copies I would pay twice
the cost of Illustrator to upgrade.

I get lots of young designers coming as interns to my studio. They are all
trained on Illustrator. I was never trained on FreeHand, nor any other
software, I'm a Mac user and just learn as I go. I effectively draw circles
around these young, sharp design students when they use Illustrator to do
projects and I do the same things in FreeHand.

By the end of their internships, most of them have chosen to work in FreeHand
and can produce great technical quality art in half the time they used to do it
in Illustrator.

Some of the people commenting on this forum have said "Adobe would never let
go of FreeHand because they are in business to make money". This is a rough
paraphrase.

It's just not so. There have been a number of companies over the years that
have sold products to competitors or back to the original programmer teams, who
have then continued development of their original product. (I don't know if
Adobe has ever done so.) Perhaps we should be looking for some of the original
Aldus design team to get the code back from Adobe for further development.