The point is Flex is a completely separate technology Adobe are actively
pushing forward, and they're trying to get me in on it by teasing me
with a preview of AS3 ;P Conspiracy! Aiee!! But seriously. It smacks of
a form of early brand imprinting. I don't see Flex murdering AJAX or
sparkle in the same way Flash has murdered SVG for online vector
dominance, and as such i don't see it's worth my time without going
full-time.
"under $1000" is not necessarily cheap by the way.
- Andreas
David Mendels wrote:
Hi,
Lots of stuff in this email, but I will just respond to this:
"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."
The Flex 2 SDK is free. Hard to call that expensive. Flex Builder 2 is "under
$1000". Ditto. And FES 2 starts at free and scales up based on usage, but it is
*not* required.
-David
-----Original Message-----
From: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
[mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf
Of eugen pflüger
Sent: Monday, March 06, 2006 6:50 AM
To: Flashcoders mailing list
Subject: Re: [Flashcoders] FF Seattle Report
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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plugisto
...........................
eugen pflüger
alexanderstr. 109
70180 stuttgart
fon +49.711.6739797
mobil +49.177.6428272
e-mail [EMAIL PROTECTED]
...........................
http://www.plugisto.net
http://itself.pmalc.de
http://www.lifeperformance.net
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_______________________________________________
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--
- Andreas Rønning
---------------------------------------
Flash guy
Rayon Visual Concepts, Oslo, Norway
---------------------------------------
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