On the first day of MAX 2005, developers heard what Macromedia is up to now, what's coming soon, and what they can expect in the not-so-faraway future. On top of that, attendees were treated to an early look at some upcoming technologies, including the Flex 2 product line which became available in alpha through Macromedia Labs.

Stephen Elop welcomed everyone to MAX 2005 in Anaheim. He then followed up by stating that Macromedia had made several commitments to its users last year at MAX.

Figure 1. Macromedia CEO Stephen Elop welcomes everyone to MAX 2005 and reflects on Macromedia today.

First, Macromedia had committed to do a better job than ever before to listen to and work with developers to ensure that we create the best products and technologies possible. Macromedia met this promise through a new synchronous product development methodology—where the product team members met with customers onsite to get their feedback on how they use the products and to solicit feature requests. This new methodology really paid off. It is evident in the releases of Macromedia ColdFusion MX 7 and Studio 8. Elop quoted several customers; one Studio 8 customer said:

"You could lose your girlfriend over it. You probably will, and you won't even care."
—Peter X

Users are downloading Macromedia Flash Player 8 at an astounding rate. There have been almost 100 million Flash Player 8 downloads so far—that is about five million downloads per day. In fact, during the keynote alone, about 400,000 Flash Players were downloaded and installed.

Next, Elop showed several MAX Awards finalists' entries to demonstrate the amazing applications that developers are building with ColdFusion MX 7 and Studio 8. Examples included the Tazo website, and the online promotion for the Wedding Crashers, and the Harley Davidson website. "Looking at your work tells us if we've hit our mark," said Elop.

Second, Macromedia had committed to give developers the ability to find answers through TechNotes and Developer Center articles. The first example of this is the new knowledgebase system on Macromedia's support site. In addition to the dedicated Team Macromedia volunteers, there are also developer relations managers and technical support engineers answering questions in the Macromedia forums.

Third, Macromedia had committed to continue to focus on the experience. Great experiences matter, and there have been profound changes in the industry where more and more people are caring about great experiences. Others in the software industry have started to follow Macromedia's lead on this. There has been an explosion in the number of RIAs in the last year, and Elop demonstrated examples of companies such as Harley Davidson and SAP who use the power of RIAs to provide great digital experiences to their customers. Great mobile experiences matter too. They've appeared in Asia and Europe, and you will see these instances reach North America in the next few weeks.

Web 2.0

Kevin Lynch, chief software architect at Macromedia, kicked off his portion of the keynote by taking a look at the future of where the web is going. He cited Tim O'Reilly's document, What is Web 2.0, and underlined one of its outstanding characteristics: the separation of data and user interface. Lynch said this, along with open data formats, RSS feeds, and public APIs, defines the new generation of Rich Internet Applications.

Figure 2. Kevin Lynch talks about the Macromedia software roadmap.

Lynch demonstrated a new application, Adaptive Path's MeasureMap, which displays real-time blog traffic data through a rich interface. The application exemplifies how Flash and HTML work together to provide a great experience, including rich charting. Lynch showed an interactive world map of blog traffic to his own blog, graphically representing the geographic spread of his audience, and showing how a new world of Rich Internet Applications will look.

Flash Platform Roadmap

Lynch talked about where the Flash Platform is now, and where the platform is going in the near future and in the long-term.

Flash Platform: Now

Studio 8: Lynch said that in the month since it has launched, 1.5 million people have downloaded the Studio 8 trial – and that the feedback coming from the 36,000 who have attended Studio 8 seminars worldwide has been terrific.

• Flash Player 8. Adoption of the new version of Flash Player is yielding high rates and is on track for 80% penetration on all PCs worldwide in 12 months.

• Flash Lite 1.1. Flash Lite, Macromedia's player for mobile and devices, is present on more and more devices. Lynch showed the new Kodak EasyShare camera, which has a UI completely driven by Flash Platform technology. This is a "great new experience for cameras," Lynch stated, and he noted that we'll certainly see more interfaces of this type.

• Flash Lite 2.0. Lynch gave conference attendees a peek at the features of the upcoming Flash Lite 2.0, the new version of the player for mobile and devices. One of the most exciting features for developers is the new Flash Lite support for ActionScript 2.0. "You don't have to go to eBay to buy Flash 4 scripting books anymore!" Lynch said, as mobile developers cheered the announcement. Some of the other features of Flash Lite 2.0, which is based on Flash Player 7, include parsing for improved data integration, and new hardware support.

Kevin invited Guido Schroeder, director of development at SAP Labs, to the stage to explain where Flex is now. Schroeder explained that with Macromedia products and Flex especially, SAP developed a sales-processing application that checks the credit of potential customers and “not only displays the information, but helps the team to act on it more quickly.” He emphasized that the SAP development team was consistently pleased with the object model and architecture of Flex and the other Macromedia products.

Figure 3. Guido Schroeder of SAP explains how his development team uses Flex

Flash Platform and Flex 2: Coming Soon

When Lynch launched into the "Coming Soon" section of his presentation, he meant really soon. Macromedia released an alpha of the Flex 2 Product Line today, which includes alpha versions of Flex Builder 2, Flex Framework 2, Flex Enterprise Services 2, and Flash Player 8.5. Flex already contained a class library and a set of utilities, but Flex Framework 2 gives developers more capabilities through optimized presentation, advanced tooling, and enterprise data services.

One blogger, for instance, downloaded Flash Player 8.5 alpha from Macromedia Labs this morning and declared that it showed a performance increase of 1594% over Flash Player 8 in one simple while loop test. Flash Player 8.5 contains a new Virtual Machine, ActionScript 3.0, ECMA-standard language, a W3C DOM Level 3 event model, and support for regular expressions and runtime error checking. Check out the alpha now in Macromedia Labs.

