Macromedia

US company specializing in software tools. Its products include the Shockwave player, which displays Internet content created using the program Director, the Web development tool Dreamweaver, and the vector graphics program Flash. The latter was acquired in 1997, when Macromedia purchased FutureWave, the company that had created Flash (originally known as FutureSplash). In 2001, Macromedia branched out into database-driven Web applications with the acquisition of Allaire, whose Cold Fusion application server had been released in 1995.

Macromedia was created in 1992 from the merger of three separate companies: MacroMind, Paracomp, and Authorware. The main product of MacroMind, founded in 1984 by Marc Canter, Jay Fenton, and Mark Pierce, was a computer-animation package called VideoWorks (which became Director in 1988). MacroMind merged in 1991 with Paracomp and in 1992 with Authorware, both of which were founded in 1987. Paracomp's main product was a 3D graphics and animation program called Swivel 3D, while Authorware was an educational courseware company. It is now owned by Adobe Systems.