For a while now, the trend in generating content online has been away from software on a computer owned by an author and toward online content creation sites. For example, you do not need to own software to blog. You use a browser to connect to a site allowing you to write and integrate multimedia. Some blog sites allow the creation of pages (instead of posts) allowing the generation of something more akin to a web site. Google sites, etc. offers a browser-based approach to creating a web site.
Adobe appears to be interesting in revisiting the older model. They have just announced Muse which appears to be what might be described as a “drag and drop” authoring environment. With Apple pretty much abandoning iWeb, I am certainly glad to see that a company is still developing tools for the “hobbyist designer”. These tools used to exist (anyone remember PageMill) and I still like the idea. The related challenge is going to be “hosting” – I wonder if Adobe will also provide a hosting service of some type.
I do not like the funding model which basically requires you to rent access by the month.