It was with a mixture of interest and irritation that I read Macromedia's
announcements about Flex and Flash Player 8.5 and the ensuing reactions.
The valid assertion that "Flex is a tool for building RIAs (Rich Internet
Applications)" is gradually becoming widely interpreted as "If you want to
do 'rich' (fantastic, impressive or professional?) things with Flash you
need to buy Flex." Many of the people who have been fortunate enough to be
able to play with Flex since it was released are now self-declared RIA
experts, most of whom are extremely pleasant, incredibly easy to reach and
deal with others with the utmost humility and modesty. (I am really going to
miss our Iteration 2 friends in this respect...)
We could begin by debating the concept of RIA and the fact that it is the
new Grail of the present-day Internet. By no means am I sufficiently
familiar with the subtleties of the English language to fully understand the
nuances of the adjective 'rich'. By 'rich' I understand 'souped up',
'brimming over' (with functions and information), 'complex' in terms of
interactions, and I would imagine that it quite expensive, etc.
Personally, I prefer 'sexy', 'shrewd', 'fluid', 'educational' or
'intelligent' to 'rich'.
Actually, most Flex applications have this characteristic compartmentalized
appearance, like a 1970s living room bookcase, with cabinets, drawers,
framed photographs, multitudes of lists and datagrids which provide a
talking point. On the subject of sobriety, are you familiar with Google
Maps?
I started using Flash quite a long time (almost eight years) ago because it
was fast, powerful, visually appealing and there was no need to buy server
software for 15,000 dollars to produce dynamic maps. All you had to do was
connect to a good old database. At the time it performed miracles. These
days we have to fight through a myriad of increasingly large and unwieldy
component libraries. I have never been able to start using V2 components
because my Internet clients do not want any files larger than 100 KB for a
public-access website.
When Flash MX2004 was released in its basic and professional versions, I
immediately bought the professional version because I really wanted to feel
like a true professional. When someone pointed out that a really serious
Flash development was being made in OOP and integrally in external classes,
without putting any objects or drawings at all on the scene, I gritted my
teeth and continued regardless. I fiddled around a bit: mycb._y=8? too
high. mycb._y=15: oops, too low! I used the Event Dispatcher function like
there was no tomorrow and put Delegate.create everywhere in my code. It
looked fantastic and I felt really free!
Of course, I bought Flash 8 Pro, which I use mainly as a compiler and
debugger. I have now learned that using Flash 8 IDE for compiling purposes
is rather old-fashioned. I was told I should use MTASC and, of course, Flex
builder. I will soon be able to throw my Flash 8 Pro away. Do I need Flash
9?
Lastly, the story of the Flash Player 8.5 has completely worn me out. You
fight for major tenders, explaining that Flash is now a mature, stable
product that works with all browsers and operating systems, and that we are
waiting until the latest version has spread everywhere before switching to
the new one. And one month after Flash 8 is released, there are more and
more announcements and no one understands anything any more. Yesterday, a
smart aleck computer specialist who is always abreast of new developments
said to me "So, that's it. If we take your Macromedia Flash, will we need to
buy the Flex for 15,000 dollars in a year's time?"
- The first demo that I assemble for a client using Flash 8 makes all his
browsers crash, although I had vigorously assured him that Flash never
crashes. I had made the mistake of trying to impress him with contextual
menus.
- I was not immediately aware that Windows NT4 and a few other environments
were not supported.
- I shouted it from the rooftops that the Flash/JavaScript communication was
now reinforced; yet unfortunately it only works with really up-to-date
browsers. I congratulate Mike Chambers and Christian Cantrell for their kit.
It is a great initiative but what is the status of this investment with
Macromedia? What is Macromedia's obligation to truly consolidate this Flash
integration in the browser, also for Flash 7 and IE 5.5, etc.?
- It is a good idea to have bitmap functions, but Flash's original
contribution is vectors and there is still not the slightest function for
editing a shape after Actionscript has been used. If you want to change the
coordinates of a polygon node you have to redraw the whole thing. There are
still no dotted lines and you can only alter the line thicknesses, which are
ridiculously still integers (1, 2, 3, etc.).
The only two good aspects of Flash 8 for a cartographer are the
much-improved memory deallocation and the antiscale option which enables you
to zoom in on a map without the line thickness varying.
Fortunately, the SVG people have self-destructed on their own because we are
still a long way away from the descriptive finesse of SVG.
- The speech about accessibility is very difficult to read - you can say
that again! Who is familiar with Microsoft Active Accessibility? It is
almost impossible to convince a public client that Flash is credible in this
field.
All of this makes me think that Flash 8 was released too soon, as the
creation cycle for a new version was not complete; lots of things remain
unfinished or incorrectly finished. But I do have a lot of respect for the
Macromedia developers who have impossible constraints to resolve (putting
more and more into a little gadget that works everywhere). However, I feel
that short-term political considerations (fending off Sparkle or Ajax,
making one last stand before being taken over by Adobe, etc.) have taken
precedence over the former shrewdness (slow but sure progress).
Nevertheless, I can take some solace in the shrewd, long-term analyses of
people like John Dowdell or Tinic Uro. Tinic, in particular, asks extremely
pertinent questions about Flash's strengths and weaknesses:
(http://www.kaourantin.net/2005/10/next-generation-flash-player-user.html).
Right, I understand that the ultra-fantastic super asv3 with the new
ultra-fast virtual machine took longer than expected.
But please, my dear brilliant Macromedia friends, make your communications
clearer and consider the end clients we are working for, all the more so
because you already have your foot in the door of Adobe and soon we may need
to familiarise ourselves with a new product segmentation.
Eric Mauvière
www.geoclip.net
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