Flex Pasta » Adobe MAX Day 1
Adobe MAX Day 1
Today I was at Adobe MAX in San Francisco. I attended 4 sessions. Here is what they covered and my feedback.
- Ely Greenfield’s session on the next version(Gumbo) of Flex. Very well organized and presented. The next version of Flex is basically a complete rewrite of Flex 3. It involves seperating the data and functional pieces of the Flex framework from the visual appeareance. Sounds very interesting, but Flex 3 to Flex 4 won’t be an easy upgrade. One other note about Flex 4 Gumbo is that two way data binding will be supported by the Flex compiler.
- The Flex Architecture Faceoff -This was just a debate on the different frameworks such as Cairngorm, Pure MVC, etc and what people did and did not like. Some of the panelists preferred no frameworks! My favorite quote of the session was from Yakov Fain - “I didn’t like Cairngorm until I learned Pure MVC”. A good middle ground between Cairngorm and no framework could be Penne?
- Cocomo SDK - Cocomo is a new SDK built by Adobe on top of the Flex SDK for real time collaboration apps with RMTP using cloud computing. Very cool presentation to show developers how to start using the Cocomo SDK. This is something I will try out. I am still a little skeptical since it is only a beta release, and the potential problems with a re-written Flex 4. I also wonder how upgrades to the Cocomo cloud avoid breaking the clients running on an earlier version. I see some real world applications for Cocomo, though I would have liked to hear about the pricing model!
- Filthy Rich Graphics with Chet Haase - Very well organized, fast paced, yet easy to understand. I learned a lot about how animations, effects, etc works under the covers and the thought process that goes into coming up with great effects. I think this was the most enjoyable session of the day. Check out the new Mirror effect in the Flex Gumbo SDK.
At the end of the day I got to meet some members of the Flex SDK team…Matt Chotin, Ryan Frishberg, Joan Laferty. Nice to put faces to names in the bug database!
4 Comments
1. Ely Greenfield replies at 20th November 2008, 12:53 am :
Just to be clear — Gumbo is not a complete rewrite of Flex 3, but a new set of components and functionality that live in addition to, and are compatible, with, the existing Flex 3 content. And the transition from Flex 3 to Gumbo should be seamless…we are committed to maintaining compatibility with the existing SDK.
Ely Greenfield
Flex SDK.
2. Chet Haase replies at 20th November 2008, 10:26 am :
… and to clarify the new effects going into Gumbo, the ‘Mirror’ effect that I showed was an example, not an upcoming effect in Gumbo. In fact, that example was built using the Flex3 APIs and doesn’t have anything to do with Gumbo. There will be several new effects (plus all of the old ones) in Gumbo, but the reflection demo was more to illustrate how you would go about achieving that effect, not what we’re putting in the SDK.
I’m glad you enjoyed the talk; I was trying to stuff a lot of material in that little tiny hour….
Chet.
3. Tom Van den Eynde replies at 21st November 2008, 5:47 am :
Let’s hope that Gumbo solves most of the JIRA entries with status ‘closed and deferred forever’… Feel free to contact me if you want a list of ‘essential components and functionality for data centric applications’.
4. Brian Telintelo replies at 21st November 2008, 6:35 pm :
Thanks for adding that information Ely. Going from Flex 3 to Gumbo will not require major code changes, but changing from an mx:ComboBox to an FxComboBox for example could be more challenging if you have made significant visual changes. I do like the direction you and the team are going with Gumbo in this regard.
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