Hi everybody (glad that the list is back by the way) Hey Eric I understand your "frustration" but in all the things you said There are things overlooked imho
It's not anymore only about flash versus itself, it's about the flash platform versus other platforms Sure with time you can be bitter with flash That from one year to another you have to change all your code base Nothing -> Smartclip (f5) -> component v1 (flash6) -> component v2 (flash7) -> etc... Nothing -> Telltarget -> AS1 -> AS2 -> AS3 But with all these years there have been a shift in so many levels And it's not only because of flash or Macromedia For me I saw AS2 as a total loss of time, I know enought in it to code what I want, but I didn't invested more time in AS2 + component v2 , I was almost sure it not gonna work with me I was using JScript.NET long before AS2 arrived, And pfff AS2 was just half baked for me compared to JScript.NET (just check that, compare to AS2 http://burstproject.org/build/doc/constructs.html ) When you really look into AS3 and how it connect to MXML with Flex2 And how this time Macromedia has fully baked it based on ECMAScript v4 Well sure you can feel bitter to have to relearn stuff moving from AS2 to AS3 or change "environment" moving from Flash IDE to Flex Builder But this for me is THE WAY to go, especially if you are in the coder camp AS3 even in alpha is far better than JScript.NET Even if there is this feeling that at each new release of flash, You feel you have to relearn everything, You have to think that without those changes Macromedia could Have not done so well in the evolution of things Because in the meantime Microsoft came with Expression, XAML, and all the WPF/E stuff etc... Yes they are after the RIA market with all that And even if I don't really care that they want to compet in there What I care is if they are after this market they will not want To do it with JScript.NET, they will want to go with C# and VB.NET I like C# and all, but really I much much much prefer to keep programming in ECMAScript (yes I'm biased I love ECMAScript programming) Flash IDE by itself is not enougth, Keeping a Flash VM as it was (no runtime type check etc.) is not enougth Keeping the component + class paradigm in a half designer / half developer IDE is not enougth And I really think what happening now is a very good thing for any flash developer Whatever I think AS2 was half baked and/or components v2 was not a good architecture, or someone else think it was a super all perfect solution Is not important really Macromedia needed those steps to arrive where we are now, I ranted about them, but I don't blame them The result of Flex builder 2 + AS3, being able to access that right from the alpha stage, the wiki for documentation, the code documentation that you can see in playerglobal.as and all the rest This is imho the right thing to do and its not only about RIA it's about providing the right tools for a platform, and providing them as soon as its possible (a public alpha!). I'm not sure if they do that really because of the Microsoft plans But considering the spread of the flash player and seeing the potential Of flex2+AS3 I feel that as a programmer interested in those things I got a headstart I will not be taken by surprise in 6 month or 1 year from now And even if I or others can feel that Macromedia have made mistakes in the past Well they have obviously learn a lot from that And I can just see they are not making mistakes at all with all that Even if Microsoft stuff gonna arrive in a very far future Once all their tools and technologies gonna be in place The first thing they gonna do is to spread them as much as they can Remember what happened with Netscape vs IE ... It's no more a browser war which gonna happen It's a RIA / Web 2.0 /(whatever buzz word you want to call it) in brief, a platform war flash 8 was perharps released too soon but I can assure you that flash 8.5 + AS3 are released not too late It perharps can sound cacophonic when you consider only flash technology But if you look at that on the platform level It's make perfect sens and it goes beyond just RIA Adobe PDF vs Microsoft Metro Flash vs WPF/E MXML vs XAML Flex Builder vs Visual Studio Flash IDE vs Expression AS3 vs C# / VB.NET zwetan _______________________________________________ Flashcoders mailing list [email protected] http://chattyfig.figleaf.com/mailman/listinfo/flashcoders
