Macromedia

Macromedia was an American graphics and web development software house headquartered in San Francisco, California producing such products as Macromedia Flash. The line of Macromedia products is now controlled by its former rival, Adobe Systems, which acquired Macromedia on December 3, 2005. Macromedia was formed by the 1992 merger of Authorware Inc. (makers of Authorware) and MacroMind-Paracomp (makers of Macromind Director). Director, an interactive multimedia authoring tool widely used to make CD-ROMs and information kiosks, was Macromedia's flagship product until the mid-1990s. As the CD-ROM market began to decline and the World Wide Web gained in popularity, Macromedia created Shockwave, a Director viewer plugin for Web browsers, but decided it also needed to expand its market by branching out into web-native media tools.