Stories about: New Magic

Bill Kendrick is a software machine. He is the lead designer and developer of New Breed Software, a company creating free and open source games, libraries, tools and utilities across a range of operating systems, mobile devices, hand held and home video consoles. He has personally created a diverse range of classic Web-based games that run across all browsers, and has worked as a professional video game developer since 2003.

CRM may not be such a sexy topic of conversation today but once upon a time it was hailed as a form of modern magic and everyone wanted the powers it promised. Like all forms of magic there was plenty of smoke and mirrors.

Time to suck and see

Prepress programs have had a hard time making themselves relevant to Web designers. The current versions of traditional print applications Adobe Illustrator, CorelDraw, and QuarkXPress lack so much as a single Web-specific feature that another program doesn't handle more efficiently. In fact, only one application-Adobe Photoshop-has managed to gain wide acceptance among print and online professionals alike.

Making your e-business stand out from the crowd requires sophisticated graphics design, and that requires sophisticated graphics design tools. Vector-based drawing products were originally created for designers to develop resolution-independent artwork for print design. Currently, these same products are proving very useful for Web design as well as for print. One product that is particularly adept at both is Macromedia Inc.'s FreeHand.