Flex Builder “Gumbo” is Being Renamed Flash Builder
Do you remember the wheel o’ icons that John Nack posted on his blog when the CS3 branding first came out? I wasn’t a big fan when I first saw them but they’ve grown on me a lot since then. But right in the middle were a bunch of grey/black icons and right behind the black Fx that we all know and love was an Fb icon for Flex Builder. For some reason that never got used and to this day I don’t know why. So my first reaction to the changing of the name from Flex Builder to Flash Builder is that it’s about damn time.
I came up as a Flex developer. I’m still a Flex developer. If you’ve ever seen me try and demo Flash CS4 you know how much of a trainwreck I am when I’m outside of my precious eclipse-based IDE. In the early days there was a pretty solid line between people doing Flex and people doing Flash. But as Flex Builder evolved, a lot of people started using it for AS3 only projects. The “traditional Flash developer” would move between Flex Builder and Flash CS4 a bit or had started to use Flex Builder as their primary development environment even if they weren’t using the Flex Framework at all. As the Flash Platform has grown up, the types of people using the tool has increased. And that’s what a good tool should do; it should be basic and powerful enough to meet a variety of needs.
So with the name change, we’re acknowledging that the tools for creating Flash content are independent of frameworks or other parts of the Flash Platform. And I don’t see how that’s a bad thing.
Some of the push-back I’ve seen has been from Flex developers who enjoyed a clean break from the perceived baggage of the Flash brand. For you guys, not much is changing. Knowing the Flex Framework inside and out is still going to be a much-demanded skill. You’ll still be able to call yourself a Flex developer, you can still say you know how to build Flex applications and you can still pitch clients on Flex instead of Flash. No one is going to ask you what tool you’re using. The Flex brand still lives. The bigger concern, and one I think is more valid, is one like Constantiner posted:
Ok. What we have now? We have Flash IDE and Flash Builder IDE (looking forward for questions from customers and colleges about what is difference and why Flash Builder IDE has advanced code editor but can’t compile fla-files and Flash IDE can compile them but useless for serious coding?). And we have Flash Catalyst which can use projects imported from Flash Builder IDE but can’t share the same project and can’t edit fla-files. And have one ugly child aka Flex SDK which is what? How to explain colleges and customers why Flash Builder IDE hasn’t timeline and can’t build flas but can use something which called Flex SDK (why Flex? why Flash?). And in other hand Flex SDK can be used to develop only in Flash Builder IDE and Flash Catalyst but not in Flash IDE. And what about beginners? Why Adobe going to drive them mad?
I can tell you after watching this whole experience that at a big company doing something as simple as a name change takes a LOOOOOONNNG time. Let alone trying to take two mature products like Flex Builder and Flash CS4 and get them to work better together. So Constantin is absolutely right when he says that there are still a lot of things that need to happen. But now that the naming is set we’ll keep working on bringing the tools closer together so that you can interchange between all of them as well as the design tools on the Creative Suite side.
I’m less concerned about people figuring out which tool to use. As I see it, here’s the landscape for Adobe’s Flash Platform tools:
The developers to the platform will use Flash Builder, the designers can use Flash Catalyst, and those of you who are creative developer rockstars will continue to use Flash Professional to create some great content.
Hopefully this clarifies the name change a bit. We’re going to be doing a huge user group tour to talk about Flex 4, Flash Builder, Flash Catalyst, and ColdFusion 9 in June, so if you want to find out more, check with your local user group. The long and short of the announcement is that all of your tools and technologies are staying the same, we’re just working on making them play better together.
Posted in Flash, Flash Catalyst, Flex
May 16th, 2009 at 10:26 am
Flex Builder by any other name would smell as sweet.
May 16th, 2009 at 10:49 am
The problem unfortunately is that people in the corporate IT world hear the word “Flash” and they think “annoying banner ads.” The Flex brand was an opportunity to distance from that negative connotation and now Adobe is pushing Flash right back in everyone’s face. All it does is make Flex a harder sell at a time when Silverlight is growing in popularity and momentum.
