Macromedia MAX 2003 Topic Center

Today's general session was formatted in the evening entertainment talk show genre, titled "Developer Entertainment Tonight" or "D!ET." Eileen Stanley, Vice President of Corporate Communications, and Tim Buntel, ColdFusion Product Manger, hosted the session. The show began with an interview with Chief Creative Officer Michael Gough who demystified the audience on the new Halo components in Flash MX 2004.

"Will people be wearing Halo components this spring?" Stanley asked. She and cohost Tim Buntel spoofed infotainment while interviewing key players in Macromedia's development and product strategy.

Figure 1. Eileen Stanley interviews Michael Gough about Halo components.

"Halo components aren't really like shoes, Eileen," replied Gough. He went on to explain how the Halo components save developers time by providing well-designed, already functional interactive interface elements.

Into Site

What are you Into? In this morning's session, the audience discovered what Into users were passionate about. With the Into site, users upload their personal movies, then the app uses Macromedia Flash to present the short movies to curious surfers. Why would someone use Into? To see what people are passionate about. Beau Ambur loves taking things apart to see how they work—evidenced as he pulled apart a small remote robot and hooked it up to a pulse monitor on his finger. Soon the robot whirled to his pulse. "Every time my heart beats, the motor goes on," he smirked, as the robot whirled in disjoined pulsing circles. Another user professed his love of water, "I can't imagine another liquid I like as much." He showcased his extensive super-soaker collection and introduced us to his favorite website, i-soaker.com. "I am sharing my love for water warfare…BYOB, or bring your own blaster!"

DevNet Resource Kit (DRK) 5

Next, cohost Tim Buntel invited Community Manager Christian Cantrell up to talk about all the new content, components, and applications featured on DevNet Resource Kit (DRK) 5. Among other things, Christian talked about how many of the Macromedia Flash UI components on previous DRKs have been updated to the new version 2 component architecture and re-released on DRK 5. Christian also reviewed some of the applications included on DRK 5, including Blogman. Blogman is an online web log manager that is simple to install, configure, and get up and running in no time.

TV Guide Rich Internet Application

TV Guide's upcoming online television information application shows just how well Flash can organize and display large amounts of information for users. Users can access 15 days worth of program information (with about 4800 items per day) through an interactive schedule.

Figure 2. Eileen Stanley introduces the TV Guide Rich Internet Application.

"The application has over 700,000 individual items of data in memory at the same time," said Robin Haffner, lead Flash developer at TV Guide. The application incorporates a Macromedia Flash interface, which incorporates DataGrid, Tree, and Accordion components. The Flash front end connects to C# components on the server through Flash Remoting. Haffner said that starting with Flash MX, Flash offers a "platform-independent, easily deployable, encapsulated solution." She cited components and ActionScript 2.0 as extremely valuable features for her development team.

"Two releases ago, we wouldn't have been able to do this," Haffner said.

Contribute 2

Following TV Guide, Tim invited Contribute Product Manager and fly fisherman Erik Larson to talk about Contribute 2 and the new Contribute 2 updater that will be available next week. Erik talked about how, at the request of customers, the user interface didn't change in Contribute 2. One of the hottest new features in Contribute 2 is the inclusion of FlashPaper. Unlike PDFs, which can take up to 30 seconds for Acrobat Reader to load, FlashPaper loads immediately. When the FlashPaper updater releases next week, it will be possible to embed FlashPaper documents in FLA files. Another new feature in Contribute 2 is the PayPal integration developed by WebAssist. With just a couple of clicks in Contribute, it's now possible to integrate e-commerce into web pages.

Figure 3. Tim Buntel and fly fisherman/Contribute Product Manager Erik Larson discuss Contribute 2.

Commercial Break

Next, Eileen and Tim showed a mock TV commercial—reminiscent of the old Saturday Night Live commercial spoofs—for a fictitious product called "Spray Away." Spray Away is a revolutionary new space-age product used to repel project managers, web development managers, and other annoying characters. The slogan? Just let web developers do their jobs.

