Re: flash vs html part 756 (was 2 cents)

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On Saturday 13 September 2003 11:04 am, alan hill wrote:
> hi again,
>
>   Thanks for taking the time to reply.  Being a Coldfusion person I
> get a lot of pro-Macromedia rhetoric thrown at me so it was good to
> hear the other side of the story again.  I'm very sympathetic to
> almost all of what you said (I think you're 99% wrong about MX 2004
> Pro being completelty timeline based, you can do everything you can
> do in HTML/JS without it, and as you admit once it's optional it's
> pretty nice to have around)

Note that I haven't really used flash since Flash 5. I moved 
exclusively to Linux about that time and haven't looked back, so my 
opinion may be skewed/outdated/plain wrong on several counts here.

For the record: I'm not one of those who beleives that Flash isn't 
good for building "real" apps or that it's only good for adding 
"spice" to a web page. I think it's a credible platform for a lot of 
application development and one that you just can't ignore. That 
said, I do think it has some app deployment development constraints 
similar to a large DHTML app. Where these overlap, I expect to see 
competition. Where they don't, I expect to see a lot of heated but 
pointless debates = )

>   The reason why such thoughts preoccupy me is that a little while
> ago I was going to create a few Coldfusion custom tags to wrap
> around QForms and probably bits from various DHTML apis (eg. 1k
> DHTML, Sarissa, netWindows), this was in response to an existing
> tag-based api (Fusionscript) moving from open-source to commercial.

Hrm. So do you think there would be value in something like this for 
ColdFusion developers that want to use NW?

>  But a few things made me go cold on the idea (eg. Safari being
> based on Konqueror and not Mozilla, wondeing if significant amounts
> of new Coldfusion apps were actually being developed in HTML etc.).

netWindows supports Konq. In fact, Konq is my main browser = )

>   Currently I'm involved in a multimedia community project, and I
> really wanted to try and do the project in DHTML.  But it just
> became too much hassle (client wants streaming audio, video
> effects, watermarking and so on).  

Yeah, there are some kinds of things that DHTML just isn't good for. I 
am of the opinion that we'll never beat Flash in multi-media apps. 
But for "business" apps and the like, I think we can compete (and 
win) on a lot of our previously mentioned strengths.

> I really hope that Devel is
> successful because as Macromedia bloggers are oh so fond of
> pointing out, truly cross-browser DHTML websites are often promised
> but rarely achieved.

This is a valid point. netWindows, for instance, will not support 
older browsers in any way other than to allow for graceful 
degredation of most UI elements.

> It would sadden me to pay $699 for Flash MX 2004 Pro (they need a
> shorter name!), but I have CFStudio so I can sneak on the upgrade
> path and pick up Studio MX 2004 for a few hundered bucks ($999
> normally).  The new Dreamweaver looks quite nice (fully CSS-based,
> full compatibility testing),

It's nice to see MM finally getting their standards-compliance act 
togeather. I've cleaned up ineumerable Dreamweaver messes and I just 
want the crappy code to _stop_ already.

> and Fireworks sure will be nice to
> have around.  I *do* feel very much like I'm signing a pact with
> the devil, but I suspect I won't be the only one snuggling up to
> Macromedia's comfy bosom.  They have their flaws but they are a
> very well organised and focused company and I think they will
> become major players in Internet 2.0 .  I would not be shocked if
> they were bigger than Microsoft in 10 years, though that's not a
> prediction of course.

I would. In fact, I'd be pretty aghast. The only way I see this being 
a good thing is if MM grows marginally and Microsoft sucumbs to the 
Open Source pressure. Of course, at that point, there will be a 
credible Open Source alternative to Flash et al. taking hold as the 
platform battleground moves.

> As I say, thank you very much for your replies and I look forward
> to exploiting your good work in the future.  HTML/JS needs an army.

Nah, we just need working apps. The army will follow = )

> PS.  On a "Signals and Slots" tip, are you aware of the new CF
> (Java and PHP to come) MVC framework Mach-II (
> http://www.mach-ii.com ), it's based on Implicit Invocation and
> will probably become the new "Fusebox" (cue "what?" from most of
> you, us CF-ers do have our bubble).

Nope, haven't seen it. I'll have to read up.

Regards

- -- 
Alex Russell
[email protected]   BD10 7AFC 87F6 63F9 1691 83FA 9884 3A15 AFC9 61B7
[email protected] F687 1964 1EF6 453E 9BD0 5148 A15D 1D43 AB92 9A46
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