Figure 4. Macromedia Labs

What is Macromedia Labs, you ask? It is the new Macromedia website for downloading and trying pre-release alpha software, sharing feedback, and collaborating on content, code, and sample applications with Macromedia engineers and other developers in the industry. Developers can find out what Flex 2 is all about before Macromedia makes it available as a commercial product. They can learn how to code ActionScript 3.0 and more through tutorials and sample apps. The Flex 2 product line is the first Macromedia product line available in Labs, but soon other Macromedia products and technologies will be available too. Developers can learn more about Labs in the article, What is Macromedia Labs? and at the Macromedia Labs website.

Everyone’s excited about Flex Builder 2. Why? Developers can now develop and deploy Flex applications with a Flex Builder license, for under $1000. It’s been rebuilt from the ground up on the Eclipse platform. It’s got a built-in compiler and application debugger. It generates MXML and ActionScript for you. The list goes on, but Sho Kuwamoto, vice president of the Flex Builder team demonstrated it best as he coded an RIA in under 5 minutes in front of the session’s 3000 attendees.

Figure 5. Sho Kuwamoto demonstrates new features in the Eclipse-based revision of Flex Builder 2

His sample RIA called the Flickr Photo Web Service, returning resulting photos to users based on their searches. He had added the Flickr web service and styled the application with two simple tag edits. Then, William Wechtenhiser, director of software engineering for Flex, joined Kuwamoto on stage and added messaging capabilities to the application with one simple line of code. Sho and William demonstrated the app as they searched and shared for photos, and chatted online through the just-created application. Wechtenhiser said this signaled a completely different type of user experience through Flex applications.

Figure 6. Sho Kuwamoto and William Wechtenhiser search for and share pictures through the RIA they built in under 5 minutes

“This kind of sharing is what the next generation of applications is all about.” Imagine, he said, the types of applications you can build—user to user, users to services, servers to servers, and more, through the new data services in Flex 2. He encourages everyone to attend Christophe Coenraets’ session, Next Generation Flex: Data Services.

To try out Flex 2, visit Macromedia Labs and learn more about it. Once you download and install Flex Builder, check out Kuwamoto’s video tutorial on Flex Builder 2, and build a Flex RIA in under 15 minutes. As of this morning, Sho said 1000 people had downloaded Flex Builder 2 from Macromedia Labs.

Note: If you are at MAX and don’t have wireless access, you can get the Flex 2 product line at any Flex session or workshop, as Flex product team employees have the installer on USB ports, and can download it to you immediately.

Flash Platform: The Future

Looking further into the future, Lynch launched a "scenario for a future use case" – a travel site with a fictional customer named Sally. Lynch showed how the current experience – searching for, reserving, and buying your tickets – will be improved through Flash Platform technology. In this case, Sally was able to improve her travel planning experience by:

• Collaborating with friends joining her on her trip as she plans her itinerary
• Integrating her calendar (and her friends' calendars) so that she can pick flights and events that work with everyone's schedules
• Distributing information to various platforms and devices for her friends to read—like a printer, laptop, or mobile phone. (All of the friends going on the trip would be able to access and modify the shared itinerary through their phones.)
• Getting additional information on happenings and must-sees at the destination, such as theatrical events, movies, and great restaurants. All this would happen automatically in conjunction with the reservation.
• Making or altering reservations anytime, anywhere—even offline—and saving the transaction for processing when you reconnect.

Apollo: "The Universal Client"

After showing what the future of experience could be, Lynch revealed how Macromedia will attain it. Apollo, which he called the "universal client," will provide Flash and HTML functionality and will run independent from the web browser. Apollo will support the improvement of user experience by embracing the best of client technologies – data synchronization, the ability to work online or offline, and desktop integration, and more -- in combination with desktop distribution. Apollo will join Flash Lite (the mobile client) and Flash Player (the browser client) to form the Flash Platform client family.

Figure 7. Apollo, the "universal client" of the future

The Future Media Experience: Human-Centric Software

Mike Sundermeyer, senior vice president of product design at Macromedia, broke out with the experience vision for enjoying and accessing media. Sundermeyer talked about how there is too much media "stuff" in our lives – music, TV shows, movies, games – but that all of these are "islands," making us waste time as we search for what we really want to see.

Figure 8. Mike Sundermeyer demonstrates an integrated application that controls content for all his devices

The "future" interface Sundermeyer showed combines all of these types of media in an interactive environment through Flash technology. A user can choose from all the media in his or her library, and also get real-time suggestions from friends about new songs to listen to or movies to watch. On top of that, Sundermeyer added that "the content is the interface, "and showed video previews integrate seamlessly into the media browsing and navigation environment. Finally, all of this media is accessible from a mobile phone, for "on-the-go" reservations and ticket purchases.

Bruce Chizen: Adobe and Macromedia

Adobe CEO Bruce Chizen then came onstage and asked the audience, "Who ever thought that the CEO of Adobe would be standing here, speaking at a Macromedia Developer conference?"

Figure 9. Bruce Chizen introduces himself to the developers

Chizen said that together, Adobe and Macromedia will develop great products during a “time of profound change” in the software industry.  Because he also wants to improve experience—through workflows for developers using creating RIAs with Macromedia and Adobe products, and for users who will do business through RIAs. He noted there is a great opportunity to create an unparalleled platform for people to engage with information.

Finally, Chizen is especially excited about the developers he’s meeting through Macromedia. Chizen talked about how they are one of the major assets of the acquisition.

“I believe and continue to believe that we are getting a great developer community through Macromedia." Chizen said. "Together, we’ll continue to invent the future of great digital experiences.  We’ll reinvent how people engage with information.”

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