Digesting MAX 2005
Posted by Jesse Rodgers on October 25, 2005 at 09:34 PM
If you have been paying attention to the Macromedia MAX 2005 photo pool you might think MAX was all about partying. But let me tell you, that partying only took place after some really long days in sessions and discussion about web development tools and techniques. Although some discussions in the hotel lobby are rather difficult to recall, the overall feeling from MAX this year is very positive. Here is what I got out of it:
Flash 8.5 changes my perception of Flash
Flash? That ‘skip intro’ thing that was cool in 1999 and won’t go away? That is going to be huge? What about SVG? Flash 8 is not the Flash you know and loath. It could be considered a platform within the browser platform – truly OS independent – and it’s starting to be taken seriously by companies like SAP and ESRI. Not only that but Macromedia is making a bold move in making Flex 2 Alpha available on the new Macromedia Labs site.
You can go to the labs site to check out in more detail but essentially Flex is Flash + Coldfusion following ECMA standards with Actionscript 3 to give you a tool that allows you to make a front end for many different big name back end applications/services. Last year I met a guy from the UK that was using it as the front end for PeopleSoft. This year I heard of much more uses for Flex. Not knowing too much about it myself, I liked what I saw, just wish I could try it out (windows only at the moment).
Mix into all this Bob Regan had around 3 presentations on accessible design for Flash developers that were all pretty full. Bob has done a lot to influence Flash’s accessibility while trying to retain the ‘experience’ for the user – both with and without a screen reader. His example at MAX was the JK Rowling site that was developed by Lightmaker Group. Tom (from Lightmaker) was even in the crowd for every presentation. My favorite comment from Tom after one of the presentations was essentially that ‘accessibility just takes some thought.’ Accessible Flash and people are thinking about it…
I am not a Flash developer but I saw a demo at MAX that show AJAX applications interacting with a Flash application but the Flash one was much prettier of course. I also saw XML providing all the data (content) for the Flash application and it seems to update in real time. Could it be Asynchronous Flash and XML (AFAX)? There are some interesting possibilities here. More sIFR type JS/Actionscript in the future?
Finally, Action-script 3 is supposed to be really close to Java, more than before, how’s that for you students learning Java? Another outlet for those skills that could favor the more creative of you out there. I hope to get re-aquanted with my old friend Java (we don’t get along), maybe Action-script 3 is good venue to mend some fences…
MAX really helped me get a better grasp on where Macromedia sees things going and what role the soon-to-be Adobe Systems Inc. will take. For me, the non-Flash person, I am thinking about using Flash in different ways. Hopefully I will find some time to do that in the coming weeks. For those students I am interviewing tomorrow, I am going to ask what AFAX is just to see if you are reading this blog ;)