Colin Moock, a legend in the Flash community, created quite a stir last week (and rightly so!) with his Charges Against Actionscript 3.0 article on InsideRIA. It’s really a fantastic read (but it is a little bit long), and the comments are even more helpful to see how the community feels and not just the one author. Even Adobe Engineer Francis Cheng weighed in on the actionscript buzz.
It was so popular that now Rich Tretola has a poll going to see which of the 9 main issues the community really feels is most important to address. Given the overwhelming response the original article got (over 70 comments!) this should be really interesting to see how the numbers play out. What are you waiting for? Go over and vote!
The heart and soul of what flensed is about is re-thinking the way flash is used and leveraged on websites. There’s (understandably) a good degree of resistance with the hip crowd who thinks its still so cool to yell “down with flash” whenver they get a chance.
I predict those fools will be the ones begging for a job 5 years from now, because the rest of us, who see flash as a pratical tool with powerful potential (but admittedly a colored past), will be far down the road in making real and practical innovations on the web. I “preach” a message of inclusion, meaning that all these different technologies have their place and it takes a mature and intelligent person to think technology-agnostically about the topic and use what’s right for each part of a job, and not be afraid to re-think the status quo from time to time.
This ZDNet article on flash/silverlight is one of several I’ve read recently which are starting to, ever so gracefully, crack open that egg and start seeing if anyone else will bite. I couldn’t be more pleased that I’m not alone in the wild on this concept. Definitely give that article a read and comment over there if you agree.
3 pieces of good news today regarding Flash:
- Flash v9 is up to 97% usage worldwide! And 9.0.115 (update3), which is only 6 months old, is already at 82%. We still need to get 9.0.124 (update4) up in numbers, because it has some huge security fixes that are very important. Hint: Use SWFObject or CheckPlayer, which have the inline auto-update features to help get more people updated with the latest Flash. Read this Flash Player version penetration article for more details.
- Flash v10 beta 2 for Linux is finally catching up in performance! This is huge news for Linux users, and for web developers across the board, as we can finally target audiences in that segment with our Flash content and not have to worry so much about a poor experience they may have. Keep up the good work Adobe. And Gnash, better step up your game!
Here’s a full review of Flash Player 10 beta 2 for Linux that is very informative.
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To me, perhaps the most exciting of all, is that Adobe is preparing to release a set of open-source tools that allow a C/C++ developer to cross-compile their projects (using LLVM) to target actionscript byte code which will run natively in Flash! They already have working versions of Quake and other games done this way as proof. Yes, there are security concerns we need to address, with the full superset of those languages, before deploying that code to a buggy web browser (ah-hem, IE?), but this is a great start.
Silverlight’s big claim to fame is the cross-compile with common intermediate runtime language across a bunch of .NET languages, as well as many other ports to languages such as Java, PHP, even Javascript! I can only think that the future looks bright (I gotta wear shades!) for Flash to get up to par with them (and probably surpass) as other languages follow Adobe’s lead, opening up Flash to a whole ‘nother world of development talent! Here’s a great article describing the C/C++ cross-compiling effort by Adobe.
Btw, thanks to FlashMagazine.com for keeping us all up to date on these great progress steps for Flash!
