Corel drop RAVE in X3

[El Brenty]

Corel have released their new Corel Graphics Suite X3, which is a follow on from 12. I guess they were superstitious and didn't want it to be 13. Although changing the number, I don't think it's worked for them because they've decided to take Corel RAVE out.

Anyone who'se used Corel RAVE will know it's a fantastic vector based flash animation program with some logic. Not as feature packed as Flash with Action Script, but a lot easier to use, and far better for generating virgin graphics. Some problems with RAVE included hogging most of the system memory, as well as flash files being somewhat on the large size. It was far from perfect. Some of the potential was realised where Version 2 of Corel RAVE improved memory and file size handling with more logic, and I was quite looking forward to seeing how far they would have taken a Version 3 ...

... But they discontinued it instead! Seems they've been concentrating on giving Corel DRAW and PhotoPAINT some more tweaks and even more extra features and compatibility.

This is a real shame, because RAVE with a couple more tweaks was looking to become a formidable competitor to Flash. Whoever decided to drop RAVE and not develop it further should have their head examined.

At the moment, I know of no other good flash-generating programs (Apart from Macromedia Flash itself), and will greatly miss RAVE. My request to Corel: Please do some out of hours work to develop RAVE further and bring it back with Corel 14 (X4?)!

[El Brenty]

UPDATE:

It appears that RAVE has been dropped thanks to something Adobe have in the pipeline...

... Adobe are planning to make the SWF format opensource!

Therefore if this happens, Corel will be wasting their time paying for further development, when a spread of opensource programs will be coming onto the market for free download.

Watch this space!