Flash Communication Server

Flash Communication Server Product Manager Chris Hock took the stage to show some new examples of streaming video and audio. The Canadian Broadcasting Company's CBC Radio 3 built an online radio station that queues MP3s for playback, incorporates a controller throughout the site, and streams audio as users browse through other pages. Independent film fans can also view full-screen videos of newly produced films.

Hock spoke a bit about the bandwidth required to play back this kind of video—about 800 Kbps. "On a low traffic site, you can do this with one server," Hock said. "However, a higher traffic site needs a cluster."

With this, Hock announced an upcoming service—Flash Communication Server hosting. Developers will be able to take advantage of Flash Communication Server performance without setting up their own servers. They can simply upload Flash Video files (FLVs), and they're ready to go. "Ordinary developers can quickly deploy video on a high-performance network without the worry and expense of setting up and configuring servers."

One of the first companies to use this new service on their site is Comcast. As Hock showed a Britney Spears video, he talked about how Comcast had requested, and has now found a "failsafe, redundant, high-performance network to deploy the video on."

Breeze

Next, D!ET cohost Tim Buntel invited Peter Ryce to the stage to talk about Breeze and Breeze Live. Peter showed how easy it is to convert PowerPoint presentations to engaging Breeze presentations. Breeze Product Manager Leesa Lee joined Tim and Peter remotely from San Francisco via Breeze Live and actually took control of the Breeze Live broadcast while Peter talked about some of the upcoming features in Breeze Live. Peter showed how developers will soon be able to create and customize their own Breeze Live "windows of capability" called pods. One example of this is a shared white board pod developed by Peldi Guilizzoni.

Director

D!ET cohost Eileen Stanley brought Director Product Manager Miriam Geller to the stage for a look at some of the cutting-edge applications of Director MX and a sneak peek at a few new features in the next version of Director. First, Miriam talked about how American Idol winner Kelly Clarkson's new DVD includes a Director application. Miriam then previewed some of the new DVD integration features that Director developers can expect in the next version of Director. Not only will Mac Director developers now be able to create video DVD applications, but all Director developers will be able integrate web and DVD interactive experiences into their Director projects.

Mobile and Devices

"Devices aren't a fad anymore," said D!ET host Eileen Stanley. "They're a fact!" Tim and Eileen pulled out a Leapster, a device from LeapFrog designed to help children learn interactively, and launched a learning program designed for four to eight-year-olds. The cohosts had fun watching talking frogs, visiting an animated farm, and doing some simple, but challenging, math problems—all running in Flash.

Figure 4 . The Leapster interactive children's game using Macromedia Flash

Next in the news on the device front is FlashCast, a new information service that provides information though mobile phones. "The information can find you," Buntel said, "instead of you having to find it." Some FlashCast applications that Stanley and Buntel showed on a mobile phone were a news service, a sports channel, and "Lover or Loser?," an interactive dating popularity polling application. Stanley and Buntel rated Jennifer Lopez, Ben Affleck, and Macromedia President of Products Norm Meyrowitz—results are still being tabulated.

Flash Lite provides a platform for custom Flash applications that run on NTT DoCoMo i-mode phones. Some of the apps shown included Tipster, an application for calculating the amount of tip you should leave at a restaurant, and another app that lets you download, listen to, and purchase custom ringtones. Buntel configured the phone to play a Lenny Kravitz tune when a call comes in.

Intel has built a new application that will work for folks on the go—in Macromedia Central. Intel Centrino wireless hotspots are making it possible for folks to work and surf on laptops and devices in cafés and other communal areas. The Central application, called the "Hotspot Finder," helps users locate hotspots that are near to them so they can go online.

Since folks who are searching for a hotspot are unlikely to be connected to the Internet, Macromedia Central and its ability to work in a occasionally-connected environment is a perfect platform for the Hotspot Finder. Central holds hotspot data locally; users select nearby hotspots based on their locations. On top of that, Central forwards the location information to a map and provides directions to the hotspot.

