[WEB4LIB] RE: Does this exist?

[Thomas Dowling]

> Well, Jorge, I'm not impressed.  I don't mean that I might not be
> impressed if I could see or buy the software. Details of how not to
> run a business follow:
>
> 1. I searched the web for Webtricity and found a favorable review.
> 2. There was a link to the publisher, www.micrografx.com/, which seemed
> like a good and useful thing.
> 3. The website doesn't feature Webtricity at all.  By searching I
> found it.
> 4. No trial download available, despite a button saying so.
> 5. To find out pricing and purchase options I had to tell them
> everything about me except my mother's maiden name on a very long
> form.
> 6. The list of sellers only listed wholesalers.
> 7. The purchase online button produced an ASP error.
>
> So, I called the 800 number listed on the page...

Once upon a time, I counted PicturePublisher, the Micrografx bitmap
graphics program, as a little treasure.  It was cheap but useful, you
could buy it standalone or as part of a suite with their vector and flow
chart programs, and basically it did 90% of Photoshop's work at 10% of
Photoshop's [retail] price.  Then they screwed up royally; they jacked the
price way up with a new release just about the time Adobe and Macromedia
came out with very competitive products that cost less, got a lot more
publicity, and were better optimized for web work.  Since then, Micrografx
has stopped selling it standalone, and they only bundle it into a couple
of other suites, including Webtricity, that are not well articulated on
their web site.

I still have Picture Publisher on my machine, but I use it less and less.
I have Photoshop, but I'm sure I could also do the bulk of my occasional
graphics work with ImageReady, Fireworks, or PSP.  The one feature I still
turn to in PicturePublisher is its ability to calculate the final size of
JPEGs at different compression levels, before I save from TIFF or
Photoshop image.