May 16th, 2009 at 11:08 am
I heard news of this storm brewing and knew people would be getting twisted up over it, but I still have no idea why. Those of us that have been using Flash from the beginning were never confused over what we were actually doing in FlexBuilder. It was obvious once you took a look that you were using a Framework for Flash content, nothing more. I personally thought it was a great sign that Flash was maturing, like a gladiator forced to kill slaves in the coloseum for entertainment buying his earning his freedom in order to run for senate. We all hated skip intro, but it paid the bills. I know very few Flash kids who escaped the early days without making one I those unforgivable banner ads, but without people using the Flash platform there would have never been a Flex. I am more than a little annoyed by the johnny come lately throwing a hissy fit over calling FlexBuilder what it really should have been called all along. It’s like a spoiled teenager who doesn’t want to be seen with his parents in public. It should be about the playfurm we all make our livings by standing on, not the niche.
May 16th, 2009 at 11:26 am
I definitely second Cliff’s statement! I am currently looking for jobs, and in the perception of companies Flex was making the difference between “serious” RIA’s and funky Flash sites. As much as we know better, I definitely love to be a “Flex” developer developing in an IDE called Flex, and not being a FlashBuilder (I mean, seriously, what is that anyway guys?!?) working with the Flex framework. Definitely dissapointed by that, but let’s see it on the market first …
May 16th, 2009 at 12:25 pm
I think the name change is a bad idea principally due to the reasons Cliff Meyers pointed out. You guys have got a hell lot of a job to communicate with clarity, your tools and technologies in the Flash Platform
May 16th, 2009 at 12:32 pm
I completely agree with Cliff. I have taught Flex at major US consulting firms. They would never have touched Flash because of exactly the phenomena that Cliff mentioned. I am really concerned about this and think this is a pretty bad marketing move by Adobe.
May 16th, 2009 at 12:47 pm
Hey guys, thanks for commenting. I’m going to be driving to Portland today so I’ll be a little slow to respond.
@Cliff, I definitely understand the concern and I know you guys fight a battle out there when it comes to the Flash brand. When you’re walking into a client or a company, does this change mean you’re going to be pitching Flash to them? I’d assume you’d still be pitching Flex. You’d tell them you want to build a Flex application, you’d show them the Flex charts, you can even talk about how Flex is open source and describe yourself as a Flex developer.
So two questions: Is your concern that Adobe’s shift to the Flash Platform going to endanger your ability to sell Flex? Or are you worried that you won’t be able to get managers to buy something called “Flash Builder” when you want to do Flex work?
When pitching to a client, I don’t think this name change will have a huge impact (I assume they won’t ask you what tool you’re using). But the wider issue of our focus on the Flash Platform as hurting you guys pitching Flex is something I want to get into more detail on.
=Ryan
ryan@adobe.com
May 16th, 2009 at 12:52 pm
@adehaas and @Mark, I’d love to hear the same answers from you guys. Does changing the name of the tooling worry you or is it the wider shift to the Flash Platform that’s the main concern. I hope changing the tool doesn’t mean you still can’t go to clients or customers and pitch Flex. Flex is the future for Adobe: We’re building our online applications on it, we’re building our services around it, and we’re baking support in to our tools for it. So it’s not going away and the brand will stick around. The main goal of this was to separate the tooling from the framework. Does that affect how you can pitch to clients?
@William, that I definitely agree with. Which is why it takes a ton of blog posts to talk about a name change for a tool. We’re going to get better about that and there will be some roughness around the edges at first, but there’s a very solid story there for the platform. We just need to smooth things out a bit.
=Ryan
ryan@adobe.com
=Ryan
ryan@adobe.com
May 16th, 2009 at 12:59 pm
I have to disagree with the negative connotation of Flash. Communication is the most important skill in this industry and the banter over what platform or tools used just confuse (if not hinder) the overall result.
