Let's start with the Good:
- Absolutely loved the keynote. Kevin Lynch (and a set of guests) did a good job explaining Adobe's vision over a variety of platforms - from desktop to tablets to mobile. It was a great message and one of the fastest keynotes I've seen. (They actually ended early which is a shock.) Some of the demos were incredible: Content Aware Replace on a table - hardware accelerated Flash video. It all looked pretty darn exciting and I can't wait to see more.
- AIR was everywhere. I think that AIR, after ColdFusion, is the technology I'm most excited about. We were shown AIR on a template, on a TV, on a phone - pretty much everywhere. I think it's a great sign for the platform. Adobe quoted how many installs of the AIR runtime have been shipping but unfortunately I can't remember the number. It was pretty significant. For more details on AIR related news, see this entry.
- If you had told me I would have been enjoyed Martha Stewart at MAX I woulda called you crazy - but wow. Her and Kevin gave a great demo and she seemed like a pretty darn interesting person.
- A whole heck of a lot of software have been dropped on Labs, including Burrito, the new version of Flash Builder with mobile support. I'll be posting more on this later but it's pretty incredible how easy Adobe made this process. See this entry for more details.
- The first day of the ColdFusion Unconference went spectacular. For many sessions we had standing room only. Great turnout and I hope to see as many people
- Oh yeah - we got a free phone. I won't lie - if you give me stuff, you make happy. I'm easy that way.
- I don't remember her name, but the woman from Motorola said something along the lines of, "If someone gives you a browser without Flash they aren't giving you the whole Internet." Awesome - and I agree completely.
And now the bad...
If you follow me on Twitter, you saw that last night my laptop bag (and laptop of course) was stolen. Totally my fault as I walked away from it, but if I was a jerk to anyone today - I apologize. I'm trying to be pragmatic about it. A lot of other things could have happened a lot worse then just having a laptop stolen, but it's pissing me off a bit more as time goes on. I've got a laptop (obviously) now that I'm borrowing so I was able to present. (Thanks Dean Harmon and Charlie Griefer!) Tomorrow will be better, right? Don't forget you can watch the keynotes online live. (See max.adobe.com.) I've heard the quality was excellent, and oh yeah - it works on all
Archived Comments
On all what??! Ahhh!
also, don't forget the html5, css and jquery write once and display on multiple devices, with content formatted appropriately for the devise. that was impressive a h-e-double hockey sticks.
I'm sorry to hear about your laptop :( You'd think at a conference people would be more of "one mind" about that stuff. Other than that, though, it looks like conference is really awesome.
@ryan I think he meant view on all platforms, since Apple's keynote video was only viewable on macs.
@ray sucks about your notebook. Do you have any distinguishing marks on it? Like vader or something?
@joshua I know I was just giving him a hard time for not finishing the sentence.
Ray - saw your comment about Motorola/Flash, etc. When did Flash become a requirement to use the Internet? I'm not necessarily anti-Flash (depends on situation), but the idea that the Internet/web can't or doesn't exist without it doesn't fly...
Just sayin'...
The ability to _view_ Flash is the requirement, not _having_ to use it. A platform that blocks part of the web isn't complete.
Ray,
Thanks for the blog, I love a knowledgable and practical perspective on all things CF (and maybe Adobe at large now?)! I was at MAX, and AIR sure looked like the lightweight competitor vs. jQuery/HTML5/CSS - d**m easy to use, but I didn't see how one could write an AIR app that would perform equally on all form factors (mobile, smartTV, iPad, etc.) Did you hear anything in the conference where that point of weakness in Flash might be addressed? I hope so - I loved the AIR BYOL's I went to but I'm having trouble justifying it in a business case.
Wow, thats a lot of questions in there Matt. I'll try to hit them up, and if I forget anything, let me know..
"but I didn't see how one could write an AIR app that would perform equally on all form factors (mobile, smartTV, iPad, etc.)"
Is your question asking about how well AIR code could handle the different platforms? If so, my understanding is that AIR code focuses more on capabilities then platforms. Ie, you don't have code saying, if(tv), but rather if(size of screen is smaller than some limit). You don't have: if(iphone 4) but rather if(geolocation enabled). So you still do have to consider multiple platforms - you never will get away from that - but I think the framework goes a long way to making it more agnostic - or more high level perhaps - then how things may have been done in the past. Please remember I'm still a newbie at AIR myself. I'm extremely interested in it - but I'm no expert.
Um actually - that was your only question I think. Just let me know. :)