freehand for a application nearly 3 years older than Illustrator is still superior in many respects...

multipage support (with multiple, independent sizes for each page too!)
multipage PDFs with interactive links.
ability to work in multiple color modes (ie: CMYK, RGB, etc) ALL AT THE SAME TIME. (Color mode is only determined at the point of printing or export...thus preserving your gamut without the CMYK to RGB sacrifices.)
ability to export selected graphics by selection only
search and replace by vector graphics
master style pages and templates.

PLEASE ADOBE...let FREEHAND INNOVATE. It's actually an extremely POWERFUL APPLICATION.
3 YEARS OLD and STILL (in many respects) WAY AHEAD.

I'm sure Adobe will roll Free-hand's features into Illustrator, and vice-versa. Then, will will be much easier to discontinue underperforming products. However, I don't see there being a chance until all products have feature parity.

Not to rain on anyone's parade, but I really get the sense that this is Adobe's way of letting us down easy. Although the title of this post is "Adobe: GoLive and FreeHand development will continue", no where in the post does the Adobe representative specifically says this. Instead the representative says, "Adobe plans to continue to support GoLive and Freehand and develop these products based on our customers needs". Supporting products and continuing to develop them are two very different things in my mind.

What I suspect Adobe is planning on doing is offer transition features in Illustrator and Dreamweaver for longtime FreeHand and GoLive users. Features that would allow for easy import of existing FreeHand files and GoLive sites. This along with bringing over popular features in these products to help migrate users to the "market leaders". Hopefully we'll see FreeHand's Auto Shapes show up in the next Illustrator and Dreamweaver gets GoLive's Smart Objects and refined UI.

You can see this sort of "continued support" in the relationship found between PageMaker and InDesign. PageMaker 7.0 is still available to buy although it hasn't been upgraded in years and InDesign can open PageMaker files and now even offers a PageMaker toolbar. PageMaker is now considered the right tool for business publishing while InDesign is "a new standard in professional layout and design".

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Not to rain on anyone's parade, but I really get the sense that this is Adobe's way of letting us down easy. Although the title of this post is "Adobe: GoLive and FreeHand development will continue", no where in the post does the Adobe representative specifically says this.

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gpenston is completely right. Adobe's statement really means "We will continue to sell this product and take your money. We will provide minimal support but we will not be adding new features. We do not have A-list engineers working on this product. In fact, nobody here at Adobe is really looking at this product except for the sales guy that will take your order."

The term "based on our customer's needs" is a political spin statement that sounds customer friendly but basically allows Adobe to do whatever the heck it wants in the coming years.

This kind of B.S. public statement is completely in Adobe's favor and unhelpful for customers who need to make long-term product decisions. I would prefer that they kill the product and announce the fact clearly rather than making equivocal statements that defer hard choices for later.

In any case, my guess is that Dreamweaver and Illustrator are the future. Go Live and Freehand are for the stooges that purchase the software today hoping that they will continue. Adobe doesn't have the balls to be truthful.