Does this mean there will be a Flash-based suite such as Production or Web for Creative Suite 5?
May 16th, 2009 at 1:21 pm
Hi,
I side with these guys – I really don’t understand this change.
The flex name and idea was good as being separate from the flash brand. Flex is almost entirely used to build apps and sold as such – it is separate from flash.
And where is the Air builder? Not everything built in the flex framework is for the Flash player so how does that fit into this – or are we to await the rebranding of Air as Flash desktop as well?
May 16th, 2009 at 1:59 pm
Are you going to have a separate “RIA Developer edition” for CS5 with Flash Builder/Catalyst/Photoshop/Acrobat/Illustrator? In current situation Catalyst and Flex builder are kind of out of CS ecosystem. What would be positioning for Flash Professional and Flash Builder? It may be understood as 2 versions for same product and be really confusing. And it leads to: What i can do in Professional version which is impossible to do in Builder?
May 16th, 2009 at 2:02 pm
@Ryan The platform is a great thing, it was about time, to give the flashplayer it’s stage so to say … but this I say out of the view as a developer.
Customers understand it definitely wrong at the moment.
Although as you said, most of them have no idea really about the tools you use, they at least “heard” of things, and it has def become a common sense, that Flex is pro and Flash is fun. And even though they mostly don’t inform themselves enough, you still (being in the position of wanting the job) have to explain it each and every time.
This doesn’t make it easier to pitch for now, but as I said, let’s give it time.
Adobe DEFINITELY needs to set their marketing straight, and hopefully the names are as of now set (at least give it some years).
If you ask people here, I’d say that the better part of Adobe users up until now has no clue what the Flash Platform is!
Not to talk about understanding the switch from FlexBuilder to FlashBuilder …
May 16th, 2009 at 2:04 pm
Well, I share the concerns partly, but I guess I am fine with it as long as Adobe does not plan to rename the flex framework. Moreover I hope that with flex 4 on the horizon there will be some more marketing to rise public awareness of the flex brand.
On a sidenote, I think it would be consistent to rename Flash IDE to Flash Designer to avoid naming ambiguity.
Best,
S.
May 16th, 2009 at 8:32 pm
Thanks Ryan,
As a Flash Developer I always thought that working within the Flex framework was part of that umbrella. AS3 knowledge is essential to working within Flex. The separation of flash and flex that people wish to see for their own reasons is nothing more than that – I though flash meant the output!!
Actionscript 3 needs a serious IDE, flex/eclipse partially does that, but it misses the component fl. classes (yes I know it has its only components). There is a reason why Pure actionscript developer have used third party applications for a long time – Flashdevelop, FDT etc…
I hope FlashBuilder provides the tools to these people. I had hoped for integration of the current cs3/4 flash ide and its library and timeline. This is because in real world development we have to deal with image conversion, creation, the timeline(errk) and asset management. So it all depends on what FlashBuilder actually offers, is it just FlexBuilder4? Will it allow actionscript developers access to all component packages? How seamless can I work with Photoshop etc?. I still don’t like the lack of vector based png export, dammsakes you own Fireworks, get it sorted
Cheers,
Elliot
May 17th, 2009 at 7:44 am
Name them what you will. To me these products will always be..
FlashBuilder = Actionscript Builder (the place where i code actionscript, be it using flex framwork, gaia, my own in house framework.. ect), Flash Designer (designing assets for swfs and air), then Flash Catalyst = Flex Designer (visual designer for working with flex).
I love these things and to me they have their own identity.. a rose by any other name..
All you wet bums winging about selling to clients.. Try selling the product your gonna make them, not the tool you’ll use. You work on the flash platform because it’s the best, dont hide it. Do any of your clients ever come to you and say.. ‘Hey b*!$%h! You never told me this Flex thing is realy that horrible Flash. Your not gonna make us a banner advert are you!’
