To responde to your post in reverse...
For someone like me - someone who's not a Flash developer - the Flash IDE
is
somewhat overwhelming, and has a bunch of things in it that don't even
make
sense from a forms-based application development perspective.
That's half of what I was saying: making an uber-IDE wouldn't make you
or any other developer from a non-Flash background happy, it would give you
a large and confusing interface that might make you wonder if it's worth the
trouble. Meanwhile, the Flash "designer-types" would see such a release as
largely useless, because they don't care about a better code editing panel
in Flash. So when I say it's not a good business model, I don't necessarily
mean " ooh, they're greedy and want to sell it to us twice", I literally
mean I understand it wouldn't be a good decision to release it that way
right now. However...
You've heard the expression "good, fast and cheap - pick any two", right?
I
don't think it would have been possible for Macromedia/Adobe to deliver a
good, affordable multipurpose IDE in a reasonable timeframe. It's not just
about code view, but rather the whole look/feel/approachability of the
IDE.
Frankly, I just need good, the other two are relative (not to mention
being tax deductible ;-) ). What worries me is the previaling opinion that
the Flash IDE doesn't need the features that are being built into Flex 2. It
needs them *desperately*. Flex shouldn't be a seperate app, it should be a
subset of the "Flash Studio" IDE (even better as an eclipse plugin), as
should the "classic" Flash IDE. If all you need is to build timeline
animations for banner ads or site intros, you just need the animation
package. If all you need is to write code for forms apps, you just need
Flex. But I want the whole "studio", and I want it in one package so that I
don't have to switch apps to work on different parts. Visual Studio isn't
just a form designer IDE, it is much, much more than that. It lets you build
both the client and the server-side code, the database connectivity, desktop
applications and web applications, and so on. Flash needs to fill a similar
space, and right now you have to either make a choice between the two or
deal with working in both. Why can't I edit the html file the flash piece
will be embedded in insoide the IDE? Why can't I edit xml data files in the
IDE? Is there actually a good reason, or does someone just thing it's not
important? I didn't mind paying for Visual Studio, I didn't mind working
past the buggy and delayed releases, and I wouldn't mind the same problems
from Flash. I may voice my complaints equally loudly on the appropriate
forums, but that doesn't mean I don't appreciate what those apps have to
offer. ;-)
ryanm
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