Hi Eric, Your work at geoclip has always inspired me.
Lets me try to help: > 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." No. That would be a major miscommunication. The Flash Professional product is a major part of our strategy for creating things "rich" and we certainly don't think everyone should but Flex. For many projects and people Flash Professional is absolutely the best tool. For many projects and people Flex Builder is absolutely the best tool. And for some projects and teams the best approach would involve working with both. At a very high level let me try to differentiate the two. This is purposely simplifying to make the high level difference clear: Flash Professional's design center is rich interactive content. It is most focused at a wide audience of web developers, web designers, multimedia professionals, videographers, animators, graphic professionals. The Flex product line (including the Flex Builder tool) design center is rich internet "applications". I wouldn't use it for a web site or a home page or a product overview. I would use it for a data rich (and UI rich) application that is web deployed. It is most focused at a wide audience of application developers/programmers with a background in object oriented programming and technologies such as Java/JSP, C#/ASP.net, client-server, and enterprise application development. The applications it creates can indeed be graphically and UI rich, but will usually be data rich as well. Flex applications are very small compared and seamlessly deployed compared with client server applications or VB, but it is not designed for creating the very lightweight interactive content the Flash Professional tool can create. Many teams building applications will also want to include designer(s) using Flash that might create skins or or interactive content assets to be used inside of Flex. Flex applications are very small compared (usually a few hundred K) and seamlessly deployed compared with client server applications or VB, but it is not designed for creating the very lightweight interactive content the Flash Professional tool can create. Eg. You can't do a 25K rich ad or product overview in Flex. (That said, the Flex Builder tool does have the ability to do pure AS projects that can be very small, but that would mean forgoeing the Flex Framework iteself). Very roughly speaking, I'd estimate that the vast majority of Flash Professional customers will and should keep using Flash Professional--indeed with Flash Professional 8 and Studio 8 we have just done what I think is a fantastic release. Lets say roughly 80%. A small percent of Flash authors frankly have never felt at home in the Flash authoring product and will prefer a programming oriented IDE--many of these folks already have been using 3rd party editors and just using the Flash authoring product to compile (or an open source/third party product). These folks might jump to Flex. Lets say roughly 5%. Lastly, another group--say 10-20 percent--might use both depending on the project they are building and/or the composition of the whole team for a project. It is not our aim to confuse the Flash Professional audience or suggest that they change tools for the vast majority of folks. Indeed, you will see the Flash Professional team continuing to invest heavily to advance the quality and functionality of the tool (as hopefully we just did in Flash Professional 8). This readers of list will of coure be very mixed, because it is not just a "Flash" list but specifically aimed at that subset of the Flash community that identifes as "Flashcoders" :) > 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...) The Iteration 2 folks have joined Macromedia Professional Services, but they aren't going away. They are going to be an active part of the community! Sure, they like Flex and they do a lot of projects for which Flex is very well suited, but these worlds are not mutually exclusive. I am sure that team will continue to use Flash in their projects as well and contribute to the community. I hope we will continue to see a community that really spans a broad array of talent from design to programming to architecture and not see everyone go off into separate worlds. > 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. That is because for many people the "out of the box" look of Flex applications is well suited to what they want. But it is not a requirement of Flex. Indeed, in the Flex 2 product line it is far easier to skin/stlye applications and create things that look very different from the out of the box appearance. > 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. Flash Professional is still all that. Don't need to stress about Flex. > > 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 think that is extreme and bad guidance for most people. Some people will prefer this route, but it isn't the way Macromedia is designing the products. If you truly just use Flash Professional as a compiler and do AS only projects than yes, Flex Builder 2 might be a better choice for you when you are ready to target the Flash 8.5 Player. But I think the vast majority of folks benefit greatly from all of the tools in Flash Professional. > - 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. That should not occur. Can you reproduce this? If so, please let us know. I am not aware of any crash bugs in the Flash Player 8 that would cause this > - 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.? We are very committed to continuing to support and improve Player-Browser communication. The Flash JS-AS kit that Mike and Christian did is now open source and other folks can advance it as well. And we added external.api to Flash Player 8 making it still easier to manage Flash AS-JS communication. > - 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. I am surprised to hear this...we have a ton of information about it on our site, and we have significant use of Flash in government, education and military institutions that have very strict requirements around accesibility. It is still harder than I would like, but I don't have trouble convinciing folks 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). Actually, the Flash 8 product cycle was our longest ever. We took our time and added a many months to the schedule to really polish the product. So far most reports from our customers are that we did release the most stable and solid release ever. I hope this is helpful, David Macromedia _______________________________________________ Flashcoders mailing list [email protected] http://chattyfig.figleaf.com/mailman/listinfo/flashcoders