If you were choosing a carpenter, you wouldn’t worry if he called his hammer and banger and his nail a sticky.
We sell experiences and applications, let adobe worry about selling tools.
May 17th, 2009 at 11:14 am
I have to agree with the general sentiment on this board.
This is a very, very POOR marketing move by Adobe. Adobe is about to make the same mistake as SUN with their Java brands (anyone know how many J2xx/Jxx brands out there and what they do?).
@Ryan Stewart the problem (at least not currently) is not so much explaining Flash/Flex to the client. I’ve always referred to any RIA applications as Flex and simple ones as Flash and this is starting to become a good way to differentiate the two to clients.
The bigger problem, as Constantiner mentioned, is Adobe is confusing the CRAP out of any beginner developer in this space and for WHAT? Just to acknowledge the fact that some people use FB for actionscript projects only? That does not seem like a very good reason for me. Adobe is making Flash Catalyst to help partly with this, wouldn’t it be a lot easier to explain that RIA developers use Flex/Flex Builder and creative folks use Flash IDE and Flash Catalyst (per your diagram)? Why cross over the brand and create more confusion?
Like it or not, by doing this you will inevitably create confusion across the Flex and Flash brand. When beginners start using “Flash Builder” they will eventually start refer to everything they do (to everyone, including clients) as “Flash” regardless of whether they are using the Flex framework or not. Why? Because they could be totally oblivious of the fact that they are using Flex (since its pre-installed in FB).
Bottom line, if you are keeping the Flex brand and want that brand to represent RIA…it would be wise to do everything to keep it that way and avoid any cross over with the Flash brand.
May 17th, 2009 at 7:11 pm
Wait, what is Flex? Because if Flex Builder is now Flash builder, then what is/was Flex, and is there Flex? I mean, can anyone be a Flex developer? You said you were and always will be a Flex developer, but you can’t be, right?
Doesn’t this name change mean you always were a Flash developer, but you erroneously called yourself a Flex developer?
When I first heard about the name change, I thought I understood, but the more “explanations” I hear, the less I understand. No?
Cheers,
David
May 17th, 2009 at 10:37 pm
@Ryan
My concern is definitely on the sales side. The Flex brand was an opportunity for the enterprise to feel good about developing for the Flash platform. It may be easy to dismiss such prejudice against the Flash brand but I can say from experience that it is very real and can play a significant role in the early stages of a development project.
I realize this name change only affects the IDE but I think any move that weakens the Flex brand is a bad one.
Thanks for listening,
Cliff Meyers
Cynergy Systems
May 18th, 2009 at 6:39 am
Seems like most of the push back is people trying to sell the software as the right tool for the job. It seems to me that any company that is basing their software spending dollars based on the name of a tool is going to be against it anyway. I’d say it’s time to find another job because companies like that rarely turn around and start making rational decisions. That is, until they see the work their competitors are doing and then they want to know why they haven’t been using Flash/Flex all along.
As far as push back from the community, we as Flash/Flex devs are not going to stop using the tools provided no matter what they are named.
May 18th, 2009 at 4:27 pm
@David, no, if you know the Flex Framework, then you’re a Flex developer. Think of every other technology. Are you a “Dreamweaver Developer” or a web developer? A “Visual Studio Developer” or a .NET developer? The tool should be independent. And since so many people were using Flex Builder for pure AS work, this makes more sense (to me).
Now helping new developers wade through the products is something we’ve got to make sure we nail. I think we’ll be able to do it, but we will be looking for feedback from the veterans.
@Cliff, thanks for the feedback. I’d love to hear more on why you think this weakens the Flex brand. I’m not trying to sound contrarian but in a lot of ways I think this makes a clearer distinction for the value property of Flex. Flex is the framework, great for building RIAs, open source, very productive. It won’t get mixed in anymore with people talking about the tool instead of the framework.
=Ryan
ryan@adobe.com
May 18th, 2009 at 8:19 pm
Thanks for the post Ryan.
