History


Starting in 1990, Allaire worked on Internet projects which at that time were very text driven and not that pretty to look at. As years went on though, Allaire saw the Internet as being able to successfully become an application platform, and from there focused his attempts to develop this idea. He saw it as a way for people from different parts of the world to connect though online discussion (message boards, chatrooms, etc.), and to make a users experience with a web site interactive (Tual 1). In 1995, Allaire, along with his brother, defined the model for these pages known as "Active Server Pages," or "ASP", however were beaten to the punch by Microsoft in releasing these pages; however, this model they released soon became known as "ColdFusion, " and were able to do fairly well, releasing four versions of the program from 1996 until 2000(Tual, 1-7). However in 2000, stock for Allaire Corporation dropped from 30 dollars a share to 6 dollars a share(Tual 7), and sensing the need to survive as a company, Allaire merged with fledgling web and software developer Macromedia in a deal worth 360 million dollars. In this merger, Jeremy became Macromedia's Chief Technolgy Officer, and through this merger, the MX line was born (Carr, 59).