On desktops/laptops, I will be surprised if you lose the ability to view SWFs. I can’t imagine you are the only person to leverage SWFs in PDF and I would expect major backlash if that was to stop working.
But the question for you is, in the future will your customers be using desktop/laptops? In the home, tablets are becoming all the rage. This is also true in some upper executive ranks. Tablets may not support SWF in PDF. There aren’t separate VMs for AIR vs Web. AIR is a delivery package of the same AS VM that you get with the FlashPlayer but with some extensions and the ability to hook into the OS, so I don’t quite know how to answer your questions. Both the current AS VM and AS Next VM use JIT to convert AS byte code to machine code at runtime. For mobile apps you have to pre-process the entire SWF and the AIR runtime into a single machine-dependent package. PDF is using a special player but I think that, even if that player does not stay in sync with Flash Player Next, it doesn’t matter to you. It should still run your content. So, I think the big question is what kind of devices your customers will be using. I think Adobe will support legacy content on desktop/laptops for a long time. -Alex On 12/23/12 10:43 AM, "John McCormack" <j...@easypeasy.co.uk> wrote: That is a very interesting diagram showing a way forward for Flex users. I have only used ActionScript Projects, rather than Flex, and have mainly been concerned not to lose a way to deliver my SWFs. I can see myself developing in JavaScript but not wishing to go back near the beginning with programming, and liking the way SWCs are used in my projects, I rather want things to stay as they are. On that subject, will later FlashPlayers have separate Virtual Machines for: (1) interpreting AIR (legacy) and (2) Browser (legacy) as well as (3) new code which is CPU dependent machine code? I understand that PDFs have their own built-in player and, according to Dave Merchant on Acrobat.com, we don't know what tje future of that might be. It would be a great shame to lose the PDF SWFs since if they worked properly with the PDF container it would be the best way to deliver high quality Text/Photo/Video/SWF combinations. At the moment the SWFs and PDF container don't thoroughly know about each other. Have I got that right about the PDF SWF player? Forgive my delayed posts but I have been teaching three days a week and busy winding up the apprentices assessments for the end of term. It's a great thing that Adobe have continued to keep you involved with the project. John On 21/12/2012 21:43, Alex Harui wrote: Re: [flexcoders] Re: Flex alternatives Actually, I’m not just hanging in there, I’m still paid by Adobe to spend all of my time on Flex. My teammates are now folks like you who have spare cycles to contribute to the future of Flex. Apache Flex just “graduated” to being an official “top-level” project at Apache which means it will be around for as long as folks want it to. Adobe has no say in its future. Working in Apache has been interesting because these new contributors have lots of diverse knowledge and experience. The Apache Flex community is now investigating was to leverage a cross-compiler that can take in ActionScript and spit out JavaScript and allow you to use a Flex-like workflow to create RIAs that run without Flash. My thoughts on that topic and prototype is written up here: https://cwiki.apache.org/confluence/display/FLEX/Alex%27s+FlexJS+Prototype On 12/21/12 12:50 PM, "John McCormack" <j...@easypeasy.co.uk> wrote: -- Alex Harui Flex SDK Team Adobe Systems, Inc. http://blogs.adobe.com/aharui
