Monthly Archives: December 2009

Gartner RIA MarketScope: A Rising Tide Lifts All Boats

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Boats ImageThere’s always a lot of back and forth between the Flash crowd and the Silverlight crowd. And that’s fine; everyone needs an enemy and competition ends up driving everyone to have better features, better performance, and a better platform. But one of the things I’ve always thought was that Microsoft’s entry into the RIA space would end up being good for everyone. Microsoft has a lot of developers but there are also a lot of developers who don’t like and won’t use a Microsoft solution. Those people also need RIAs.

According to the Gartner MarketScope on RIAs it looks like Microsoft jumping into RIAs pushed adoption across the board in 2009. I don’t have the full report yet but here’s the quote from the blog post that stood out:

Now that Microsoft has validated “heavy RIA” in the eyes of many enterprises, interest in RIA technologies is increasing across the board. Frequent Gartner inquiries indicate that clients pit Ajax vs. Flash vs. Silverlight against each other in evaluations for new RIA projects. What does this mean for JavaFX and other technologies? Tough to say for sure, but my bet is that the “heavy RIA” arena comes down to a battle between Adobe and Microsoft, and that there is enough room in the market for both to be successful.

This isn’t supposed to be a happy-feelgood post. I want Adobe and our community to kick ass and continue to be the leaders in the RIA space. But I’m glad Microsoft is raising awareness; it helps when we can talk about why our platform is better for RIAs and not go back to what RIAs are :) .

I’m stoked about 2010. Especially if it’s a battle between Ajax, Flash, and Silverlight. We’re starting to get a big lead in mobile, AIR continues to do well as a desktop RIA solution, and we’re starting to monetize our own RIAs with services like Acrobat.com. There’s been a slight trend towards “native”, which is being led by the iPhone, but don’t discount the persistent desire to create rich, desktop-like experiences with all of the flexibility and scope of the web. The web is still going to win and RIAs will be a big part of that.

Photo by Flickr user jal33

Work with ColdFusion and Flex at Wharton in Philadelphia

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The Wharton School of Business was the place where I got to first play with ColdFusion 7 and Flex 1.5 which set me on the road to Macromedia/Adobe technology. It’s been a great ride and I have a lot of fun memories of Wharton. I even helped pull one of my co-workers, Terry Ryan, from Wharton on to the Platform Evangelism team.

If you like the education environment (free tuition is an awesome benefit) and are interested in working with cutting edge Adobe technologies then you’ll be interested to know that Wharton has a job opening for a ColdFusion and Flex developer. You’d be working for one of the best guys I know and working on some very cool projects. If you have any questions, feel free to drop me a note over email (ryan@adobe.com) and I’ll answer any inside questions you have. Relocating to Philadelphia is a requirement.

Get a Discount on the First Book on Flex 4: Hello! Flex 4

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armstrong3_cover150Peter Armstrong is a gung-ho kind of guy. He has the very first book on Flex 4, Hello! Flex 4 and it’s currently available on Amazon. I got a PDF copy of the book and it is a really fun way to get up to speed on Flex 4. A ton has changed including the component model, how we do states, a new graphic language called FXG, as well as other tweaks and optimizations. This book goes through them all and provides a great overview of how to use Flex 4 with existing projects and frameworks.

One of the cool things is that the book is available both in hardcover and in PDF format. In fact, if you order the PDF version before December 31st I have a discount code you can use to get it for $10. Just put in hf410 when you check out on Manning’s site and you’ll be able to download the PDF copy for $10. Well worth it for anyone who wants to see what’s coming in Flex 4.

I was on a Boat – RIAdventure

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Imagine for a moment being stuck on a boat for 6 days with a bunch of geeks. Then imagine you’ve brought your wife (or husband) into it. There is no escape (except for excursions). What do you think the result would be? That’s what I was asking myself before RIAdventure. I have to admit I was a little nervous but I had faith that because it was the Flex community it would be a great time. I was dead wrong. It was a FANTASTIC time and I got to know a lot of people really well, saw some great presentations, and my wife and I even came away with some “couple friends”. It was the ultimate blend of great community, friendly people, geeking out, and personal friendships.

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My favorite talks of the conference were by Doug McCune and Greg Burch. Doug talked about his work on data visualization and took us through the history of “datvislashun” (inside joke) that he’s researched because of the Spatial Key project. It was a perfect high-level, thought provoking talk. I also learned a lot about “Slider” the Flex Mobile framework from Greg Burch. It’s amazing what you can learn about your own products when you hang out with the person who’s the lead on internal projects.

But the best part was the socializing. We saw some great (and some terrible) karaoke, hung out on the beach with Flex people, and got to know some new members of the community. One of the most interesting parts to me was that a good chunk of the RIAdventure attendees were “new” to the Flex/Flash community and this was one of their first conferences. It’s kind of a hardcore way to jump in so hopefully we didn’t scare them off.

Thanks to everyone who made it fun. For those that weren’t there, I highly suggest you go next year. Bonding with the community, getting to know spouses, and geeking out on some cool topics was a great way to spend the week. It was just a completely different kind of experience for getting to know people in our world and I’m really glad I went. Of course the next best thing is 360|Flex in March. Be sure to register!

UcompOS Rich Experience Framework

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I’ve spent quite a bit of time talking with Ed Mansouri (who was behind the O2Apps site when AIR first launched) and he’s been working diligently on something called the UcompOS Rich Experience Framework. It’s an impressive bit of code and it’s also one of the best examples of HTML and Flash integration that I’ve seen inside the browser. The premise is pretty simple. He defines it as a platform that lets you build Rich Portal Applications. At first glance it looks a bit like an operating system inside a browser, something that Goowy tried back in the day. And it does kind of fit that model, but don’t let the “OS” look turn you off, there are some cool integration points.

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He’s made it very easy to create portlets out of either HTML or Flex/AS3 and then made everything configurable with an XML file. So it’s incredibly easy to add new pieces to someone’s portal. He also has some cool integration with Adobe AIR. You can either deploy apps in Adobe AIR or you can use the Adobe AIR helper application to provide some native functionality in the browser. For instance it’s very easy to expose files to the UcompOS framework via AIR’s file APIs.

He has a ton of video tutorials up as well as a wiki and forum for questions. It’s well worth checking out if you’re looking to build something complex on top of a portal-based framework. It’s a great example of a lot of web technologies coming together and a great building block on which to create your own stuff.