Looking out on the Lake Washington Ship Canal & drawbridge outside of Adobe’s Seattle office today, I’m hit by a profound sense of déjà vu: I looked at the same scene exactly 10 years ago, my first day at Adobe & working in this office.
I’d given up my Flash & HTML design gig, moved out from New York, and joined a team that set out to make a great new Web animation product.
- Back then the open-standard SVG was just about to take over the world (for real!), and we were getting set to support it. We’d export Flash SWF files, too, but fundamentally we wanted to support open standards.
- The browser wars were still blazing away, bringing rapid innovation in HTML.
- We were starting to see hardware-accelerated Web content, and it seemed inevitable that such support would soon be widespread.
Well, you know, funny stuff happens… But here we are, exactly 10 years later, and I’m looking at today’s headlines:
- Adobe CTO Kevin Lynch: We’re Going To Make The Best Tools In The World For HTML5.
- Microsoft is supporting SVG and talking open standards. (Hey, it’s only a decade late; but so it goes…)
- Browser innovation is once again red hot, with Google showing off Chrome speed, and MSFT, Apple, and others leveraging GPUs.
- Flash Player is being optimized for GPUs on mobile & desktop systems.
Interesting times, to say the least.
In the intervening decade I moved coast-to-coast two more times with Adobe, hung up my flamed shoes & the flamed Volvo I bought in Seattle, met & married a great Seattle girl, had two most excellent boys, and got to help design, build, and support five versions of perhaps the most important graphics application in the world.
And now I’m about to take on some brand new challenges. More details to come, soon.
Happy decadivarsary, John! It’s good to have you on my team, so I hope your “brand new challenges” won’t make you stray too far away. 🙂
[Thanks, Klaus. I’m not going far (well, not in the bad sense). –J.]
indeed. keep us posted.
Sounds a bit ominous! Good luck in your new ventures, but I do hope you will continue updating your excellent blog!
[Thanks, Adil; I plan to do so. –J.]
The suspense is killing me, and I just read this blog post. When will you spill the beans?
I’ll have to chime in and say I’m curious too! Spill it John.
Regardless, I can’t wish for anything but the best for you and yours in whatever comes next.
Happy Anniversary! Best of luck to you in the future.
Yes but what’s been more interesting over the decade, the same ol’ Ballard drawbridge, or the same ol’ this vs that technology debate?
Hummmm… What is John building in there? Congratulations on year 10. Don’t forget this blog as a mark of your accomplishments. The info you provide to the online photo community should not be overlooked. Big ups.
Best of luck wherever you end up.
I’ve enjoyed reading your blog over the years, even as just a Flash/Flex developer these days only occasionally dabbles in Photoshop.
Congratulations, John! I hope that the next 10 years brings you and your family much happiness and success.
Good luck with whatever the next step is for you, and glad to hear your blog will still be udpated 🙂
Happy anniversary John!
Can you do up my sister’s volvo John, as a flamed volvo is so unlikely and yet so genius at the same time?
Oh and I hope you aren’t going to be leaving PS behind as you’ve been quite excellent in communicating to the world [and with amazing patience at times], how PS is moving forward and obstacles that may occur with improving such a great programme.
This blog is a great asset to PS.
Whatever those next challenges are John, I’m confident you’ll be great! You’re just one of those guys. : )
Congratulations John! A significant milestone and I’m privileged to have worked side by side with you for almost 5 of those 10 years. -LR_Tom
Wow, that’s amazing John. Congratulations on your 10 years with Adobe. I just came up on 4 years at Widgetbox. I just met up with my friend Terry (you know him too) last week and we were talking about how great of a guy you are and how we have to give you props for always being passionate for creative tools and thusly Adobe. I feel lucky to have met you and get to know you more over the years.
I’m excited to learn what about your new challenges. Hope the boys are doing well. Take care and godspeed my friend.
As long as you don’t dare leave Adobe. Okay???
Dunh dunh duuuunhhhh….!!!
Well done John!
But the real question, after all that time at Adobe, in the great Pacific Northwest, best asked by that immortal journalist is……..
If you were a tree, what kind would you be?
Congratulations, Happy Anniversary:)
Here’s to many more! Whatever that may be.
And yes, you’re a good Photoshop communicator.
John, Congratulations for those 10 years, thank you for your most excellent work driving the Photoshop team.
It was a pleasure to work in the Prereleases…
I hope that you won’t be too far away of the Photoshop universe, maybe leading the Creative Suite? Cheers, and thanks!
Congrats! 🙂 -And joining everybody above, please don’t leave this post!
(Nice read about livemotion there – was the macromedia merge 5 years ago already!? damn, time flies 🙂
Congrats, John! And I echo all of the sentiments and kind words above. Here’s to another 10 years! Best of luck with whatever life throws your way.
(I really liked LiveMotion – great idea, clever concept that made much more sense to me than the Flash interface at the time. worked well, fast, clean, flexible…)
John, you are a quality guy, great attitude, generous with information, a real asset to Adobe. Looking forward to your next “thing.”
“the same ol’ Ballard drawbridge”
Isn’t it the Fremont drawbridge?
Love Adobe’s location right there on the Burke-Gilman trail. Visit the area every summer and stop by.
Happy Anniversary John.
Every morning I start my day with my e-versions of newspapers and then to your blog.
Thanks for the insight and thanks for the interesting blog.
JImmy
Chief Executive Community Motivator .. that’s what you are, John. Thanks for many years of brilliant work and I’m looking forward to see you go to the next level. And I’m pretty sure you’ll make us say “Wow”. 🙂
Cheers,
Martin
I wasn’t around the web side of things when Live Motion was out so I have no idea what it was like, but I suspect I’d have preferred it over flash. All the difficulties I have with using Flash I think are due to it’s Macromedia legacy, it just doesn’t fit with other Adobe products which I think generally have a better interface (for me anyway). Dreamweaver is alright though. What would be great in my dream world is a new product to be developed to replace Flash directly. Do all that Flash does and more (the whole HTML5 thing, whatever it means to do that) but built differently and more like an original Adobe Product. Having seen InDesign rise from the ashes of Pagemaker and Premiere Pro from Premiere 6.5, Adobe does a great job when they can start from scratch (m.
Happy Decade! 🙂
Also just down the road from that bridge is where the boathouse from the movie Sleeping in Seattle is.. I was walking around there one afternoon and noticed it! 🙂