I like the idea as it appears to represent a melding of a heretofore hierarchical structure into a unified playing field with respect to the development communities that rely on Adobe products. It may help to alleviate some of the flash/flex face kicking allowing us to rise together against our common enemy. United we are strong.
I dislike the idea for the same reason. An Oryx and Crake future is not in any of our best interests.
I agree with your point that it’s the framework that matters when you’re doing the selling. While it’s the platform that matters when you’re doing the building. IF you’re a stand-alone freelancer. Though much of the development community is made up of contractors who work on-site in home-grown-software shops. Managers of these shops know the names of the products installed on the computers the sla…empl…underlings sit in front of, especially if that product costs money.
This name change would of-course have an impact on the reputation within the industry at the management ($) level…though I believe the impact may not be so damning as most seem to believe.
Seems to me that the current solidity of the Flex name within the minds of the PO responsible would indeed help undermine and uproot the older meme of trite and annoying banners. People forget faster these days, especially if you offer a suitable replacement for their old ideas. Indeed by separating the communities for a time and allowing a more traditional set of software developers to emerge standing on the Flash platform under the Flex umbrella, Adobe has put themselves where they need to be in order to fill some of the market gaps. That is to say…overstack the bad karma of the Flash namespace with the good karma of the Flex. Pun and request intended.
That said, creatures of habit resist change.
May 19th, 2009 at 4:06 am
We could refer to Flash Professional as “Simply red” to avoid any confusion.
May 19th, 2009 at 5:00 am
Against the popular trend on this board, I have to say that rebranding is a good move on part of Adobe, especially considering that there is Flash, Flex, Adobe AIR against Microsoft’s Silverlight. I suspected something like this when Thermo was named “Flash” Catalyst. Couldn’t understand how Flash Catalyst would interact with Flash Professional. I think that rebranding would improve the image of the Flash brand as a plugin against Silverlight, and is good in the long term. The question is do we need Flex at all?
May 19th, 2009 at 10:39 am
Ryan,
The problem with the tool being re branded to flashbuilder is that it now caters to “the traditional flash developer” and the “flex developer”. Before the IDE was purely focused on Flex .. will this be the case down the road. I really doubt it. I think the flex project perspective should do one thing well .. not a bunch. So I disagree that flex builder “should be basic and powerful enough to meet a variety of needs”. Furthermore, you already have a tool marketed .. why on earth dump the brand in a time when hungry competitors are growing their competing products (silverlight, javafx etc.)
May 19th, 2009 at 11:05 am
@Brandon, just because we might believe that Flash should not be perceived poorly in the corporate workplace doesn’t mean it isn’t. It is. Rightly or wrongly. Borrowing from a different phrase, perception is nine tenths of the law. I don’t have the luxury of picking my clients because I think they are being irrational about Flash beliefs.
@Ryan, if you REALLY believed in the Flex branding, you wouldn’t screw with it. You would strengthen it. Please give me some rational explanation why you think this move STRENGTHENS Flex branding in the marketplace. One less use of the Flex name is one less use of the Flex name, on the site, in release announcements, on box covers, everywhere. You won’t have any marketed product called Flex, since you don’t sell the SDK. I’m feeling queesy…I need to lie down.
May 19th, 2009 at 4:23 pm
@sergy, flex is built purely from AS3, and the authoring of AS3 and AS3 class files is integral to developing applications built using the flex framework, so i fail to see how adding more robust support for pure AS3 development is going to dilute flex builder in any sense.
i don’t know how many times you guys i have to hear it from adobe and the evangelists: flex isn’t going anywhere. if anything adobe are demonstrating that they’re behind the flex SDK more than ever by pro-actively improving the tool set.
you can sell flex into clients in the same way you always have, because its still a robust framework for RIAs, that (ironically for you flash-haters) runs on the near ubiquitous flash player. if you’ve been selling it into clients on the basis that you use this cool tool called “flex builder” then you must be suffering some kind of malfunction yourselves.
in part, i see this move as adobe honouring all the creative flash developers who have been struggling away with the either the IDE code editor or bloated 3rd party offerings like FDT. its these creative developers who did the ground work, grew the community and made flash a success, and they deserve some consideration. they don’t deserve all the johnny-come-lately flex developers jealously guarding flex builder, which could be great tool for everyone.
