Well, I stumbled upon this site today while looking to see if Freehand had ever been updated since version 10. I haven't really needed to use it much lately as my design focus has changed, but since I'm between jobs right now I thought I'd update my resume. I found some older work worth updating, but I had originally created it in Freehand 10, and opening it with Illustrator just seemed like blasphemy, so I went looking, as I said, for an update.
This group is great! I chose Freehand 1.0 over Illustrator 1.0 way back in prehistoric times, and loved everything about it. I used FH while doing information design at Chevron Resources (alternative energy) in San Francisco, and when I moved to Seattle in 1988 I went to work as a contractor testting FH 2 for Aldus. The group I worked with was just great! If any of you are reading this, thanks for being so cool.
At Aldus, as a tester, I owned the system-related areas and was also the beta admin. I sent out beta disks (remember, this was pre-Web) to designers all over the country who had signed up for our beta program. At one point, just after mailing out a new beta, I discovered a virus on the disk that was used to duplicate the others, and immediately called each designer, explained the situation and sent out clean disks. This was all within an hour of handing the disks off to whichever carrier we were using at the time, so there was no way this virus could have ever caused any damage. The very next day, after someone had leaked the virus story to one of the Seattle newspapers, we found the morning paper with World War 3 size headlines: "Aldus Releases Computer Virus!" Ay, yi, yi! The end of civilization as we know it...
Anyway, after leaving Aldus, I continued to use Freehand until it was no longer supported and about that time my design focus changed anyway. Now I'm mostly using Fireworks for UI design mockups, but miss having Freehand for when I do need it.
I hope you're successful at either bringing it back or creating something similar. Have you contacted the original developers of the product? They also developed Fontographer and the were excellent people to work with. They knew their Postscript inside and out!
Keep up the good work!
Erick Estrada - 12 years ago
bueno marco la version MX no fue mala solo que tuvo varios inconvenientes que a la gente no les agrado.... y yo soy uno de esos . me encanta el formato de freehan 10 y 9 es más sencillo, pero comparado con otros programas de vectores freehan es el mejor.
vaa - 12 years ago
Excuse me, but this survey is a bit limited and limiting. What is it useful for? Hopoe we meet in beta…
A mi forma de ver FreeHand hasta su última versión comercial es la herramienta vectorial con mayor versatilidad que a existido. Todas sus funciones tanto en texto como trazos son excelentes.
Erick Estrada - 12 years ago
i agree with John Pendleton i tell befor FH10 is the best at the moment. FH10 tools mirror, blend, union, divide etc tools are very good to make strange shapes and unique objects. good with work with text too and most of all EASY to work with....
FreeHand 10.x is still "the favorite hammer" in my toolbox, even though I have MX and Illustrator CS5. I have never liked the way MX handled color palettes or path properties, and I'm still finding new depth in version 10.x, well over a decade after its release. It's classic professional software, and I'd like to see it emulated, if not just relaunched outright.
Erick Estrada - 12 years ago
Its funny when you guys are quiet jejejeeje thats means you are working hard. you guys have my email if want opinions. well GL to all...
Erick Estrada - 12 years ago
change the color of the entire canvas to Yellow Notebook Paper will be good when we have tires eyes and of course the normal white. so we can change any time we want the rules and grids ,snap point, blend etc. are good tools. the shadow tool need a improve in all programs the shadow is a copy of the entire object, and we ending make the shadow manually. the new app need the pen so we can use draw tablets. i LOVE freehand 10 i don't change it at the moment. in freehand mx i cant see well because windows of the right take canvas space so the zoom in and out and make it a bit annoying...
Erick Estrada - 12 years ago
speak directly with the team to give them others ideas to improve more options to the new app
will be nice at last for me we have to cover all the areas the other vectors program don't reach without forgetting the ares already freehand cover. example need the pdf export, that way outside printing shops etc can get the art ready to print. but i think more higher thats why is very nice speak with the develop team...
Michael Donlan - 12 years ago
I'm sure you guys are aware of this, but for roughly 20 years, Freehand was the industry standard for newspaper infographics. Hundreds of thousands of graphics in national and individual site archives are now a great deal more difficult to reference and reuse - especially when it comes to maps (one of Illustrator's main weaknesses) and charts (Illustrator's greatest weakness).
I could write a ton about what should be added. If something that was as close to FreeHand as possible was created I'm sure it would be a success! Also, I hated the way FreeHand MX made the gradient fills. I liked the FreeHand 9 version of gradients better. It was more "production friendly." That's a small complaint though.
