There has been a lot of buzz in the mobile space lately, and I suspect there will be even more around Windows Phone 7 at next week’s Microsoft Mix conference. One thing I wanted to clarify as it may have been lost in some of the other news is that Adobe and Microsoft are working together to bring Flash Player 10.1 to Internet Explorer Mobile on Windows Phone 7 Series.
So if you’re on Windows mobile, you’re not forgotten and you’ll be getting a Flash Player 10.1 on your sweet new phone.
TweetSome very cool video of Flash Player and AIR running on HP’s Slate tablet computer.
It’s great to see Flash Player running on a tablet. One of the nice things about the tablet versus the mobile device is that because of the larger screen size, more content will work out of the box. Flash on mobile devices performs really well but the screen size is going to require some UI changes for sites that will be visited heavily by mobile devices. Tablets provide a more big-screen experience.
TweetWhile my primary focus is (and remains) Flash, I am an interactive developer. I would be sorely remiss to ignore other technologies. Not only does knowledge of other technologies potentially open new project opportunities, but it lets me reinvest ideas and mental models from them back into my work with Flash. Working with C# has already sparked some new ideas for me (not to mention a few AS3 feature requests). Knowledge of alternative technologies also lets us suggest the best possible solutions for our customers or talk them out of a bad one.
That thought should be extended to all technologies, including HTML5. As an interactive developer you have to be familiar with the technologies around you. The best part is that it’s a great way to get ideas for what you want in Flash/AS3 as Grant is finding with C#.
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There’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.
TweetKevin Goldsmith pointed this out and I thought it was awesome. For those not familiar with Mini-Microsoft, he’s (she?) is a highish level Microsoft employee who blogs anonymously about what’s happening at the company. He has a ton of insight about what’s going on over in Redmond and quite a bit of opinion about how things should be. My Microsoft employee friends love him. On Tuesday he did a breakdown of Microsoft’s quarterly numbers and what the status of various parts of the company are. The gem came when he talked about Dev Div (which I think stands for Developer Division), the part of the company with the developer tools and technology. Here’s the quote:
Dev Div: If I had to sit down tomorrow and write a casual application for the PC, my mind would fork itself in about five different directions. Native with ATL? WPF? Silverlight? An HTA? And what’s up with XNA? If I want to write an app for the Zune (which Zune?) what do I do? And can it run on some future mobile device? And the PC? And Xbox?
And how do I share it? How do I sell it? And, ah, crap, you mean you just released a whole new version of C# / Silverlight / XNA that I have to go and relearn? Maybe those free Starbucks coffee dispensers wasn’t a good idea…
If anything, I’d probably be pretty damn tempted to invest time learning Adobe AIR. And I’m thinking that while smack dab in the middle of the Microsoft bubble. There are a lot of Partners in Dev Div, and I’m not seeing any benefit from their concentration. The Windows client should be the premiere development platform. It’s not. What am I missing?
Mini, if you want to learn AIR, you can drop me an email. I’ll drive over to Redmond or even meet you secretly at the Adobe offices here in Fremont and show you the ropes. Anytime
The big news of the night is that Google is building an operating system (no, not Android) that’s based on Chrome. I’m not entirely sure of all of the details but I think it’s cool at first glance. It sounds like it’s going to be designed initially for netbooks and I like how they describe the OS:
Speed, simplicity and security are the key aspects of Google Chrome OS. We’re designing the OS to be fast and lightweight, to start up and get you onto the web in a few seconds. The user interface is minimal to stay out of your way, and most of the user experience takes place on the web. And as we did for the Google Chrome browser, we are going back to the basics and completely redesigning the underlying security architecture of the OS so that users don’t have to deal with viruses, malware and security updates. It should just work.
I think Google gets it: Netbooks are going to be huge and they’re going to be a place where the web can “beat” the desktop. In a lot of ways they’re the perfect combination for the next generation of the web. The devices are small, portable, probably going to be connected most of the time, and have memory and resource requirements that require an optimized experience. I love Windows 7 and think it’s beautiful, but I do wonder how well it will run on netbooks. Microsoft seems tepid in how much it’s going to support or encourage netbook use.
Netbooks: A Boon for Rich Internet Applications
But people moving to the web-centric netbook experience are going to want a close approximation to the desktop environment. User experience is still going to be important on these small devices. We’ve seen how important a great user experience is (and how much of a selling point it is) with the iPhone. Google is a lot of good things but they aren’t user experience gurus and they don’t get design.
So what fills the gap? If only we had a good, lightweight layer for this new operating system that could play video, support games, enable real time communication, and let developers create beautiful user interfaces that felt like desktop applications with a much smaller footprint. Oh wait, we do, it’s the next generation of rich Internet application technologies like Flash and Silverlight.
Isn’t the netbook: a hybrid mobile and PC device, the perfect fit for RIAs: hybrid web and desktop technologies? You get the audio/video aspect, a framework for building very rich user interfaces, real-time web connectivity, and an existing ecosystem of developers and designers. All in a small package that’s meant to run with less resources than a full operating system requires.
I think netbooks are going to be a big deal for RIA developers. I think it’s a large addressable market and things like Adobe’s work with ARM to optimize Flash for their chipset are going to pay performance dividends in a big way. Throw in the cross-platform aspect and you’ve got the perfect way to build applications for a hybrid web-desktop-mobile device like the netbook.
Pooneekay Vatsoom Ahdtuih
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