Yes, I remember only having to deal with ActiveX controls “in the enterprise”. The problem was that “in the enterprise” there are a lot of idiots who think that “if it appears in the browser window it must be on the Web!”, and these people then start needlessly mandating the proprietary wares in stuff that ultimately gets rolled out to the public (although I think the public were spared in one particularly memorable case).

> Sure a technology like Flash/Flex might be mostly closed architecture, but you can now get Flex Builder for $250 bucks, and the Flash/Flex runtime runs almost anywhere (except for the three people running linux desktops on 64-bit architectures.)

That would be the three people in this room with Linux on x86-64 plus everybody else, then. Given that a large number of systems now shipping support x86-64 and that Linux has supported the architecture for ages, I suppose we just have to assume that Adobe wants to refresh our memories about certain disadvantages of proprietary software.

> What’s also great about these technologies is that your developed applications can be served by any web-based architecture (not the video/music streaming) side of things.

Yes, I suppose that would be like the testing software I once had to use “in the enterprise” which was Web-based: it required Internet Explorer and dropped an ActiveX payload onto my Windows (x86) desktop.

One place where all this Silverlight/Flash/Flex stuff is going to be BIG is in the enterprise. Think about all the enterprise applications that exist, and management consoles for these that are very clunky and dated. Sure, some of them you can be improved with an AJAX style interface, but as a programmer, I really hate working in AJAX. Then, there’s applications that just aren’t possible in HTML/Javascript. How many web games have you seen written in Javascript? Why does everyone write them in Flash?

Plus, with two big companies, like Microsoft and Adobe, competing hard for the space, we as developers gain by getting better tools, apis, more functionality, better products. For example, Adobe would have probably sat on developing a HD-quality flash player (coming in next version of Flash Player) if Microsoft never came out with their excellent Silverlight streaming capabilities found in version 1.0. Adobe would have probably also sat around and not developed any hardware based acceleration for their graphics APIs. And Microsoft would have probably never came to the game if it weren’t for companies like YouTube using Adobe technologies in ways that Microsoft couldn’t support.

I’m all for making web sites simple pages, but there’s a lot of applications that can gain from more interaction. How for example, would you create an image editing application out of HTML components and JavaScript? A web game? A simple video editor? How about building a book from a bunch of images?

Another thing that’s great about these technologies is the developer productivity. Until you’ve opened up Flex Builder, grabbed some data from remote RESTul or WebServices. Placed some initial controls and stepped through the debugger…well…there’s so many desktop type applications that are going to be able to be built with Flex/AIR and Silverlight (1.1 and above). There’s going to be a lot of developer productivity. And I think this is what has developers excited.

Also, AIR has several different development methodologies: 1) you can be a html/javascript developer and access the APIs 2) a Flash developer has access to them, and 3) a Flex developer has access to them (C# and Java developers should really look at Flex). It’s also interesting to note that Adobe has open-sourced Flex, so you can look at a lot of the APIs (but not all), in fact, it’s a great way to figure out how to build more controls.

Also, those of you who keep interchanging Silverlight and AIR, they serve two different technologies. Silverlight = Flash about 6 years ago. Silverlight 1.1 (coming in the spring, hopefully) will be the goods (as far as developing with the Microsoft platform goes). Adobe AIR is probably most similar to XUL, in which case, Microsoft doesn’t have a story for cross-platform desktop application development. Adobe AIR is just a few extra apis that allow access to native windows, SQLite, the filesystem, notifications, etc., and some form of launcher.

Sure a technology like Flash/Flex might be mostly closed architecture, but you can now get Flex Builder for $250 bucks, and the Flash/Flex runtime runs almost anywhere (except for the three people running linux desktops on 64-bit architectures.)

What’s also great about these technologies is that your developed applications can be served by any web-based architecture (not the video/music streaming) side of things.

What’s Prism got for user controls that people can duplicate, how are they going take advantage of hardware acceleration? Could you write a simple video editor in it?

Also, from reading the Mozilla Labs website, I’m not really sure I think much of this quote: “Unlike Adobe AIR and Microsoft Silverlight, we’re not building a proprietary platform to replace the web….” That is something MICROSOFT would say about one of their competitors. One of the my favorite things about working in Flex/AIR is system interoperability. The backend can be written in anything, .NET, Java, Ruby, Python…etc. So with the premise of the web being finding information based on URIs, I’m not so sure either Microsoft or Adobe are looking to replace it. This quote by Mozilla sounds a bit alarmist, and naturally, makes Mozilla sound ________________ (I can’t think of the right word).

Another note, I developed a lot of Java applets back in the day, and trying to get them working across different implementations of the VM was a pain in the but. I have yet to run across this working on Flex/AIR.

Go learn more about AIR/Flex/Silverlight. You’re going to have to someday, anyway…and as a technologist, there’s probably some things you can learn by digging into their platforms. In the mean time, here’s some RIAs (some AIR, some not) that look pretty promising, and I’m pretty sure, if you event had the inkling to create an application like this and you wanted to stick to JavaScript, well, good luck. (There’s a reason COBOL eventually died out): http://www.mixbook.com/

This guys is making a UML modeler called Saffron. It’s not released yet, but it looks very promising. Lots of interesting screen shots at his site. It really shows how AIR isn’t really just to take the web to go, it can be thought of as a cross-platform runtime development environment similar to wxWindows or QT (though, not as functional): http://www.levelofindustry.com/display/ShowJournal?moduleId=676235&categoryId=114963

SplashUp photo editing: http://www.splashup.com/

Picnik http://www.picnik.com/

(I’m including just some browser-based stuff, because all Adobe AIR is really doing is allowing you to run locally like an application, and have access to filesystem so you don’t have to proxy file uploads through a webserver to use an application).

Call me when it does something special.

Congratulations, you guys have come up with the greatest marketing campaign ever. Taking a browser with no features, and heralding it as the next big thing. Genius.

But I’d much rather an open source cross-platform way of doing this. I’d say the JVM which is cross-platform and being open-sourced.

The JavaFX stuff sounds promising if it’s open source, but it seems to have been forgotten in the Air/Silverlight race.

But I’m all for mozillas work, though I’m very fond of the back button.

Stellar argument.