Well, I stumbled upon this site today while looking to see if Freehand had ever been updated since version 10. I haven't really needed to use it much lately as my design focus has changed, but since I'm between jobs right now I thought I'd update my resume. I found some older work worth updating, but I had originally created it in Freehand 10, and opening it with Illustrator just seemed like blasphemy, so I went looking, as I said, for an update.
This group is great! I chose Freehand 1.0 over Illustrator 1.0 way back in prehistoric times, and loved everything about it. I used FH while doing information design at Chevron Resources (alternative energy) in San Francisco, and when I moved to Seattle in 1988 I went to work as a contractor testting FH 2 for Aldus. The group I worked with was just great! If any of you are reading this, thanks for being so cool.
At Aldus, as a tester, I owned the system-related areas and was also the beta admin. I sent out beta disks (remember, this was pre-Web) to designers all over the country who had signed up for our beta program. At one point, just after mailing out a new beta, I discovered a virus on the disk that was used to duplicate the others, and immediately called each designer, explained the situation and sent out clean disks. This was all within an hour of handing the disks off to whichever carrier we were using at the time, so there was no way this virus could have ever caused any damage. The very next day, after someone had leaked the virus story to one of the Seattle newspapers, we found the morning paper with World War 3 size headlines: "Aldus Releases Computer Virus!" Ay, yi, yi! The end of civilization as we know it...
Anyway, after leaving Aldus, I continued to use Freehand until it was no longer supported and about that time my design focus changed anyway. Now I'm mostly using Fireworks for UI design mockups, but miss having Freehand for when I do need it.
I hope you're successful at either bringing it back or creating something similar. Have you contacted the original developers of the product? They also developed Fontographer and the were excellent people to work with. They knew their Postscript inside and out!
Keep up the good work!
bueno marco la version MX no fue mala solo que tuvo varios inconvenientes que a la gente no les agrado.... y yo soy uno de esos . me encanta el formato de freehan 10 y 9 es más sencillo, pero comparado con otros programas de vectores freehan es el mejor.
Excuse me, but this survey is a bit limited and limiting. What is it useful for? Hopoe we meet in beta…
A mi forma de ver FreeHand hasta su última versión comercial es la herramienta vectorial con mayor versatilidad que a existido. Todas sus funciones tanto en texto como trazos son excelentes.
i agree with John Pendleton i tell befor FH10 is the best at the moment. FH10 tools mirror, blend, union, divide etc tools are very good to make strange shapes and unique objects. good with work with text too and most of all EASY to work with....
FreeHand 10.x is still "the favorite hammer" in my toolbox, even though I have MX and Illustrator CS5. I have never liked the way MX handled color palettes or path properties, and I'm still finding new depth in version 10.x, well over a decade after its release. It's classic professional software, and I'd like to see it emulated, if not just relaunched outright.
Its funny when you guys are quiet jejejeeje thats means you are working hard. you guys have my email if want opinions. well GL to all...
change the color of the entire canvas to Yellow Notebook Paper will be good when we have tires eyes and of course the normal white. so we can change any time we want the rules and grids ,snap point, blend etc. are good tools. the shadow tool need a improve in all programs the shadow is a copy of the entire object, and we ending make the shadow manually. the new app need the pen so we can use draw tablets. i LOVE freehand 10 i don't change it at the moment. in freehand mx i cant see well because windows of the right take canvas space so the zoom in and out and make it a bit annoying...
speak directly with the team to give them others ideas to improve more options to the new app
will be nice at last for me we have to cover all the areas the other vectors program don't reach without forgetting the ares already freehand cover. example need the pdf export, that way outside printing shops etc can get the art ready to print. but i think more higher thats why is very nice speak with the develop team...
I'm sure you guys are aware of this, but for roughly 20 years, Freehand was the industry standard for newspaper infographics. Hundreds of thousands of graphics in national and individual site archives are now a great deal more difficult to reference and reuse - especially when it comes to maps (one of Illustrator's main weaknesses) and charts (Illustrator's greatest weakness).
Best of luck!
I could write a ton about what should be added. If something that was as close to FreeHand as possible was created I'm sure it would be a success! Also, I hated the way FreeHand MX made the gradient fills. I liked the FreeHand 9 version of gradients better. It was more "production friendly." That's a small complaint though.