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Adobe Announces Discontinuation of 'Muse' Website Building Software

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Adobe today announced that it is discontinuing its website building software "Adobe Muse" for Mac and PC. The shutdown process begins today with the final feature release of Muse, although technical support for Creative Cloud customers will remain ongoing through May 20, 2019. After that date, Adobe will officially end new feature development for the software.

Adobe Muse launched in 2012, offering users the ability to design websites without having to write any code. Adobe said that while it has been "deeply committed to the Muse vision," trends in recent years have caused the company to evolve its strategies related to website creation.

adobe-muse-logo.jpg

Now, Adobe is thanking Muse users while hoping a "smooth transition" can be made into other Adobe programs that will be sticking around:
If you are building complex websites and applications, you can now use Adobe XD. Although XD does not generate web-ready code as Adobe Muse did, XD is an all-in-one solution that allows users to design, prototype and collaborate with stakeholders and developers to bring their websites to life.

If you are building a website to showcase your creative work, you can use Adobe Portfolio to create beautiful portfolio websites that can also be connected to the Behance platform.

If you are building one-page websites, such as photo stories, newsletters, or landing pages, you can use Adobe Spark Page to create beautiful responsive web pages with your own unique brand.
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Adobe explained that users will still be able to open Muse on their Mac or Windows computers, as well as edit or create new websites in the app. But, after May 20, 2019, there will no longer be any compatibility updates or fixes to bugs that could appear when users publish a Muse-created website.

For more details about the Adobe Muse discontinuation, be sure to visit the company's FAQ page on the topic.

Article Link: Adobe Announces Discontinuation of 'Muse' Website Building Software
 
Article Link
https://www.macrumors.com/2018/03/26/adobe-discontinuation-of-muse/
I always thought it was a weird little app. I think I was trying to get it to do too much and was getting frustrated with it. Personally I use Coda with CodeKit, but that's a lot more advanced than Muse. I recommend those for actual web development.
 
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This is not the first time Adobe has yanked a design oriented application for website development.

Adobe allowed GoLive to wither and die on the vine years ago. Could it be that Adobe developers could not keep up or evolve GoLive to CSS, Web 2.0, etc...

Maybe Adobe wants to take the simple out of website design.

How is it that the Macintosh excelled in desktop publishing and page layout yet decades later the Mac seems to lack a robust WYSIWYG website development tool.

For those who had the opportunity to use NeXTSTEP remember how smooth and buttery display postscript was. It was a true WYSIWYG work environment. Even the simplest of drawing programs were masters of drag n’ drop layout on that platform.

Check out Flux from
http://www.theescapers.com/
Maybe it will help fill in some of the missing pieces.
 
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Ugh, this is horrible news. Started transitioning to Muse for fluid visual design and layout. Had a website in development built in Muse to launch in the next few weeks. It had quirks, but once learning the limitations it worked well enough to get a decent looking website off the ground for a relatively low-budget. I'm a motion graphics and video editor, so coding is not my speciality. Guess I'll be going back to Dreamweaver and looking for templates that can be semi-easily modified moving forward. Unfortunately, the WYSIWYG view in Dreamweaver just does not work well enough all the time.
 
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SOLLERBOY said:
Great :( Now I am going to have to pay someone like square space a shed load of money and have a generic cookie cutter website. I really enjoy using muse. Are they at least going to make it free?
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It doesn't appear to be the case.

Adobe XD is probably what Adobe wants you to use instead, which is a lot more powerful but a bit more complicated.
 
I actually used Muse and found it pretty good... not perfect, but Adobe was at least addressing the bugs and releasing betas with new features. At my last job I helped a junior graphic designer with no coding experience get set up with Muse to build basic scrolling / expansive micro-sites that actually functioned flawlessly.
 
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iZac said:
*sigh* I wanted Indesign for the web and it basically delivered that.

What other WISIWIG desktop publishing type program should I move to now?
Click to expand...

Disappointed in Adobe...again.
They seem to have a real knack for pissing off their users.

Try webflow.com

It's not as intuitive as Muse/InDesign, but apparently it has clean code.

