One of my readers is working on a Flex 2 application and they are looking for someone to help out with some icons and logo work. As you can see below, it is a smaller application, but I think it is one that you would have a lot of fun doing some work for. If you’re interested, or know someone who might be interested, drop me an email.

I have a small RIA I’ve been developing for personal use with Flex 2 (and ColdFusion on the server). During development I’ve used mostly random icons, or icons that reflect none of the functionality that is behind them. This has worked for my purposes (I know what they mean), but really leaves the application feeling unfinished. I think I’m about ready to start sharing it with other people (friends and family) and would like to finish those rough edges by having some icons created professionally.

I am in need of approximately ten (10) icons and perhaps a logo (around which I already have some ideas). The application has sports/exercise theme.

As this is a personal project, my finances are limited, but I am happy to pay for the work done (or perhaps something off an Amazon wish list). If it helps, I’ve been using some icons from the FamFamFam, Silk collection and like that look and feel. I also like that those icons are delivered as 32-bit PNG files (alpha goodness). This would be my expected delivery format, at 16×16 and 25×25 pixels (maybe others).

It is probable that fulfillment of this request will lead to more work in the future (albeit along the same lines and equally limited in scope). I’ll be happy to iron out the details over email and/or phone as necessary if anybody is interested.

If you haven’t heard (which seems impossible), Adobe acquired InterAKT, a firm that has been a part of the Adobe/Macromedia community for a very long time and has made a name for itself developing extensions for Dreamweaver. In fact, many of the blog posts I read about the acquisition focused on that fact, but after talking with Michael Haynie, I think they’re all missing the big part of this news.

If you read between the lines, for instance the first part of the FAQ, and Matt Chotin’s post, you’ll see Flex mentioned. What do Flex and a company building extensions for Dreamweaver have in common? Absolutely nothing. But take a look at this product: KTML. It is a fantastic online, rich-text, HTML editor. If Flex has one glaring Flaw, it would have to be its handling of text.

The web is still mostly text, and what I hear over and over from people is that Flex is great, but it handles text very poorly. This is because Flash was never really intended for text in the beginning, and the attempts to enhance text support in Flash have fallen somewhat short. That’s not to say it is impossible to create great rich text editing in Flash, I’ve seen some very good examples, but for most people it is out of reach.

Matt’s blog says that “Some of the engineers there (at InterAKT) will begin working on Flex-related projects very soon. We haven’t figured out all of what those are yet, but they’re bound to be exciting!” I hope he’s being coy here, because there is a big need in Flex and a lot of rich text experience over at InterAKT .

[tags]Interakt, Adobe, Flex, Rich Text[/tags]

Owen called me out, and rightly so (although Owen, ‘respected’, no way) . Between my ZDNet post and my post responding to Rey, I look like a pretty big Ajax hater. And I’ve been accused of a whole lot of fear mongering and incendiary writing. I’m not going to shy away from thought provoking posts, which is what my ZDNet article was intended to do just that. And I think I usually do a good job of sticking to the facts, as Owen says we should. I think there are going to be some serious compatibility issues down the road. A post by JD today made me think even more about that. What can we expect from browsers developed in China or India? Will they follow all the rules? Will Ajax apps run on a browser that 1 billion Chinese use written by a Chinese company? Who knows. With Flash, it’s not an issue.

What I want to stress is that I am all for using the right tool for the right job. I’ve talked about that before. I even put a big stop sign! But my main problem with Ajax is that more and more people are using it to build entire web applications. I think Ajax adds great functionality to the web, and it makes the entire experience better, but if you are trying to replicate the desktop application experience in Ajax, you are going to fall short. You’re going to spend valuable developer time and a lot of energy implementing a solution that will be second rate – especially as multimedia and collaboration become bigger parts of Rich Internet Applications.

I agree wholeheartedly with Owen that a factually, intelligent “debate” over Ajax and Flex is good. However I also think we need to look at EVERY angle, and if we get some heated posts every once in a while, we just need to wade through them.

[tags]Ajax, Flash, Flash Platform, Rich Internet Applications[/tags]