May 19th, 2009 at 7:20 pm
Thanks for the tutorial on AS3 .. I KNOW. For some reason you and others can’t except that others have an opinion, a strong one at that. Of course if it was so simple there wouldn’t be 1000 blog posts on this subject. For the record it will probably start out as you describe – a better AS3 dev environment for everybody. But over time they’ll add features for “creative flash developers” and guess what? we flex developers end having something akin to your bloated FDT offering. I guess at the end of the day it doesn’t really matter. Flex was a nice refuge for java developers and your odd .net junkie but there are some big players that have entered the market so maybe this won’t matter down the road anyway.
May 20th, 2009 at 2:32 am
sorry, i wasn’t trying to give you a tutorial, i was developing a point.
i still don’t see any good reason for the melodramatics. i’m sure flex, and flash builder, will remain great solutions for serious enterprise-level java developers. i haven’t seen any compelling evidence that this will change, or that the proposed flash builder will introduce a raft of features that will cripple it as a serious IDE. if you have, i’d be genuinely interested to see it.
May 23rd, 2009 at 10:56 pm
“i don’t know how many times you guys i have to hear it from adobe and the evangelists: flex isn’t going anywhere.”
It doesn’t matter how many times you *say* it. Actions speak louder than words and software companies are notorious for saying one thing and doing another. The fact that you would rename Flex Builder to get rid of the Flex is an action that speaks louder than any assurances Adobe gives that Flex isn’t going anywhere.
This action says Flash and the Flash brand is more important to Adobe than Flex. It seems like Adobe knows this is what the action says, which is why the evangelists have been so pro-actively defensive about the name change.
Of course the name change in and of itself doesn’t do a whole lot, and Flex may or may not be going anywhere. But given the software industry’s long history of screwing up great products with confusing marketing moves, I think people are justified in being worried.
May 26th, 2009 at 11:35 am
I’m late to this ‘party’ but I have to wonder about the wisdom of this. I’m trying to articulate why I’m reacting this way. Whereas the move seeks to strengthen the Flash platform/brand, it seems to weaken the Flex brand in consequence. Whereas there is an audience overlap between Flash and Flex, you don’t want to lose the brand credibility that Flex has for application development.
May 29th, 2009 at 11:33 am
I discovered the Flash IDE with the release of Flash MX 2004 seeing the potential to create RIAs. Macromedia (Adobe) were heavily promoting it as such at the time. The IDE did not sit well with most developers and I guess on realizing this, they had to come up with a better IDE for developers. Flex Builder IDE was born out of the V2 components first presented in the Flash IDE and should have always had a name that tied it to its origins.
Adobe made the mistake of trying to hide the origin of Flex from the developers turned off by Flash, and now realize they have to correct their mistake.
June 1st, 2009 at 3:36 pm
I don’t really understand what Cliff & Co’s problem is with the name change – it may or may not be a marketing disaster, but there is enough acclaim for Flash as a platform that it may actually be good for Adobe. But we have no idea, so why complain about it? Factually, Flash builder runs with a bunch of new features and is a much better IDE, not to mention working with Catalyst should make it a breeze to work with designers. I would just not worry about it an concentrate on building good apps – I mean, if MS can get “Silverlight” to be even remotely popular, how hard can it be? I vote that we just support Adobe on it. The only way it’ll come out at the end, name change or not, is if the community creates enough great apps using it. At that point, nobody will give a crap what its called or what platform it uses – actions speak much louder than words. I would say chill and get to work and lets actually work it with Flex and build up enough support that Adobe can make it even better.