The Next Gen Flash Platform, Q & A - Friday, April 21st - NOTES
Flash platform rough notes - these are VERY unedited.
Guy Watson was unavailable, the panel was joined instead by Theodore Patrick of Synergy Systems, Washington DC, and Sho Kuwamoto from Adobe.
Mike Downey, Moderator, Adobe
Mike Chambers, Adobe
Chafic Kazoun, Rewindlife.com
Darron Schall, Darronschall.com
Mike C: The net lets you create software that is different than what you had before, eg. MS Word you are not going to put on the web, but for the web the applications are different, its stuff you don't want to carry with you, you leave it on the internet and its always there wherever you are at the moment
MS products are successful because there are so many developers working with it
Darren:
the best thing for the Adobe FLex environment it is growing in this way... e.g. it's FREE!
give away your development tools
free compiler
Flex
Flex builder is not free but it is a great builder environment so worth it
Where Flash shines is ability to connect to servers and share data across applications also video and audio, so its a more collaborative environment
opp. is there because I'm an Adobe consultant
Chafic:
older version of Flex was not viable, because had to sell license to Flex as well as to our app. but now don't have to do that so it works much better
Theodore Patrick (Ted) - at Synergy clients want apps that a easy, accessible
VB apps that they want to put out to huge user groups
you can use Flex to do that
Web 2.0 is about pushing the data model, leveraging power of users computers to process
Flash community has been on to this for a long time, more fine grained
Mike C:
AJAX is creating a lot of buzz, html is good at doing some things, Flash at others... so the question is whether this movement of logic to the client, bringing up data, is that ultimately going to benefit Flash
Chafic:
google:finance is a good example of Flash integration
some parts of things can be just plain html, but there are other places where Flash really shines
you always could do alot with html, but people are really waking up to that now
e.g. asynchronous call backs, we took
but binary sockets can be done easily with Flash in the browser
Mike D:
no visible swf
Ted:
downloading amf objects
connecting and exchanging data
most browsers don't have the capacity but with Flash you can structure data and parse data
so FLash is going to be leveraged in a whole bunch of ways
problem of compatibility between browsers
Mike D:
has been lots of misperceptions about what Flash can do
is all this buzz around AJAX going to benefit Flash?
Chafic:
maybe it'll take three years
question from floor:
the risk is that Flash just becomes this little media thing you throw on top of other things
Sho Kuwamoto:
for certain things, you stay with html if you don't need a great deal of interactivity but if you do need, e.g. events are being passed around, then Flash works great for that visual interactivity, complex user interface, then Flash is what you want to work with
Mike D:
actionscript is maybe going to become an industry standard
Ted:
processor capacity is not well used if you are sending line after line of presentation data, where with Flash the data just flows into the Flash presentation interface so it is so much more efficient
Mike C:
e_Trade, quote tracking widget, 200 x 300 px, put in the TSE code and you get the current price for that stock
they saved a huge amount of money on bandwidth charges
but the question is what kind of apps are being built? what do people need to start looking at to get into building these sort of apps?
Chafic:
real time applications/collaborations
who could have seen that the Flash player is everywhere out there
I use Adobe Illustrator religiously and integration now with Flash...
I do all my design work in Illustrator and just copy and paste it into Flash
Ted:
google:maps are impressive but its just about tiling
you create a tiling engine and it doesn't redraw the data on the fly, it fills the drawing
presentation with new data, which is much faster
Mike C:
if you don't have control of the data, that's a problem
Chafic:
yeah, I don't really agree with distributed data because if somebody withdraws or changes their data, that can be a problem for everybody else
Sho:
on the Internet, everything changes every 5 years
89-95
94-99 Windows, can do everything online
00-06 hasn't been as much innovation, nothing has changed, tools are better but what they do is about the same, but 5 years from now, you're going to see software that's really different
Darren:
social apps. are v. popular now... Flickr...
collaboration... something that the Flash platform is very good at making possible
Mike C:
how do you create an Outlook type experience on the Internet?
Avalon? Vista?
really expressive applications... if I can develop above the OS on a layer a rich
application, does the OS even matter anymore
Chafic:
a lot of what we deploy could be run by a dedicated fLASH processor
MS's angle is to make sure people switch to other platforms
Web 2.0 you can be on any device... it's going to be popular
Brian from audience:
OS is there to support desktop applications
Web apps don't have access to the whole machine
MAIA e.g. hard to imagine how it could run off the Web
also problem of multiple file formats... may be able to see the data but to manipulate it is
another matter
esp. realtime on the Web
there's a gap there
is the strategy to narrow the gap?
Ted:
clearly you can't build MAIA in Flash but you can do things like Writely(?)
some of the issues are technical only, performance is becoming less and less of a barrier
we're going to see apps move to the desktop and back to the Web, back and forth
Chafic:
co. called Wise, used to build big machines... a handful of full blown pc's... in five years it could be that 95% of their clients are running off the Web, with only a few full machines used for desktop apps.... could save a lot of money, maintenance
e.g. 500 people doing normal business things, could be running off the Web using Flash interfaces
Mike D:
what role do designers play in this big pie of FLash-base apps?
