Adobe is ending new feature development for Adobe Muse and what does this mean for Muse users?
Adobe is ending new feature development, what does this mean?
There are a couple of angles we can view this from and here are some of our thoughts.
Since Adobe’s announcement today that they will release the new (and last) feature Muse update and that they will end technical support in May 2019, we’ve spend a bit thinking about what comes next and these news are, by our opinion, both good and bad. Here is the link to their official announcement for more info.
The bad
Firstly, the bad. Having new feature updates end will is certainly not good news. But bad as it sounds, this will NOT stop Muse sites from functioning and this will NOT stop Muse widgets from working. This simply means Adobe will stop adding new features. The businesscatalyst hosted sites are not so lucky as they will stop working but we were never a big fans of businesscatalyst but rather preferred third party hosting (such as Godaddy, Dreamhost etc). To sum it up, users will still be able to open/save .muse projects, work on existing projects and export the final HTML code which basically means nothing will change. The down side is that browser manufacturers will keep evolving modern browsers, while Muse guys will not follow with updates and this is where it might get tricky in the future, but unless there is a tsunami of internet standard changes we are fairly certain that us, the widget developers, will come to aide in providing a bright and long future to Muse websites with simple compatibility widgets that will keep up with changes to come.
The good
If you have used Muse for some time I’m sure you are familiar with new Muse versions badly affecting your existing Muse projects. Well, in our opinion, one of the best things that come with this news is that, finally, we can sleep safely knowing that there isn’t a major Muse update around the corner that could possibly make our websites unusable (as it did happen in the past, especially with the last couple of releases). In other words, with no changes from Adobe, the last Muse version can become a standard, a stable version that we can further enhance and polish until perfection. It can finally let us have enough time to hunt down all Muse and Muse-widget related bugs and eliminate them. It will be the strongest foundation that we can all build upon. And, as though we are not approving or supporting piracy in ANY way, we can actually anticipate an increase of Muse users (and a large one) from the ‘third markets’ and, as this is probably not great news for Adobe, it could actually grow Muse community much larger.
These news aside, we at MuseShop.net will keep creating new widgets and themes and now we are even more determined in doing so, knowing we can work with a stable version of Muse that, finally, won’t be changed. And we are bringing some very interesting news ourselves in the near future, but this is the matter for another time (not to worry, it’s great news).
These are our quick thoughts on what is certainly huge news for the Adobe Muse community. Tell us what you think in the comments.
Comments (2)
Hi
This is a sad day for us Muse Designers, Thank’s for your reassurance as I feel there is a silver lining to this. One door closes another one opens etc. I love using your widgets and I cannot wait for new releases and the news you have to come.
Thank you
Duane
Hi Duane, we definitely see this as one door opened kind of thing and these things happen more often then not on the web. For instance, now we can hook onto Muse core code and really dig into enhancing it because we know there won’t be an update that changes the core which would make our code useless. This is an enormous opportunity and it will let us do ‘big’ stuff. As for Adobe, they do seem a bit all over the place, I would best describe it as their “experimental phase” because they appear entirely focused on pushing as much new apps as possible. Muse is a gem and I’m sure that, at this moment, there is no better solution in the world for Graphic Designers who want to evolve into web designers and, on top of that, I’m sure there are a LOT of us who simply love Muse. It will be interesting, from one side Adobe is stepping aside and from the other Muse kind of becomes more ours than it ever was so we can’t wait to see what happens.