The Macromedia Website

The Macromedia website has undergone two major redesigns in the past year. Forrester Research evaluated the website both times. In the first redesign (March 2003) macromedia.com received an average score, spurring a second redesign in September 2003 to address those issues. What did Forrester think of the redesign? In a video presentation, Harley Manning of Forrester Research announced that Macromedia scored 39 out of 50 for usability—nine points above any other website that Forrester has rated. Manning said that Macromedia addressed four main issues from the March 2003 evaluation: improving menu structure, designing better text legibility, using space more effectively, and exposing content at a higher level. Manning then boosted the score two more points to 41 after the web team addressed a couple of further issues. The site's extensive use of CSS and templates made these further updates a snap. Check out the redesigned macromedia.com.

MAX Awards
New this year at MAX are the MAX Awards, which recognize organizations for excellence in using Macromedia technologies along eight award categories. D!ET cohosts Eileen Stanley and Tim Buntel announced this year's MAX Award winners and presented the winners with their awards.

Figure 5. Eileen Stanley and Tim Buntel present MAX Awards.

The winners of each of the eight categories are as follows.

Advertising Experiences: Yahoo! AdVision
http://webevents.yahoo.com/universal/intolerablecruelty/

Branding Experiences: Pepperidge Farm Goldfish
http://www.pfgoldfish.com

Media, Entertainment and Gaming Experiences : Lonely Planet Publications/Sony

Customer-Facing Experiences : FootJoy – MyJoys
http://www.myjoys.com

Business Experiences: Avery Photo ID System

eLearning Experiences: Web Based Training for the syngo ®
http://www.sl-projectsite.de/syngowbt2/

Education Experiences: Geotechnical, Rock and Water Resources Library (GROW)
http://www.grow.arizona.edu/index.shtml

Government Experiences: Park$ Budget Reporting System
http://planning.nps.gov/maxaward/parkdollar.html

In addition to the eight category winners, MAX conference attendees voted at MAX on the Peoples Choice Award. This year's winner of the People's Choice Award goes to Cartoon Network's Virtual Townsville by Lightmaker Ltd.

Designer Eye for the Developer Guy

Five design specialists descended upon Beau Ambur, a Macromedia developer, in the videotaped mini-segment, Designer Eye for the Developer Guy. Their mission: to help him improve in five areas: presentation style, fashion, fitness/health, office etiquette, and interface design (he is a developer)—to help him achieve a promotion. "We're going to take you from geek to chic," they announced, surprising him in his cube. Beau underwent a strict regimen of fitness, fashion makeovers, and design reprogramming since he believed, "Rollovers are dumb." With their help, he presented his project plan to his boss, who embraced it fully and granted Beau's promotion. The specialists clinked glasses and nodded, "we're really impressed with Beau's improvement."

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About the authors

George Fox is the Developer Center Publishing Process Manager for Macromedia where he acts as lead editor and manages the sample applications as well as the content in the Studio, Dreamweaver, Contribute, Fireworks, Director, FreeHand, ASP.NET, and PHP Developer Centers. He holds an MS in Industrial/Organizational Psychology. Before traveling extensively in Asia, Alaska and the North Western US, George had careers in Training/Organizational Development and Business Process Analysis.

Craig Goodman is the Managing Editor of the Developer Center. He also serves as the lead editor for the Macromedia Flash, Flash Communication Server, Flash Remoting, and Mobile and Devices Developer Centers, as well as working on the macromedia.com Support Centers. Craig joined Macromedia in 1995. Before the creation of the Macromedia Developer Center, he had various roles, including managing web support, supervising product technical support for Macromedia Flash and Dreamweaver, and providing one-to-one technical support for Director and Extreme 3D. Craig also curates the video and film series at New Langton Arts in San Francisco, and is a member of the sit-down keyboard ensemble, the Helen Lundy Trio.

Amy Wong has been the Developer Center editor for server products (ColdFusion, JRun) since 2002. She has developed ColdFusion apps since version 1.5 and remembers when she first fell in love with the language. She love it so much that she came to Allaire in 1999 to work in the ColdFusion support forums, helping customers where she first sought help as a fledgling developer. From working in product support as a support engineer to TechNote editor, she is happy to still be heavily involved with ColdFusion content and the community. When she's not thinking about ColdFusion, Amy is usually calming the adrenaline junkie within, in her whitewater kayak, either upside-down or right-side up, on the rivers of New England and Canada.