Sho:
the opportunity is huge, the interfaces UI are looking a lot alike but Apple is
doing stuff, more fluidity... will be pretty different in 5 years
understandable, beautiful, keep out of the way
you HAVE to have designers to do that
XD team, user experience group, had a designer went over to Apple, designed Aperture, scared Adobe, appeals to professional photographers, very simple interface to modify photos, unlike Photoshop that is getting more and more complicated... so now he came back and is helping simplify UI
Darren:
MS Office interface is radically different already
Mike C:
moves more and more to the desktop
Mike D:
everytime I visit Mike C's desk, he's always showing me something and saying he's going to
send it over to the XD dept. to make it look good... he starts early
Sho:
but you need to get the designer in right at the beginning, how the data is presented, it's not just a development issue
Ted:
now we have two , Flex and Flash that produce swfs...
you can transport Flash timeline into Flex and make it really compelling
Chafic:
I'm all for the design stuff, but... I always had the designer in at the beginning, its' painful but always worth it
Audience question:
it's not the design but the content, FLash can deliver so much complex content, video, audio... and the user needs to be focussed on the content, not the interface...
other Audience:
the interface can do only so much to drive the user's interest
Chafic:
but take stock info, that's basically the same no matter where you go,
so the interface makes a huge difference
I'll go to the service which has the interface that works best
real time UI is very important, it HAS to work properly or its useless
so that's not about just looking pretty
Ted:
drag and drop e.g. makes things so much easier for users, no forms to fill out
Q & A
do we have successful Flash apps that have at least 1% of MS's success
Chafic:
yes, but a lot of it is internal; takes a lot of machines to run them, can't set up here, and they are proprietary
there are some, Sales Force, but it is so bad, bad UI
Ted:
a lot of apps never get seen beyond the corporate internal network
Mike D:
but that is true of most applications, it's easier to build for internal use, that's where people start, very few become public knowledge
Mike C:
Breeze, Dot Net Win Forms...
Print Shop is the only one running dot net win forms
so MS is not very visible either in terms of successful apps
Question:
pushing Flex at our shop, are we going to see more presentations on Flex, where we can have stuff to demonstrate Flex's capabilities
Mike D:
yes, definitely
- end - permanent link
Guy Watson was unavailable, the panel was joined instead by Theodore Patrick of Synergy Systems, Washington DC, and Sho Kuwamoto from Adobe.
Mike Downey, Moderator, Adobe
Mike Chambers, Adobe
Chafic Kazoun, Rewindlife.com
Darron Schall, Darronschall.com
Mike C: The net lets you create software that is different than what you had before, eg. MS Word you are not going to put on the web, but for the web the applications are different, its stuff you don't want to carry with you, you leave it on the internet and its always there wherever you are at the moment
MS products are successful because there are so many developers working with it
Darren:
the best thing for the Adobe FLex environment it is growing in this way... e.g. it's FREE!
give away your development tools
free compiler
Flex
Flex builder is not free but it is a great builder environment so worth it
Where Flash shines is ability to connect to servers and share data across applications also video and audio, so its a more collaborative environment
opp. is there because I'm an Adobe consultant
Chafic:
older version of Flex was not viable, because had to sell license to Flex as well as to our app. but now don't have to do that so it works much better
Theodore Patrick (Ted) - at Synergy clients want apps that a easy, accessible
VB apps that they want to put out to huge user groups
you can use Flex to do that
Web 2.0 is about pushing the data model, leveraging power of users computers to process
Flash community has been on to this for a long time, more fine grained
Mike C:
AJAX is creating a lot of buzz, html is good at doing some things, Flash at others... so the question is whether this movement of logic to the client, bringing up data, is that ultimately going to benefit Flash
Chafic:
google:finance is a good example of Flash integration
some parts of things can be just plain html, but there are other places where Flash really shines
you always could do alot with html, but people are really waking up to that now
e.g. asynchronous call backs, we took
but binary sockets can be done easily with Flash in the browser
Mike D:
no visible swf
Ted:
downloading amf objects
connecting and exchanging data
most browsers don't have the capacity but with Flash you can structure data and parse data
so FLash is going to be leveraged in a whole bunch of ways
problem of compatibility between browsers
Mike D:
has been lots of misperceptions about what Flash can do
is all this buzz around AJAX going to benefit Flash?
