Tim Wang's eLearning Blog

In order to celebrate the 10th year of the great technology Flash (Previously know as Macromedia Shockwave Flash), Adobe Flash developers are ready to push out Flash Player 10 and the Authoring tool. They demonstrated the new tool at Adobe MAX Chicago this week. It looks like the new authoring tool has more power in the video editing and animation manipulations. The authors can have the video clips playing in real time while editing the animation. The well known and overly used "tween" tool is apparently much more powerful. You can say "bye bye" to the confusing "path" tool which has been used since Flash 4. The manipulation of the path during the tween motion is much more intelligent and flexible. On top of the fancy UI editing features, Adobe also introduced a C/C++ to Actionscript 3 conversion process which allows Flash authors to easily integrate C++ code into swf files! They managed to show a demo of the famous FPS game Quake in Flash which are purely converted C++ code to AS3. I am anticipating Flash Player 10 will open a new horizon in 3D programming and UI designs. Really impressive.

Peter Elst managed to capture the exciting demo at the conference. Check them out!

Also check out this amazing video time line created for Flash 10 years on Adobe's site:

Soon after Adobe released Apollo - a tool that brings Flash contents a step closer to the client side desktop, Microsoft reveals it's counter strike tool – Silverlight, formerly code-named "WPF/E" . Microsoft's description of this new program is,

Silverlight is a cross-browser, cross-platform plug-in for delivering the next generation of Microsoft .NET–based media experiences and rich interactive applications for the Web.

In my understanding, Silverlight is a new Scalable Vector Graphics tool built on Microsoft's .NET technology with a focus of media components integration. Another word, Silverlight is a new Flash player where combines vector graphics, raster graphics, sound files, video files, and human interaction elements. There have been many discussion on Microsoft Silverlight Vs Adobe Flash. Grant Skinner has a pretty good summary on this topic. In general, I believe the only way for Microsoft to succeed with Silverlight technology is:

1.Focus on the market, dump tons (I mean TONS) of cash towards the promotion of this new software. This one I am almost certain is the least to worry for Microsoft.

2.Understand the usesrs' and content creators' need. Design a good user interface for the Sliverlight content authoring. I see the true value of Flash as it provided a bridge between the logically creative developers and the artistically creative designers. The geeky coders were excited by Flash's simple to use interface and yet powerful scripting engine. The visual designers appreciate the simplicity of the scripting aspect of Flash.

3.Microsoft MUST think cross platform. If Microsoft can not provide both a good user interface and a flawless client side compiler (player), Silverlight is aimed to fail. It's dead simple, most of the telanted designers I know are using Mac... Not to mention I had some "funny" bugs when I installed Silverlight to my Firefox in Windows XP. I had to restart a few times to see the installed plugin.

4.Break the "search engine black box theory" on rich media content. It's just fatal that standard search engines can not pick up Flash contents. It's like you putting content into a black box. My limited understanding of Silverlight is much contents are in well organized XML format where indexing it by the searching engines are feasible.

5.More power. You can't just "duplicate" the existing power of Flash player, Microsoft needs to invent some well differentiated new features like 3D Open GL support...

6.Microsoft needs to see they are not just competing with 1 of Adobe's product, they need to consider taking on the entire Adobe's product line. At the least be prepared for it. Because after the merge between Adobe and Macromedia, applications like Photoshop, Dreamweaver, Flash, Acrobat PDF and Premiere are working together closer than ever. Adobe is creating a true harmony among their web/media publishing tools.

I may add more points to this post later. In conclusion, a majority of designers/developers doing RIA (Rich Internet Applicaitons) and Online content publishing are using Adobe applications. As much as I want to see other alternative technology to take on Flash, I still think Silverlight has a long way to go...

VS

Almost forgot, Adobe just announced the new product line - Creative Suite 3 (the finalized product package after the merge between Adobe and Macromedia) The package includes: Photoshop® CS3, Photoshop CS3 Extended, InDesign® CS3, Illustrator® CS3, Flash® CS3 Professional, Dreamweaver® CS3, Adobe Premiere® Pro CS3, and After Effects® CS3.

As they promised, Adobe has kept the strongest product from both companies (Adobe and Macromedia). The Flash CS3 (literally Flash 9) will incorporate Actionscript 3.0

This is exciting. Except good products come with a high price:

Estimated street price for the Adobe Creative Suite 3 Design Premium is US$1799, US$1599 for Adobe Creative Suite 3 Web Premium, US$1699 for Adobe Creative Suite 3 Production Premium, and US$2499 for Adobe Creative Suite 3 Master Collection.

Both Adobe and Macromedia are (were) known to be the producers to the best digital publishing software. Their variety of tools cover areas from web creation to image manipulation to animation design to video editing and to server side applications. Products like “Photoshop”, “Flash”, “Dreamweaver”, “Firworks”, “Illustrator”, “Premiere”, and “ColdFusion” have been around since the early stages of Internet. I would say most people whom is doing graphic design, web construction or multimedia developments must have used at the least one of their products.

