Big News from MAX 2005

MAX 2005 will be remembered as a critical point in time for Macromedia, perhaps in web development in general, where the company took steps to make an already close relationship with its developer community even closer, pushed rich internet applications to the developer masses, and paved a direction for Macromedia that will continue long after Adobe takes over the company. Macromedia made bold moves and made big news, especially for a company about to be sold.

Although it was downplayed in the keynote, Macromedia announced something groundbreaking. The company debuted the Macromedia Labs website:

http://labs.macromedia.com

According to Macromedia Chief Software Architect Kevin Lynch, Macromedia Labs "provides an early look at emerging technologies". Labs will be the place to find information and downloads for products, toolkits and new ideas from Macromedia engineering teams. Labs will be the place for developers who want to be on the cutting edge and have early access to new technologies, to be able to learn and evaluate them for upcoming projects or for career and knowledge development.

Everything on Labs will be experimental - works in progress, and should be treated as such. Some of what will be featured on Labs may become new products, or become part of an existing product, while others may not ever make it into a release cycle.

Labs will allow developers to be a greater part of the collaboration process, as products are still being created, rather than being involved in beta programs or after a full release, when it is too late to change features of a product.

As a part of the introduction of Macromedia Labs, the entire new Flex 2 product line Alpha-quality software was released to anyone that wants it.

During the Day 1 keynote, Macromedia CEO Steven Elop outlined the Flash Platform Roadmap, which includes the Flex 2 product line, All of these products within the Flex 2 product line were made available for download on the Macromedia Labs website.

The Flex 2 product line includes the following:

Flex Framework 2 - Includes the programming model, core application services, and class library for rich Internet applications. This will allow developers who have Flex Builder to be able to develop Flex applications without the need for the Flex server (now called Flex Enterprise Services).

Flex Builder 2 - In this release, the previous Dreamweaver engine has been replaced with an all new Eclipse-based IDE, code named Zorn. There are two versions of Zorn - one is a standalone IDE, the other is a plug-in for Eclipse. Although the price has not been made official, they publicly stated that the price will be "less than $1,000". Having Flex Builder 2 and the Flex Framework will allow developers to publish .swf files compiled by the Flex Framework without the need of the Flex server, as was previously the case in Flex 1.0/1.5.

Flex Enterprise Services 2 - J2EE-based runtime services that enable enterprise-class rich Internet applications.

Flex Charting Components 2 - Extensible charting and graphing components for data visualization in Flex applications.

ActionScript 3.0 - ECMAScript-standard object-oriented programming language. Flash Player 8.5 and Flex 2 will use the new version of ActionScript. It was also announced that Flash 8 Professional and Studio owners would be given updates to Flash to allow developers to leverage AS3.

Flash Player 8.5 - This new version of the player will take advantage of the new ActionScript 3. The player is also designed with significant performance increases in mind.

Flex 2 ColdFusion Adapter - The adapter will allow ColdFusion developers to use Flex technologies, without the need for the Flex server, to build rich Internet applications. This was downplayed in the keynote, but it's going to make it really easy to develop Flex applications using ColdFusion... and without the Flex server.

During the Day 1 Keynote, Macromedia also announced their next generation Flash player, code named "Apollo". Apollo has been dubbed "The Universal Client". Apollo will be a "Flash + HTML" client, with such planned features as:

- Scripting & Displaying Integration - Data Synchronization - Online/Offline capabilities - Desktop integration - Notification - One-click installation - Update Management - Secure Sandbox

To explain the potential of Apollo, Macromedia Senior Vice President Mike Sundermeyer presented a concept application where a user's entertainment library was fully indexed and integrated with ecommerce, email, messaging, media center and other dynamic content into one intuitive application.

ColdFusion, although not specific demonstrated in the keynote, was mentioned several times during the Day 1 Keynote. Both Macromedia CEO Steven Elop and Adobe CEO Bruce Chizen, who concluded the Day 1 Keynote, clearly stated ColdFusion along with Flex and Flash as the future. The new Flex ColdFusion adapter fits with Macromedia's vision that ColdFusion is the best solution for rich internet application back end development.

In conclusion, MAX 2005 wasn't the end of days for Macromedia. It was a prelude to wonderful new things to come as part of the Adobe family.