Peter Elst

Macromedia Flex is released, rejoice all ye people! I’ve been a faithful disciple of the technology since I first heard about it, big up to the Flex team for their incredibly hard work and dedication to getting this product released.

Not unlike other software releases there is quite a bit of controversy about the marketing policy and product pricing. I’m not one to easily give criticism but I must admit that I’m a bit worried about adoption rates at a price tag of $12,000 USD for a two CPU license. How many freelance Flash developers regularly work for clients that commission projects that would warrant an investment of anything near that cost? We might just all be suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder from the slow yet painful demise of Macromedia Generator which was an equally brilliant and innovative piece of technology in its day.

For a couple of years now there have been calls to get some kind of commandline Flash compiler developed, JSFL is a first step in making this possible though it is still quite a bit of a workaround and it doesn’t allow for developing outside the box.

This is where Flex comes in, what about releasing a version that doesn’t run on top of a J2EE server but simply generates a SWF based on MXML and ActionScript just like the real deal. I’m sure that if something like that was made available with a price range of around $1,000 USD many developers would use that in favour of the Flash IDE. Would love to hear your thoughts on this!

I’m very pleased to announce that I’m working on the update of William Drol’s great Flash OOP book “Object Oriented Macromedia Flash MX” to be published by Apress/Friends of ED.

I can’t get into details on what topics it will cover but we’ve got some very cool material lined up to say the least! This book promises to be at least as big a success as the previous release was and I’m committed to doing Bill’s work justice.

Stay tuned for more information on this project in the next couple of months!

I’ll be doing a session at MX Europe 2004 entitled “Deconstructing a Macromedia Central application”. The application I’m going to discuss is yet to be finished but you can rest assured it’ll be something very cool indeed!

If you’re currently doing any Macromedia Central development - or are planning on doing so - I’m very interested to hear if you’re facing any particular problems! This session will be a real hands-on guide to Central development and feature loads of practical tips and tricks to make the whole process more intuitive and enjoyable to the average developer.

[update] Problem with posting comments has been fixed (again)!