Ever sine Adobe bought Macromedia in the year 2005, thousands of developers around the world have been wondering, guessing, betting on what's going to be the new product line from the joint corporation. The logical action would be continuing the strong products from each company and abandon or combine the weaker products from each company. The new line of products will also define the marketing direction of Adobe whom is the giant of RIA (Rich Internet Application) authoring tool provider.

Yesterday (Sunday, March 18th, 2007) Adobe launched the Apollo alpha software to the developers' community. It is the new line of products from Adobe to enhance none browser based RIA development. The released package include the Apollo runtime environment as well as an SDK and other associated developer tools. It supports developments using Flex, along with the promise of supporting (X)HTML-based applications in the next release (Adobe Apollo Beta). This means the developers can use Adobe product to create client side applications that has rich user interface using Flash and AJAX.

It seems Adobe has promised to open up a whole new world in OS independent, rich media based, on-line/off-line application creations. It allows previously web focused application designers to enter a new dimension. I am looking forward to what's coming down the pipe of Adobe's new product line!

Adobe Apollo Alpha Shipped on Sunday Mar 18th, 2007

The official Adobe Flash Player page is updated for Flash 9.0 beta. Get it here:

Every since Adobe acquired Macromedia, a big question mark had hang over thousands of Flash developers' mind - What is Adobe going to do to Flash, the authoring tool and the player. Many rumors have been floating around, but the Flash community continues to develop. However, there seems to be some serious movements coming down the tunnel:
- Stephen Elop Resigns from Adobe
- Apollo has been officially announced
- Actionscript 3.0 coming along with Flash Player 9

Apollo is the next generation of Flash Player that Adobe really pushing. A simplified way of looking at it is a well integrated Adobe browser? I am sure Acrobat PDF and Flash Player would be two good enough reasons for standard Internet users to give it a try. However, I am just not sure if Adobe is ready yet to compete in the overly heated web browser world. Of course Adobe says Apollo is much more than that, it also an application front where helps the developers to create cross-platform databased driven applications easily. Please do not let my biased understanding fool your judgment on Apollo. If you feel like to learn more about this new application, read the official documents written by Martin LaMonica on CNET.

cnet has a article on the new Flash project which is targeting for a free program that can runs Flash presentations on the client side.

Apollo is designed to give developers a way to create applications that can render Flash animations as well as HTML and Acrobat files (PDF).

Am I understanding it right? Adobe is proposing to create a browser like application that focus on Flash and Web content delivery? It seems that the application also has some "advanced" offline features like you can use it to interact with the web services while you are offline, and as soon as your computer / handheld connects to the net, your requests get sent automatically. I don't think this idea is new, and matter of fact, one can use many other technologies to achieve this goal. However, it's good to know that Adobe has high interests on Flash based applications.

Yep, it's true, macromedia.com is gone. The domain name will instantly point you to the adobe.com with a new look that some what retaining much of the styling from the old macromedia.com. Allow me to once more post a screen shot of the old macromedia.com. For the respect of the wonderful tools in the past and my best wishes to the new unified Adobe.

A few days after the historical merge between Adobe and Macromedia, I have been hearing various of bad rumors around the Macromedia developers' community. The news evolve from Macromedia tech support staff losing their jobs to Adobe may combine their Acrobat Reader with Flash Player into one compiler... The news really worries me, especially the second one. This speculation is based on the vivid words in the merge FAQ published by Adobe. Everyone knows Macromedia shockwave (Director) has less popularity compare to Flash due to its player is a little larger than the tiny Flash player. Adobe Acrobat reader is a 20mb compiler, if flash audiences need to download this giant player along with the Flash player, the demand will decline dramatically and the great Flash technology may eventually be replaced by others. I am hoping these rumors are caused by the uncertainty from the early stage of the product line merge. Hope the brilliant Adobe and Macromedia engineers work together and keep all the fascinating products at their best fit into today's web technology... My fingers are crossed.

This is a backlog on the remarkable historical event, Adobe and Macromedia acquisition officially started on December 3rd, 2005. I have been a loyal Macromedia user all these years... I love every single product from the company. Flash, Dreamweaver, Fireworks, Freehand, Director... I sincerely want to blog this moment to show my respect to the disappearing Macromedia identity and give my best wishes to the newly merged product line!

Macromedia today announced Flex 2, at a reasonable price. Flex 2 includes Flash Player 8.5, Flex Framework 2, Flex Builder 2, and Flex Enterprise Services 2. The alpha version of Flex 2 will be released this month and the final product will be released in the beginning of next year.

When my buddy Joel sent me the message this morning I thought he was joking. Wow, 2 long term competitors are going into a joint adventure? Over the last few years, Adobe faced serious challenges from Macromedia. As a relatively younger company, Macromedia has done an amazing job to take over the web design and online media development market. Adobe tried to produce their version of "Dreamweaver" (Go Alive) and "Flash" (Live Motion), but both attempts failed. Macromedia faced same challenge, however, their "Fireworks" did take over a large number of (Photoshop) users (myself as one of the converted Firework user). I personally believe this acquisition will make the product line much stronger but of cause the consumers will be lack of choice and the market will be dominated by a giant Blue Chip company. I am however, anxious to find out how will Flash change over the next period of time since many of my current projects are related to the technology, Learning Object Authoring Templates, Pachyderm and more...