Chafic:
maybe it'll take three years
question from floor:
the risk is that Flash just becomes this little media thing you throw on top of other things
Sho Kuwamoto:
for certain things, you stay with html if you don't need a great deal of interactivity but if you do need, e.g. events are being passed around, then Flash works great for that visual interactivity, complex user interface, then Flash is what you want to work with
Mike D:
actionscript is maybe going to become an industry standard
Ted:
processor capacity is not well used if you are sending line after line of presentation data, where with Flash the data just flows into the Flash presentation interface so it is so much more efficient
Mike C:
e_Trade, quote tracking widget, 200 x 300 px, put in the TSE code and you get the current price for that stock
they saved a huge amount of money on bandwidth charges
but the question is what kind of apps are being built? what do people need to start looking at to get into building these sort of apps?
Chafic:
real time applications/collaborations
who could have seen that the Flash player is everywhere out there
I use Adobe Illustrator religiously and integration now with Flash...
I do all my design work in Illustrator and just copy and paste it into Flash
Ted:
google:maps are impressive but its just about tiling
you create a tiling engine and it doesn't redraw the data on the fly, it fills the drawing
presentation with new data, which is much faster
Mike C:
if you don't have control of the data, that's a problem
Chafic:
yeah, I don't really agree with distributed data because if somebody withdraws or changes their data, that can be a problem for everybody else
Sho:
on the Internet, everything changes every 5 years
89-95
94-99 Windows, can do everything online
00-06 hasn't been as much innovation, nothing has changed, tools are better but what they do is about the same, but 5 years from now, you're going to see software that's really different
Darren:
social apps. are v. popular now... Flickr...
collaboration... something that the Flash platform is very good at making possible
Mike C:
how do you create an Outlook type experience on the Internet?
Avalon? Vista?
really expressive applications... if I can develop above the OS on a layer a rich
application, does the OS even matter anymore
Chafic:
a lot of what we deploy could be run by a dedicated fLASH processor
MS's angle is to make sure people switch to other platforms
Web 2.0 you can be on any device... it's going to be popular
Brian from audience:
OS is there to support desktop applications
Web apps don't have access to the whole machine
MAIA e.g. hard to imagine how it could run off the Web
also problem of multiple file formats... may be able to see the data but to manipulate it is
another matter
esp. realtime on the Web
there's a gap there
is the strategy to narrow the gap?
Ted:
clearly you can't build MAIA in Flash but you can do things like Writely(?)
some of the issues are technical only, performance is becoming less and less of a barrier
we're going to see apps move to the desktop and back to the Web, back and forth
Chafic:
co. called Wise, used to build big machines... a handful of full blown pc's... in five years it could be that 95% of their clients are running off the Web, with only a few full machines used for desktop apps.... could save a lot of money, maintenance
e.g. 500 people doing normal business things, could be running off the Web using Flash interfaces
Mike D:
what role do designers play in this big pie of FLash-base apps?
Sho:
the opportunity is huge, the interfaces UI are looking a lot alike but Apple is
doing stuff, more fluidity... will be pretty different in 5 years
understandable, beautiful, keep out of the way
you HAVE to have designers to do that
XD team, user experience group, had a designer went over to Apple, designed Aperture, scared Adobe, appeals to professional photographers, very simple interface to modify photos, unlike Photoshop that is getting more and more complicated... so now he came back and is helping simplify UI
Darren:
MS Office interface is radically different already
Mike C:
moves more and more to the desktop
Mike D:
everytime I visit Mike C's desk, he's always showing me something and saying he's going to
send it over to the XD dept. to make it look good... he starts early
Sho:
but you need to get the designer in right at the beginning, how the data is presented, it's not just a development issue
Ted:
now we have two , Flex and Flash that produce swfs...
you can transport Flash timeline into Flex and make it really compelling
Chafic:
I'm all for the design stuff, but... I always had the designer in at the beginning, its' painful but always worth it
Audience question:
it's not the design but the content, FLash can deliver so much complex content, video, audio... and the user needs to be focussed on the content, not the interface...
other Audience:
the interface can do only so much to drive the user's interest
Chafic:
but take stock info, that's basically the same no matter where you go,
so the interface makes a huge difference
I'll go to the service which has the interface that works best
real time UI is very important, it HAS to work properly or its useless
so that's not about just looking pretty
Ted:
drag and drop e.g. makes things so much easier for users, no forms to fill out
Q & A
do we have successful Flash apps that have at least 1% of MS's success
Chafic:
yes, but a lot of it is internal; takes a lot of machines to run them, can't set up here, and they are proprietary
there are some, Sales Force, but it is so bad, bad UI
Ted:
a lot of apps never get seen beyond the corporate internal network
Mike D:
but that is true of most applications, it's easier to build for internal use, that's where people start, very few become public knowledge
Mike C:
Breeze, Dot Net Win Forms...
Print Shop is the only one running dot net win forms
so MS is not very visible either in terms of successful apps
Question:
pushing Flex at our shop, are we going to see more presentations on Flex, where we can have stuff to demonstrate Flex's capabilities
Mike D:
yes, definitely
- end - permanent link
Posted by howboy at 11:32 AM.
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