Glad you had a ball, but until Adobe stops ass-raping the FlashCom
community with bizarre licensing practises and the inability to make
statements with a straight face, i don't see how this merger is positive
at all.
All i see is further separation of the individual solutions Adobe got a
hold of with Macromedia, separations that were problematic to begin
with. Macromedia always had too many onions in the soup, and it looks
like that's just going to get worse. PDF online is a total aberration
now as it has always been; it's forte is in print content, not online
content, and every time i inadvertently hit a link that brings up the
Acrobat plugin, you can hear my groan blocks away. I don't see the
Acrobat relevance online tell you the truth (someone, please correct me
here if i'm totally missing the boat on some important topic).
What you just described is precisely what i thought it'd be: Flash keeps
its footing as an animation platform with an anchor in the fast and the
frivolous, Flex takes what was getting good about AS and implements it
in a retardedly expensive solution that is of little interest to a whole
bunch of us.
What i'd really like to see from an event like that, aside from whizbang
and promises, is an indication that Macromedia didn't completely lose
the plot when they were acquired. At the moment, they're one of the
toughest businesses to like out there, mostly because of an inability to
say ONE thing and subsequently stand for it. Employees are lovely, but
whoever makes the big decisions are freaking me out.
The idea of an Adobe/MM OS brings such immense and immediate terror to
my imagination that i'm not going to say anything else about that topic.
Ever, hopefully.
I feel ever so slightly pistol-whipped by the sudden effort to push Flex
forward, leaving Flash in the dust. I assume this is some kind of
intercept vector of Sparkle or the growing interest in AJAX.
In fact, i'm so sore i'm going to rant a little bit. Pardon any french
in the following psycho-babble:
I am a very hard working man. I put 9 to 12 hours into Flash every day
of the week. By Flash i mean animation, actionscript, flashcom and audio
work. I always work with concrete solutions in mind, and with concrete
budgets and concrete timespans. I have very little time for dabbling,
exploration or otherwise advancing myself along paths my work doesn't
naturally take me. FlashCoders, this list, was fine and dandy up until
Flex2, because i felt as though the focus of the list ran in parralel to
any problems i might be working on. I felt it was worthwhile reading
posts i had no idea what were on about because i'd learn SOMETHING that
might be applicable to a problem i'd run into in the future, or alter my
approach on a current problem. Since AS3 came around, i've been hugely
confused:
I have no idea how you guys have TIME to explore it. How Darron Schall
has time to create an AS3 VNC viewer is beyond me, or how Grant Skinner
can put together gModeler, or how any number of flash "guru" types have
time to put together x number of "exciting new applications of the
technology". Where do you find your god damn time and still make a
living guys?!
I work my ass off just meeting deadlines, and 9 out of 10 times the
project is etched in stone from the outset with regard to currently
existing techniques. The focus is on meeting a demand, not on creating
something dazzling and cool to put on a blog somewhere, and when Erik
Natzke, who i think does amazing work, manages to drop the "fresh"
notion that flash developers need to explore more to further themselves
in their craft, that pisses me off to no end. Where. The. Hell. Does.
That. Time. Come. From.
AS3 in Flash right now is a cruel tease. We have no clear indication of
how it's implementation in Flash 9 will be, what it's implications will
be on the UI. All we know is that we can somehow get a head start by
getting into Flex and spend a bunch of time on non-deployable projects
so that we MIGHT hop aboard the AS3 train before it's too late, and it
slams into us with Flash 9 and all the guys that spent their MAGICALLY
APPEARING TIME getting into AS3 early get the clear upper hand.
So let's talk about motivation and demotivation, and how that whole AS3
teaser is a big piece of steaming shit on my doorstep. I want to get
into it so bad i can taste it. I downloaded Flexbuilder, i read
tutorials, i tried it out a bit, but the more i touch it the more i feel
like i'm being derailed, that my attention is being removed from what
puts food on my table and roof over my head. But doubly, i get the sense
that when Flash 9 hits, the guys that are now unemployed, on the dole,
otherwise having the chance to spend real time on self-education, are
going to be infinitely more desirable as Flash developers when that time
comes around.
To put it all into perspective, since Moock's video of the tokyo player
8 demonstration, almost everything i've heard from Macromedia has made
me feel stronger and stronger about the notion that this segment of the
industry is NOT something i want to be basing my economy on, and that's
a terribly sad notion, because i've been at this Flash garbage
professionally since i quit high school, a good 6 years ago, and i
really feel strongly about it.
So what's the solution? Probably go through some bizarre freemason
ritual to get access to the time machine Grant, Darron and Erik use to
magically create time to keep up. As it is, i feel i was well poised to
become a truly proficient developer, but that the weirdly unfocused
direction Flash has taken is depriving me of my "right" to evolve with
the format in a natural way, and by natural i mean without army issue
narcotics that let me survive without sleep.
And that, is demotivating as all hell.
- Andreas, who isn't mad at the above mentioned developers, just puzzled
and envious
Moses Gunesch wrote:
Man I had a great time and thought this conference really put the fire
back into Flash.
The keynote really showed how exciting and positive the Adobe merger is!
They built an iTunes style app in flex2 in just a few minutes on
stage, and they
showed off Apollo, the next platform for desktop-based flash apps.
Everything is
changing at a lightning clip and I really saw what a huuuuge deal
this merger is and how good it is really going to be for both of
those companies and for all of us, Kevin Lynch has been put into a
real position of influence which makes it happen. Adobe is really all
about how to
leverage the pdf and flash players but they reassured that there
won't be any sort of attempt to combine these things directly, more
like all sorts of interesting strategies to provide a useful platform
using all these tools. Seems like in a few years they ought to try
and build an OS of their own (is Google?). Also showed an astounding
performance gain in As3, really impressive actually.
The conference is on a ripping comeback now, this was the biggest
crowd since the dotcom crash, at around 1500 attendees - everyone was
super focused and attentive at the sessions, and the parties were all
really fun and classy, including a catered party at Gameworks.
Lynda explained to me that FF will no longer be west/east coast
- just wherever they want. The next one planned is Austin -- going to
be a real blast, that's a sweet town, and it coincides with the Austin
City Limits festival.
Really great material this year on Flex, AS3, Grant Skinner's talk was
awesome, Tons of
great stuff, got to see the guys from Homestar Runner and JibJab talk
which was awesome. Fully 5 sessions dealt specifically with
externalizing technology and how Flash can be used for this very
easily now. I got lots an upbeat response for my session, heard
Natzke's and Hillman Curtis' sessions were great...
Over all this was an incredibly positive experience for me, it really
brought back the love and excitement for being in such a vibrant and
vital community.
Moses
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