They even have a CMS component.
 
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SOLLERBOY said:
Great :( Now I am going to have to pay someone like square space a shed load of money and have a generic cookie cutter website. I really enjoy using muse. Are they at least going to make it free?
Click to expand...

Oh, you put stock in Adobe... the company that shutdown;

1. GoLive Systems (CyberStudio)
2. Macromedia software after they bought them out;
  • Macromedia Action!
  • Macromedia Aftershock
  • Macromedia Authorware
  • Macromedia Central (replaced by AIR)
  • Macromedia FreeHand
  • Macromedia HomeSite
  • Macromedia MediaMaker
  • Macromedia SoundEdit 16
The very company that has added just minor features to photo editing software, nearly zero features to their illustrator software, no major updates to video or post, publishing haha they will be closing down InDesign within the next 5 years... yet wants to charge you $600 PER YEAR to maintain usage of their software. You're surprised!? Seriously??

However, for $469 you can FOREVER OWN CorelDraw (granted it's windows only) or as a PhotoChop replacement purchase Pixelmator Pro, Affinity Photo, Acor, GIMP for under $75 and forever own them!

This is also why people, companies and design firms support WordPress, Joomla, Drupal, Magento, etc... so that some company can't turn around and pull the carpet from underneath them and say, "haha, sucker! We got your money, all these years and now you have NOTHING! Oh but here, a replacement that doesn't actually work as a replacement but it's yours to use, so long as you continue paying us."

You could have purchased and owned the software and your "system" so you would payout $5,000 all in for computers, software, etc but could to this very day, use the same setup for publishing... No no no, let's pay Adobe $600/year for less privilege of using software they don't do any major updates or create any major new software, but have ZERO issues on pulling the carpet from underneath you.

This isn't the first or the last time that Adobe will be doing this! So anyone invested in their "cloud" software be forewarned... Your favorite software could be next!
 
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As a web designer and developer I never used Adobe's Muse, but I do use Photoshop, Illustrator and After Effects. The only time I used Dreamweaver was when I was taking certain college courses. My person opinion, programs like Muse and others the make developing websites "simpler" do a terrible job with HTML5/CSS 3.0. However, content is king and that is the bottom line when it comes to making a website. I also cringe when a client says to me "Well, I can simply do the website if you won't accept this price for doing the website". I have to keep my temper and smile :D when I hear that coming from a client. I deep down want to say "Then go and do it yourself jerk weed", but I usually take a deep breath and calmly explain that I can do it better than you can do it yourself applications with hopes of getting a fairer price. I have nothing against people wanting to use programs like Muse, but don't try using it as leverage when it comes to having a website done by a professional web designer/developer. Sorry for my little rant.
 
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Flashback! I still remember using Adobe PageMill in circa 1997 on my grape iMac G3 (333MHz! ), playing around with building my first websites just to learn the product had been discontinued. While befriending with the idea of switching to GoLive or Dreamweaver I realized the web would probably become too complex to be handled on a WYSIWYG editor and decided to learn to code. Looking back today, not the dumbest of my life's decisions. ;)
 
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... many companies (such as squarespace, wix, etc.) include their own template-based site builders that are actually pretty decent at creating expansive sites. Maybe Adobe should make a service such as these, aimed at graphic designers with no code experience? Just a thought.
 
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I switched to RapidWeaver and Stacks a decade ago and never looked back. It's a joy to use and it's reasonably priced.
 
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Though I haven't used Muse in a while, I did build a few sites with it and was impressed with the overall ease of use and control over design. That said, I'm not surprised it's on the chopping block.

With so many CMS platforms like WordPress, Wix and others, Muse has become a bit of a dinosaur with the impending comet streaking across the sky. These days 100% of my websites are built with WordPress unless the customer specifically asks for another CMS. Short if paying for hosting it's free, has almost infinite plugins for expandability, great themes (I really like Impreza for it's design capabilities), and WPBakery page builder for us not-inclined-to-code designers, all put together it's not quite WYSIWYG but pretty close. Anything that needs custom coding, which is rare, I send to a couple of freelancers that take care of it.
 
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