Flash Player 8.5 / Flex 2: Targetting Developers

http://www.macromedia.com/devnet/flex/articles/flex2_intro.html

Here is a DevNet article that gives a glimpse of the direction that Macromedia is heading with the Flash player and some related technologies. Flex 2 / Flash player 8.5 result in part from Mark Ander's work over at Macromedia (for those of you who don't know or have forgotten, Mark was a major component of the original ASP.NET team).

I had a chance to chat with Mark and some other guys from Macromedia and preview the tools coming down the pipe the other day. The tools are definately a step in the right direction, though they are still very much alpha. One nice feature is the addition of AS3, which has support for strong typing and significantly better XML support. Personally, I would much rather have a C# compliant compiler than yet another revision of Javascript, which never really took off outside of the browser and has never really been suitable for doing much other than UI work (and even there it can be quite painful). Maybe AS3 will solve some problems, but coding my UI teir in Javascript and then my backend in C#/Java just plain irks me. Maybe I am just lazy, but I want to work with one language and one language only (and I sure as hell am not going to be writing my backend in Javascript, even if there was a AS3 compiler for .NET).

I would also much prefer a VS.NET integrated Flex Builder than an Eclipse integrated version... but as much as that would be heaven for anyone who is already spoiled by VS.NET, it is easy to see why Macromedia won't be doing this any time soon. Why would they want to force everyone to install one of their main competitor's tools to use their product? Its really too bad that Adobe bought Macromedia instead of Microsoft.

In any case, I really like how Macromedia is going to be making beta / alpha versions of their tools available to the public at large. At the very least, people like me will be able to bitch and moan about the products to Macromedia before they come out, hopefully resulting in a final product that is much more suitable. I am also quite pleased that I was assured that the file format specs should be delivered in a more timely manner in the future. No more waiting a year or so after the product release till 3rd party devs can start integrating the latest Flash features into their applications. Probably not a big deal for some people, but very important for the work I will be doing with Articulate as we get closer to the Office 12 launch. IMO, these specs should be available along with the Alphas and Betas so that 3rd party SWF developers can continue to push the boundaries with their own tools, but I'll take what I can get.