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March 21, 2007

Flex 2 is the NEW Flash 3

After taking a year away from the Flash world entirely (to reno and flip houses...that's a story for another day), I've returned to experience a sense of excitement and energy that I haven't felt personally since the days of Flash 3. Sure, there were other periods in Flash history that produced moments of near euphoria:

  • ActionScript introduced in Flash 5
  • Flash Video introduced in Flash MX
  • AS2 in Flash MX2004
  • Bitmap effects in Flash 8

However, the era that I look back on with the most warm fuzzies was back in the day when nrg.be and matinee.co.uk made heads spin with their sheer slickness and everyone hung on the edge of their chairs for the new version of Gabocorp. You know...the days when motion tweens were in, and TellTarget was for "real" coders. That was what birthed in me a REAL passion for Flash, and I knew back then it was what I wanted to do. Now it's 10 years later and things have changed substantially in a way that few of us would have predicted. A lot of Flash designers have moved into the role of "developer" and learned a thing or two about programming through this thing called ActionScript. And now we even have our own "developer" IDE in FlexBuilder. Who would've thunk it?

Yet, as I read the blog posts and see the excitement over Flash/Flex/Apollo/etc. I can't help but feel somewhat the same as I did 10 years ago. A sense of buzz over what the future holds for Flash, centred largely around this framework called Flex. A lot of people talk about how Flex has changed the Flash ecosystem (some wonder where designers are left in all of this). I can't help but think of the possibilities the future holds for us. At what point in the past have we had:

I think it's a great time to be a Flash/Flex developer. Even though we're far removed from the days of Flash 3, I anticipate looking back on these days 10 years from now with the same fondness as I do those days 10 years ago, knowing that we were on the verge of going somewhere bigger than we were (at least if I'm not off flipping houses... :)

I look forward to posting useful tidbits on anything Flash related in the coming days and weeks...

Comments (6)

Good point... when I read your title I knew exactly what you were talking about, and I agree.

Sometimes we can look ahead, see that something will work -- intuit the future. This seems to be one of those times..... :)

jd/adobe

WELCOME BACK BROTHER!!!!!

Spring is here and Philter is back!!! All is right in the world again. Oh, and good post. Welcome back!

giovanni:

I can still remember experimenting... like generating swf files on the fly with a server side 'DontRememberTheName' software, written in C by a SiliconGraphics guy, much before flash 5 not so well implemented image loading capabilities and much before the ShortLife Generator... Yes, I was just thinking the same things you wrote, actually... I could have written them.
:-)

Nate:

Are you still in Reno? Where do you work?

I bet you made a ton of money flipping houses here, maybe you don't have to work! :)

@Stacey & Randy...
Hey guys, thanks for posting. Look forward to chatting it up with you in the near future :)

@jd...
These are exciting times, and maybe the best part about it is that Adobe is letting developers have a large say in where things go. Adobe rocks! Thanks.

@ Nate...
I live in Edmonton, Alberta, Canada, and real estate here just went nuts over the past 18 months or so (and continues to climb). It was a really good experience and I'm glad I did it. It was different living without steady income for extended periods of time, but it sure was nice to get the check from the lawyer at the end :)

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