On May 2, 2008, at 2:52 PM, Glen Pike wrote:
I am not sure I agree entirely with you here.
Whilst I believe that Open Source software has so much to offer, I
cannot believe that an Open Source version of the Flash IDE would
provide such a rich feature set AND work as well as the IDE without
a significant investment in time and effort. If you think about the
time and effort invested into the IDE itself to get where it is
today, how many open source projects with IDE's have that sort of
longevity or investment? Eclipse, the various flavours of OS and
Open Office spring to mind, but I think one of the driving points
behind this factor is the demand for these tools. Even with it's
popularity, I don't think Flash has the same level of demand.
I think you are speaking from a programmers viewpoint. The Flash
IDE is not just for programmers and has primarily evolved from a
visual tool.
I actually meant the huge gap between flash cs3 ide and flex builder
3. Adobe totally left flash ide based designers with programming
skills and popped
up with a tool i needed 3 days to get through the initial setup and
learn how the big differences in working with flash ide .fla based
projects and flex
builder 3 projects and still have problems to understand a lot of
flash cs3 <--> flex 3 connectivity
i know i know, thermo is coming and is promising to fill the gap.. of
course flash ide as to this day is the ONLY one providing an .fla, so
we can't actually
have any comparable alternative. so i wouldn't say there is no flash
ide killer on it's way
Whilst some of the programming features may not be upto scratch
with other systems out there, look at the way the actionscript panel
works - it has always been aimed at getting stuff working and making
it easier for non-programmers to achieve some of their ideas. As
ActionScript has got stricter, the ActionScript panel has possibly
not kept up with this.
I feel like being slapped on back of my head by adobe, telling me you
are an designer so stay with flash ide, and if u are developer switch
to flex, i mean
why should i feel that im left behind? i know the ide from bottom to
the top, but programming with it is a huge pain, it's editor didn't
changed since 8 to CS3,
why is that? if they knew they gonna release an dev tool strict for
developers (cause i wouldn't tell that flex is for designers) why
didnt they made the ide
ability to handle the demand of designers with some programming skills
(as we all know you simply can't do things only with timeline based
animation,
or you will need a year for an navigation menu with some levels) im
actually a typical designer, who stuffed his nose into programming
after release of
as3, first time i've seen the as2 --> as3 swap, i thought that there
is something really really wrong. i needed an complete reset and
forgetting all about as2,
and learned as3 from scratch. as2 is somehow barley an programming
language, where as3 drops you on the "real" OOP with it's roots in
Java's Syntax.
I know that a lot of ppl will laugh about me telling as3 is a real
language a sin, but hey, i didn't never used something other then some
basic JavaScript
and as2 my entire life, so for me, as3 is indeed an programming
language.
But, Adobe recognised this and came up with Flex Builder, which is
aimed at developers. On a tangent, I personally feel that Flex
Builder takes a lot of ideas from Dreamweaver, but because of
Eclipse, has a better underpinning of tools for developers.
However, it is not possible to satisfy everyone, especially hard
core developers, animators, etc. who often pick big holes in the
IDE, (and other tools), because the IDE works for the majority.
Already there are alternatives that offer what people are looking for.
Im lucky they didnt want to invent the wheel 2 times, as eclipse is an
quite good product, and i it has it's isses and pains, but it's
running on ppl's computers
since some time, and a lot of ppl simply get used to it. so building
flex on top of eclipse was not that bad idea in my opinion.
Look at Flash Develop for the PC - I know that this is not Cross
Platform, but there are tools for Mac users & Linux people that do
similar stuff. And there are other tools which enable people to
produce SWF's that can be used in projects too - Moho is an
animation tool that has had IK for a while and exports to SWF, I
guess Adobe realised that some of the animation stuff needed work,
because we are getting IK in the next version...
Wow, they took the After Effects features and put those into Flash
IDE, something really amazing. I find myself the AE interface and
approach a way
better then the Flash IDE, still using both is not that different in
its basics, but AE got some really nasty features i will be happy to
se in Flash IDE, let's hope
the next version would have a better programming interface/editor, as
i dont need flex for my purposes. I think there is a gap for a tool
that make some
designers with programming knowledge happy
Take a look on Processing, it's a great great example how they could
make it, you can do stuff directly in Processing, and when u get it
you can build things
directly in java after learning Processing, the learning curve in this
process was for me a lot better! When i first saw Java Syntax i didnt
even know what
i was looking at, after 4 months i actually write some stuff in java
already.
As for Vista, i still can't believe M$ took 5 years to develop it.. I
wish and pray to adobe that they will port at least photoshop and
illustrator to linux,
so i can stay far far away from Vista :)
All these are my personal insights ;] i can be right or i can be wrong.
i can't help my english being so crappy, hopefully everyone understand
what i mean.
------------------------------------------
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www.jankun.org
Phone: +43 660 96 969 - 01
web: jankun.org
mail: p[at]jankun.org
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