LOL, I hope not... world domination seems a little extreme for a compiler, debugger, component framework and the other bits and pieces...
The discussion has been interesting though. I really like the idea that developers could weave their own components into the framework: See Ryan Stewart: http://blogs.zdnet.com/Stewart/?p=353 But what interests me most is how Adobe will go open source but still retain control as they gradually allow people outside the company to run with "sub projects" within the Flex system. (Again see Ryan's article.) I hope taking Flex open source is a huge success because I'd like to see Adobe do something similar with the player. (To "RULE THE WORLD" in Greg's terms?) My guess (and I really don't know) is that many people in Adobe can't imagine how they would take the player open source in a meaningful way. It is a highly optimized and size-constrained piece of code. For example one question would be how could Adobe begin to provide the community with a way to own sub projects? One tantalizing possible answer is for Adobe to look at re-engineering the player to adopt an extension mechanism of some type. The strategy is risky because no one wants an Acrobat player experience for Flash but it could solve a lot of problems. There was a fitc session that I couldn't attend where I understand the Flash player group asked for comments on what to put into the player in the future. I imagine there were all sorts of requests like hardware accelerated 3D, screen sharing, and better video codecs. It's hard for Adobe to add those sorts of things quickly without a player extension mechanism. It's probably impossible for them to keep the player size small and add many of the big important things designers and developers want. So it seems there are a lot of good drivers for going with introducing a more extensible/modular architecture for the player: 1. it provides an opportunity for real participation in an eventual open source initiative for the player 2. the player becomes more agile (and therefore competitive) with smaller extensions coming out in-between major player upgrade cycles 3. Adobe can add newer more powerful features to the player without bloating the initial download size much more. Extensions would have to download once as needed. There are probably a lot of reasons folks inside Adobe know about for not doing this that I'm not aware of. For example another thing no one wants to see is a Windows Media Player experience where the player announces it can't find the right codec to play your video. But if those things could be overcome this note is my personal request to Adobe to continue the process you started with AS3 and make it happen for the player too. Cheers, -Brian greg h wrote: > TRULY, NOW, FLEX WILL RULE THE WORLD!!! > > Oh, and now I better understand why the name change on Flex Data > Services to LiveCycle Data Services. > > g > -- ______________________________________________________________________ Brian Lesser Assistant Director, Application Development and Integration Computing and Communications Services Ryerson University 350 Victoria St. Toronto, Ontario Phone: (416) 979-5000 ext. 6835 M5B 2K3 Fax: (416) 979-5220 Office: POD?? E-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] (Enter through LB99) Web: http://www.ryerson.ca/~blesser ______________________________________________________________________
