Back when I heard that Adobe would be acquiring Macromedia, I mourned the fact and called it a dark day for ColdFusion.

Well, I wasn’t alone. Adobe didn’t have anything that really impresses web developers. They’re too print oriented. And their forays into web development software were generally disliked, especially by the Macromedia crowd because, whether we used it for coding or not, we recognized Macromedia DreamWeaver as a superior product to Adobe GoLive. Photoshop obviously wins over Fireworks, but Photoshop is expensive and bloated for most web developers’ graphics needs. And Flash was viewed as the cherished child that was probably a motivating force for the acquisition.

In the early days of the acquisition announcement, there were many questions. Is Adobe making the acquisition to just kill off some competition? They wouldn’t axe DreamWeaver for GoLive would they? Am I going to have to buy Photoshop for my occasional graphics work now? And most importantly, would they deem ColdFusion a waste of time and scrap it? Or considering their unimpressive web software offering, would they botch up ColdFusion, losing its appeal?

It may be a different genre of software, but my sadness greatly reminded me of Bungie’s acquisition by Microsoft. The greatest game software company of all time gets swallowed whole by the blandest company of all time. Surely, Microsoft would absorb the Bungie employees into its insipidity, much to everyone’s dismay! Although that may have been a bit extremist, the acquisition has had its downsides.

In Macromedia’s case, it frankly is still too early to tell with certainty what the long-term effects may be. Although previews look good, the new version of ColdFusion hasn’t been released yet. Neither has a version of DreamWeaver. And we have yet to see what Adobe’s “Macromedia Suite 8″ equivalent upgrade will look like.

But Adobe at least appears to have a keen interest in the continuing development of ColdFusion. The same team has been able to continue developing it, now with just more dollars available for research and development. CFMX 7 Hotfix 3 came out just recently. Ben Forta is still the ColdFusion evangelist. Things appear to be well, and there are no apparent issues to worry about. Furthermore, great things have been happening with Flex, showing Adobe’s keen interest in and vision of that venue.

Being primarily a ColdFusion developer, those were my obvious chief concerns, now addressed. What happens to the Macromedia Suite is really just gravy to me, especially now that I use Eclipse as my IDE. Although I would think poorly of Adobe for eliminating DreamWeaver–and there are reasons to suspect that they do not plan to–it ultimately wouldn’t impact me.

Sorry for my doom saying, Adobe. You don’t have the love I had for Macromedia, but give it time and attention, and you might get there.