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SERIF Complete package discontinued. What to get next

DCUK6

By DCUK6
in Educational Software

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dgsmith

dgsmith

Posted
Posted

Sorry to bump a (slightly) old thread, but it is relevant to our consideration presently.

 

We are in the process of considering purchasing Serif software, particularly the "plus" titles and as noted previously, the webplus and movieplus in particular have no affinity alternative. There is much more market choice as far as graphic/photo editing is concerned so that side of things isn't a major concern.

We presently use Adobe CS4 Design Premium which has a 9yr-old Dreamweaver and no video editing capability (we just have Windows MM and nothing else) and the teacher doing iMedia from next year has been suggested that the Serif "plus" line has much easier interfaces that the students would better engage with (when asking other schools).

 

We're in a position where we are thinking about buying this software from scratch, knowing that it is already discontinued, but I can't deny a little apprehension about this. I am just really trying to determine whether anyone else has been in this position and made the plunge to buy under these circumstances, or if anyone has found alternate software that is similar to the aforementioned Serif packages without the crazy annual licensing programs many seem to be adopting these days.

 

Indeed, if in our position, would you go for it or not?

mavhc

mavhc

Posted
Posted

For video we use Corel VideoStudio, it's ok.

 

there's also blender's video editor, davinci resolve (needs higher spec computers than we have, proper gpu), Kdenlive (beta on windows), OpenShot, Pinnacle Studio, and Shotcut

  • Thanks 1
dgsmith

dgsmith

Posted
Posted

Our staff liked the simplicity of the Serif packages, in particular WebPlus which essentially works like publisher, but many other alternate packages are either geared more towards professional usage or with a learning curve; even MS Expression isn't developed anymore but is probably more comparable to dreamweaver. Personally I think having a more industry standard interface isn't necessarily a bad thing, but many students taking the courses that'll use the software won't have any inclination to want to understand the nitty-gritty so would probably appreciate an intuitive interface.

 

Are we worth just taking the plunge and getting some of these titles, despite the current situation of them being out-of-development?

Garacesh

Garacesh

Posted
Posted
Personally I think having a more industry standard interface isn't necessarily a bad thing, but many students taking the courses that'll use the software won't have any inclination to want to understand the nitty-gritty so would probably appreciate an intuitive interface.

For website writing just use wordpress, that's what everyone will be using in the real world.

I dunno, I mean, personally I think it's better if web developers actually write the code. I'm not trying to come across as elitist or anything but websites are, at their base level, code. If something goes wrong, you're going to need to debug that code. So it just follows naturally that you should learn to write the code as actual code, not via a GUI. But for kids in school who probably don't care all that much, a GUI is fine.

 

Are we worth just taking the plunge and getting some of these titles, despite the current situation of them being out-of-development?

Probably, yeah. Serif stuff works fine on Win10 so even if there's no software updates, it'll at least work for the foreseeable future. Probably. Unless MS break something.

foofighterjim

foofighterjim

Posted
Posted
Our staff liked the simplicity of the Serif packages, in particular WebPlus which essentially works like publisher, but many other alternate packages are either geared more towards professional usage or with a learning curve; even MS Expression isn't developed anymore but is probably more comparable to dreamweaver. Personally I think having a more industry standard interface isn't necessarily a bad thing, but many students taking the courses that'll use the software won't have any inclination to want to understand the nitty-gritty so would probably appreciate an intuitive interface.

 

Are we worth just taking the plunge and getting some of these titles, despite the current situation of them being out-of-development?

 

My only reservation would be Windows 10, you simply can't guarantee that Microsoft won't change something in a feature update that interferes with the way the Serif software works. With the absence of development of the Serif software this could then render your purchase redundant. Your options on this front would be to run CBB and test every release for issues with Serif or as a last resort LTSB.

dgsmith

dgsmith

Posted
Posted
My only reservation would be Windows 10, you simply can't guarantee that Microsoft won't change something in a feature update that interferes with the way the Serif software works. With the absence of development of the Serif software this could then render your purchase redundant. Your options on this front would be to run CBB and test every release for issues with Serif or as a last resort LTSB.

 

It seems likely, despite the concerns, that we may end up going for Serif Design Suite. Serif have taken into account our reservations with their quote for our requirements and endeavor to continue offering support, though this is understanding that they're not likely to make any programmable changes if future OS versions break the software.

 

Our current arrangement of using Adobe CS4 is not sustainable anyway and Adobe long washed their hands of that. I guess if we are happy the Serif suite works fine in Windows 10, then we're covered for the foreseeable (as I can't envisage us moving beyond Win10 for some time.. we still need to adopt it first)!

  • 4 weeks later...
dgsmith

dgsmith

Posted
Posted
We were told this too and ended up buying the suite.. Serif said they'd still offer a degree of support going forward, which is more than Adobe offered..
  • 7 months later...
fiza

fiza

Posted
Posted

Sorry to resurrect this old post but has anyone found any alternatives to WebPlus and MoviePlus?

Our Staff like the simplicity of WebPlus and although we have Dreamweaver the students find it harder to use.

Garacesh

Garacesh

Posted
Posted (edited)

Brackets seems good if you're not after WYSIWYG (I don't really know how WebPlus works, never used it), it's replaced Notepad++ as my web-coder-of-choice.. Just be aware that you can't pre-populate extensions for users because they live in \AppData\Roaming\Brackets.

