This has been the topic of discussion for a long time now. The open source revolution has caught up in a major way in the Flash community now. Whoever I speak to, speaks about using open source development tools for developing Flash based contents. The Flash community was probably the last to join the open source development race but nevertheless has caught up speed to a great extend (Thanks to Aral for his amazing idea of starting osflash) .

When I ask them for that one top reason why they prefer the open source development, almost instantly I hear this answer "The Flash inbuilt compiler sucks !". Very true especially when you are working on a large project, you sit and wait and wait and wait for that blue bar to move on. I think rather than saying "Compiling.." it should say "Why don't you go have a coffee and come back while I compile?" ( May be a good idea for a feature request ;) ) 

Jokes apart, this is not the only reason, people have a list of reasons - some say the license is costly (particularly when you have 100's of developers using Flash), we want a automated workflow, we want versionable code (versioning code written inside Flash is a nightmare) etc.., My only question is if this is going to continue and people start using open source software's to develop flash content, at one point of time the Flash IDE may become obsolete or maybe only designers want to use the IDE. The player is already free, the SWF file format is open and now if the revenue that comes out of the Flash IDE also goes down things may take a turn. Adobe has to take a call now and decide on a strategy to retain users of the Flash IDE. My few cents here:

• Make the compiler in Flash as fast or better than MTASC
• Make ActionScript editing in Flash more robust
• Bring in more maturity to the ActionScript programming model. I think Adobe has managed this well to an extend in AS3 but still there is a large room for improvement.
• Create more natively supported code libraries - the only few good ones available now are libraries like AS2LIB.
• Make the build-in UI components light weight and provide multitude of ways to skin them.
• Keep adding more inbuilt components with each release (The last major inclusion was way back)
• Provide workflow related enhancements in the IDE which would have no need for a developer to go out of the IDE for anything.
• Nothing related to the IDE but be sensitive to the users when making major decisions on how the player would behave. To me the biggest mistake which Macromedia has ever done in history was to introduce the Flash Security Sandbox feature (?!!). I don't remember how many times I would have cursed Macromedia for this.
• The list goes on and on but these are the major things which comes to my mind instantly

All said, I am very careful when I recommend my clients for going by a open source approach for four main reasons:

1) It doesn't allow you to future proof your applications. Most of the open source software developers have to wait till Adobe releases the new SWF file format to port their application (and hence leverage the features of the new player) and the wait may be really long for especially the ones which uses the Flash Player.

2) Support is limited to the community or mailing lists. A googling helps most of the times but not always.

3) Doesn't perfectly suit a rapid application development process specifically in the service industry where you need to finish a project with a week or two.

4) Open source development involves a disciplined approach to software development and if you are an a mass recruitment drive you wont be able to find many who will fit this bill.

I have nothing against open source development and infact I prefer the open source approach myself, but as a consultant your role is to give solutions which makes the most sense to the company you are consulting for and not to promote your own ideas or fantasies so to say.

On a different note, someother day a developer made a statement in a conference saying "Adobe's strategy is to make Flex as the de facto for development and let Flash handle the designer features" - sounds really scary. This comment was not made by Adobe but a developer in a conference, but this is the impression which prevails. I think its very important for Adobe to give a clear picture of its roadmap for Flash to the Flash community and what the future holds from a Flash perspective. Expecting every Flash developer to move to Flex is not reasonable and will not work for sure and I don't think this is what Adobe's strategy is.

Thoughts?

Posted by Last ActionScript Hero at 04:39 AM | Permalink | Comments (6) | TrackBacks (0)

I couldn't believe it till I pinched myself when I had the brand new Nokia N73 in my hand. I won this as part of the FlashLite developer interaction and feedback session which Adobe had in FlashForward, Austin. This is a damn good device, has a whooping 3.2 MP camera with Carl Zeiss lens on the rear side and another VGA camera on the front, stereo speakers and above the FlashLite player is build-in. Check out the complete tech spec here.

Thanks Adobe !

Posted by Last ActionScript Hero at 03:05 AM | Permalink

Before I start off with anything - Kudos to the design team of the EDGE Newsletter. All along these guys have been doing a wonderful job with the newsletter making bind blowing designs and high quality content. I have never missed a single issue of the newsletter till now and have been a big fan of both the design and content.

Coming back to the reason why I (personally) don’t like the new redesign. Most of you by now would have got a chance to look at the new edge redesign in HTML and CSS. The design still looks good but:

1) I would personally favor Flash against HTML or CSS. May be this is too personal (or may sound a bit vague) - but when I make presentations I feel very bad when I have to present a PowerPoint. There have been many instances where I just printed the PPT to a FlashPaper and used it for the presentation rather than the real PPT. When you are claiming that you are a Flash Developer it looks odd when you yourself don’t use Flash for presentation but use PowerPoint.

