Name: Jeff Tapper Position: Chief Technologist for Tapper.net Consulting and a Macromedia Instructor, certified to teach all of Macromedia's courses on ColdFusion and Flash development. Technologies used: Flex 1.5, Flash 2004 MX Professional, and ColdFusion MX7.
Q. In the last ten years what non-Macromedia technologies (if any!!) have you envied?
A. This is a really difficult question to answer, as invariably, I envy any technology which would make the tasks I need to do today easier, but which I dont have access to. In the past, I've deeply envied things like XPath (now available in ColdFusion and Flash) for searching XML, prior to Flex I was very envious of Laszlo. At other times I envied JMS (which is now trivial to interact with from CFMX7, thanks to event gateways)
Q. When it comes to enterprise-class development, what do you consider Macromedia's main contribution to be in terms of technology and inspiration?
A. As a 10 year customer of Macromedia (and Allaire before them), I've always considered their main contribution to the technology to be empowering developers to build better and better applications quickly and easily. 10 years ago I was amazed at how quickly I could connect a web page to a database with CFML (actually, it was DBML at the time, but thats another story), 4 years ago with the introduction of Flash Remoting, I was amazed at how quickly and easily compelling Flash UI's could be connected to my ColdFusion server, and 2 years ago I was amazed at how much more quickly and easily I could build compelling Flash UI's with Flex. Across all of these, the recurring theme is empowering me as a developer to build better apps quicker.
Q. Having put the X into eXperience, what new areas are you looking forward to Macromedia's team heading off into (including as part of a merged Adobe-Macromedia)?
A. I look forward to seeing how the next generation of Macromedia tools will continue to let me build better apps more quickly. I'm expecting the Adobe merger will at a minimum expand the ease and richness of MX apps for the web into easier, richer printable pages from our apps.
Name: Simon Horwith
Position: Editor-in-chief of ColdFusion Developer's Journal and CIO at AboutWeb, LLC, a Washington, DC based company specializing in staff augmentation, consulting, and training. Macromedia Certified Master Instructor and member of Team Macromedia. Technologies used: "I use ColdFusion as the platform for most of my development, usually I use Dreamweaver to write the code (though I also use CFEclipse and HomeSite+). When clients desire a rich internet application interface, I use Flash and/or Flex depending on their needs."
"Flex is a terrific example of how an Enterprise Application server should be. Everything about the way you develop Flex applications has the enterprise in mind, as well as encouraging scalable, architectural (application design) best practices."
Q. In the last ten years what non-Macromedia technologies (if any!!) have you envied?
A. Wow, that's a good question. I've always envied the IDE (Visual Studio) that MS developers use - say what you want about Microsoft, they do make great development environments. I've also envied Java developers because of the language's capabilities, the size and quality of the open source community and open source projects, and because it's based on standards. To a degree I'm pretty much envious of anyone working in an open standards based programming language.
Q. When it comes to enterprise-class development, what do you consider Macromedia's main contribution to be in terms of technology and inspiration?
A. I think that with the release of CF MX 7, ColdFusion has really begun addressing the requirements of Enterprise Applications. The Flex development team, without a doubt, had "Enterprise Solution" in mind from day one. Flex is a terrific example of how an Enterprise Application server should be. Everything about the way you develop Flex applications has the enterprise in mind, as well as encouraging scalable, architectural (application design) best practices. Flex makes the implementation of Enterprise RIAs a reality. I've been focussing on Flex a lot lately - it's something that I, and the rest of the executives at AboutWeb, have prioritized as a top skill for our developers to master. We believe Flex has a terrific future.
Q. Having put the X into eXperience, what new areas are you looking forward to Macromedia's team heading off into (including as part of a merged Adobe-Macromedia)?
A. I'm very excited about seeing Flash become a more widespread agnostic platform. The idea of delivering rich interfaces to mobile phones, devices, and the desktop along with "traditional" web browsers is a very powerful one. With Flash as an interrface platform and PDF as a document format "platform" both controlled by one company, there are some interesting possibilities. With regards to server side technologies, I'm very anxious to see how CF integrates and/or encapsulates with existing Adobe server offerings. I'm also really excited about the doors that have been opened up with the introduction of the Event Gateway framework in CFMX 7. Future gateways can now be introduced to help developers load test and administer their servers (and not just via a web interface, either) as well as interface with a myriad of devices and other environments.
Name: Bryan Hoff Position: Freelance web designer, digital artist and animator - has worked on everything from movie and television effects to online games, 3D corporate animation, Flash, and traditional web site design. Technologies used: "I use Dreamweaver almost exclusively. In my day-to-day work I don't have much call for Flash, and I use Photoshop when I'm doing Web design, because I'm familiar with it and because I find its JPG output to be superior."
"I think Flash and the power of ActionScript have carried Macromedia this far, and it's likely what drove Adobe to buy them."
Q. In the last ten years what non-Macromedia technologies (if any!!) have you envied?
A. To put a bit of a twist on things, I'm actually looking forward to seeing some of FreeHand's features - like transparent gradients - in future versions of Illustrator.
Q. Having put the X into eXperience, what new areas are you looking forward to Macromedia's team heading off into (including as part of a merged Adobe-Macromedia)?
A. I'm looking forward to hybrid versions of GoLive/Dreamweaver and ImageReady/Fireworks. Let's see if it happens.
About Jeremy Geelan Jeremy Geelan is Sr. Vice-President of SYS-CON Media & Events. He is Conference Chair of the AJAXWorld Conference & Expo series, of the 3rd International Virtualization Conference & Expo and founder of Web 2.0 Journal, AJAXWorld Magazine and other major SYS-CON titles. From 2000-6, as first editorial director and then group publisher of SYS-CON Media, he was responsible for the development of all new titles and i-Technology portals for the firm, and regularly represents SYS-CON at conferences and trade shows, speaking to technology audiences both in North America and overseas. He is executive producer and presenter of "Power Panels with Jeremy Geelan" on SYS-CON.TV.
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