It does have a 'live view', but, I can't say I've ever used it, and you can't move or position elements with it, so it depends how simple you want to go with it.

 

MoviePlus X6 - at least for us - is still fit for purpose and doesn't need replacing. Having no support is a bit tosh, but users don't seem to get themselves into too much trouble with it so it's not a big deal.

Edited by Garacesh
mavhc

mavhc

Posted
Posted
Brackets seems good if you're not after WYSIWYG (I don't really know how WebPlus works, never used it), it's replaced Notepad++ as my web-coder-of-choice.. Just be aware that you can't pre-populate extensions for users because they live in \AppData\Roaming\Brackets.

It does have a 'live view', but, I can't say I've ever used it, and you can't move or position elements with it, so it depends how simple you want to go with it.

 

MoviePlus X6 - at least for us - is still fit for purpose and doesn't need replacing. Having no support is a bit tosh, but users don't seem to get themselves into too much trouble with it so it's not a big deal.

 

From a few experiments I don't think live view works with network files, annoying. It does have an msi to deploy though, unlike VSCode and Atom (Atom's msi installer just lets each user install atom, completely pointless)

  • 10 months later...
  • 8 months later...
Garacesh

Garacesh

Posted
Posted

Did anybody get anywhere with this?

 

Our IT dept are coming up on the webdev part of the syllabus again..

Annoyingly they still want to use DreamWeaver despite it being so hit-and-miss on Windows 10. I've explained the issues and said I'll see if there's anything else out there.

We did push KompoZer but I know that's long since out of development.

 

Serif WebPlus seems decent, I've quickly fooled around with it for 10 minutes, but I'll be honest, as someone used to text editors (NotePad++, Brackets, etc) I'm pretty stumped at using any WYSIWYG editor so I have no idea what's 'good' or not.

 

I know that I'm fighting a losing battle, I've explained that most WYSIWYG editors are online now (Wordpress, Wix, SquareSpace, etc) but none of that really matters, the syllabus is the syllabus.

JATSO

JATSO

Posted
Posted
Did anybody get anywhere with this?

 

Our IT dept are coming up on the webdev part of the syllabus again..

Annoyingly they still want to use DreamWeaver despite it being so hit-and-miss on Windows 10. I've explained the issues and said I'll see if there's anything else out there.

We did push KompoZer but I know that's long since out of development.

 

Serif WebPlus seems decent, I've quickly fooled around with it for 10 minutes, but I'll be honest, as someone used to text editors (NotePad++, Brackets, etc) I'm pretty stumped at using any WYSIWYG editor so I have no idea what's 'good' or not.

 

I know that I'm fighting a losing battle, I've explained that most WYSIWYG editors are online now (Wordpress, Wix, SquareSpace, etc) but none of that really matters, the syllabus is the syllabus.

 

You could take a look here.

 

If your looking for free stuff:

https://listoffreeware.com/list-of-best-free-wysiwyg-html-editing-software-for-windows/

  • Thanks 2
mavhc

mavhc

Posted
Posted
Install multi site wordpress on a local VM? Given that 50% of websites are Wordpress, and you can get into editing html, templates, css, js in it, why bother with anything else?
NixNerd

NixNerd

Posted
Posted
After using Serif for a number of years it looks like they are now discontinuing the whole line and focusing just on image editing.

 

Just started at a new school and was going to put this package in but not paying for software thats no longer receiving updates.

 

Adobe is well out of over our budgets.

 

Has anyone else got any recommendations?

 

We need, photo and movie editing at the least throughout the site.

 

Many thanks

 

Scribus - https://www.scribus.net/

Inkscape - https://inkscape.org

 

Just suggestions ;)

DrBeaker

DrBeaker

Posted
Posted

For photo-editing I've been trying to look into Affinity Photo https://affinity.serif.com/en-gb/photo/ it looks just as powerful as Adobe and a lot cheaper.

 

We can't afford Photoshop either and my argument is are we teaching the kids skills or "How to use Photoshop"? I suspect the politics and skills of Art teachers (as well as people's egos) are called into question then however.

Garacesh

Garacesh

Posted
Posted (edited)
We can't afford Photoshop either and my argument is are we teaching the kids skills or "How to use Photoshop"? I suspect the politics and skills of Art teachers (as well as people's egos) are called into question then however.

 

I mean there's not much you could learn in photoshop that isn't transferable.

 

I learned the majority of my graphics design knowledge on Jasc Paint Shop Pro 7 (now owned by Corel) and can now use Photoshop reasonably well as the concepts of layers, brightness/contrast, RGB/CMYK, colour theory, transparency, etc are all fairly universal and (with a bit of effort to learn the new software layout) can be applied to basically any graphics package.

 

I guess that's both an argument for and against Photoshop. It's still (I think?) the industry leader, so you might as well teach them on that, but if you could teach them GIMP et al for free have transfer the skills, that's also mighty attractive.

Edited by Garacesh
  • Thanks 1
Oaktech

Oaktech

Posted
Posted

i've just had a quote to replace the serif suite and they are suggesting a very reasonable £600 for a 3 site licence covering almost 1000 PCs at 3 schools.

 

We will retire PagePlus and DrawPlus, but continue to use MoviePlus.

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