From this point of view - when the company which makes Flash itself feels that HTML and CSS are better and fast how could you sell the idea of using Flash for publishing to a client?

2) All through the video the only thing which stands out is that it makes production faster and easier. Agreed. But just have a look at both the Flash version and the HTML/CSS version side by side and it would be very visible that Flash content looks more professional and crisp rather than the CSS version - no popup's, no refreshs - just wait for sometime for it to load and you are ready to go.

3) In the Video someone told about making the page accessible. Of the time I spend with my clients selling a Flash based solution against a HTML based solution I spend 25% of the time explaining them how Flash contents CAN be made accessible. I would have been happy if Adobe spend some little extra time and made the Flash version accessible and show the world that Flash is capable of being made accessible.

4) Again a bit personal - Being a patriot of Flash all along I have spend hours arguing with people, that combined with the right technologies Flash is no lesser than any other development tool in the market and when I see Adobe itself not using Flash for their popular newsletter I was sortof depressed.

To sum it up all - I understand that the EDGE team wants to change their content creation workflow and fasten up the process for good- but guys if we don’t use our own tools how can we expect others to?

Posted by Last ActionScript Hero at 05:57 PM | Permalink | Comments (3) | TrackBacks (0)

This is absolutely funny and very creative. I specifically like the finishing touch - which ends like a symphony. Jeffa is a very good guy to work with, I have spent very little time him when I was in SF and he is very jovial and friendly.

Check this out: New Employee Song via Jeffa's blog

Posted by Last ActionScript Hero at 02:25 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Stumbled upon this - interesting and funny.

Signs You're a Crappy Programmer (and don't know it) through Damien Katz blog.

I particularly liked these three points as I have seen people doing it many times.

# You are adamantly opposed to function/methods over 20 lines of code.
(or 30 or 10 or whatever number of lines) Sorry, sometimes a really long function is just what's needed for the problem at hand. Usually shorter functions are easier to understand, but sometimes things are most simply expressed in one long function. Code should not be made more complex to meet some arbitrary standard.

# You think error handling means catching every exception, logging it and continuing on.
That’s not error handling, that’s error ignoring and is the semantically equivalent to “on error next” in VB. Just because it got logged away somewhere doesn’t mean you’ve handled anything. Error handling is hard. If you don’t know exactly what to do in the face of a particular error, then let the exception bubble up to a higher level exception handler.

# You model all your code in UML before you write it.
Enthusiastic UML modeling is typically done by those who aren’t strong coders, but consider themselves software architects anyway. Modeling tools appeal most to those who think coding can be done in conference room by manipulating little charts. The charts aren’t the design, and will never be the design, that’s what the code is for.

Posted by Last ActionScript Hero at 04:09 PM | Permalink | Comments (3) | TrackBacks (0)

One of my friend pointed me to this video on YouTube. Its really funny, apparently one of the guy - Jekre(the one with a pony tail) was working with me in my old company. Check it out here.

Posted by Last ActionScript Hero at 12:37 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Check this entry on the forum, to know more.

Posted by Last ActionScript Hero at 09:23 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

I was browsing through some LongHorn blogs and stumbled across this experiment by Valentin Iliescu. A 3D Chess game using WinFX, quite impressive but don't know how much of work it takes to get something similar done. Check it out here.

BTW you need WinFX runtime components installed in your machine to view this wba application. You can download WinFX donwloader from here. Initially it's a 2MB web download and then the installer downloads 34MB of WinFX runtime components.

If you already have WinFX runtime components installed you can directly have a look at the application here.

Posted by Last ActionScript Hero at 02:20 PM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

AJAX and the Richer Internet Application : This is an article on ZDNet Blogs about AJAX, Flex and DreamFactory, the three emerging RIA's. The author complains that AJAX lacks graphic capabilities which is where Flex leads the market. The interesting part about the whole story is not the content itself but this comment in the TalkBack section. I completely agree with Frank, many a times we get into a comparing mode and start comparing one against another, I am no exception myself, its a urge to do so. But in the process we completely forgot the possibilities of leveraging both of these competing technologies to deliver something better than what each one of them can achieve independently.

Now I have a question, why do you ever need fifty to sixty thousand moving pieces in your RIA? :)

Posted by Last ActionScript Hero at 10:44 AM | Permalink | Comments (2) | TrackBacks (0)