Wednesday, March 12, 2003

ISVs and Desktop Flash Apps Kevin Werbach posted this comment in reply to my earlier post about Flash as solution to cross-platform desktop apps: So, why do you think these developers don't use Flash today? Lack of awareness, cost, performance, missing features, compatibility, bad associations from cheesy animated Website intros... or something else? I know Flash has significant support from ISVs and platform vendors, but not the boutique tool creators. I'm pretty close to the issue and will offer up a few comments. Hopefully Kevin Lynch or others from Macromedia can chime in on their blogs, too. Here's a shortlist: ...lack of awareness… …Cognitive Dissonance…. …Deployment Limitations… Programming Model. Today, building Flash applications requires a hybrid left-brain/right-brain skill-set. That's reflected in the nomenclature and workflow of the Flash IDE, which uses concepts like Movies, MovieClips, Timelines, Symbols, Layers, etc. in addition to classic software programming concepts like Components, Objects, XML, ECMAScript, and Web Services. Macromedia understands the diversity of developer types, including pure ISV-style application developers, and will surely deliver the right range of products to better optimize development workflow. [Jeremy Allaire's Radio] Perhaps what Jeremy is describing is a branding issue? Last time I looked at Flash, it was all graphics, all the time. As an application developer, I don't want to worry about movies and timelines, I want to wire views (menus and buttons) to models and controllers. Perhaps what Macromedia should do is introduce the "FlashGUI" SDK, which would have a GUI-centric editor and GUI-specific APIs for quickly building the view system of an app. Even better would be if the FlashGUI library was skinnable, so that as an app developer I can focus on functionality, and independently a graphics designer could customize the look and feel of the GUI elements. Maybe this is already available, but if it is, it definitely needs better marketing... 9:45:05 AM