right, andreas.
eugen
Am 05.03.2006 um 23:03 schrieb Andreas Rønning:
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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