Adobe gives Meaning to Web Development

Hi folks



Yesterday, 30th April, 2008 I was in the Adobe workshop for RIA. The focus was on "Delivering the next generation customer focused UI". It was sure hit. We reached the venue, Deccan Rendezvous( Ausumn place) at 10, got registered.

Before the session started, We got a chance to speak with Raghunath Rao (Adobe Evangelist), it was just "hi hello" kind of stuff.

Sessions started at 10.20AM.

Raghu Started the session with discussing how the Java guys and Flash Guys find difficult doing both the things simultaneously. Java people from the Swing/awt background don't focus much on the UI part, while the flash people are cool UI guys.

He then started discussing the Reachability of RIA and how RIA evolved from mainframes to static web pages to AJAX and then RIA( WEB 2.0). Google is the champion , holding 53% internet market. Adobe seems to have given web a new dimension, with so many products which not only helpsboth the Java as well as Flash Developers. It's fabulous!

Two things that Raghu discussed ( important to understand)
1. Movement has meaning - when to have a drap and drop functionality. Your UI should not have moving things on a click of a button if it is not required. Balancing the look and feel with the functionality. Great example of "Movement has meaning" is the Adobe Media Player. Sliding of windows is done with some elegance there. I have started using Adobe Media Player.


2. Content is the king - Huge Data that is shown neatly with Flex.

Glimpse of other things at Adobe RIA event:
1. Mobile Apps using Flash Lite( only supports AS 2.0, you cannot run flash application on Flash Lite as of now). They are working on reducing the size of the VM and other things so that it can fit in nicely.
2. Flash Cast - Backend for mobile Applications
3. Cold Fusion Component- Encourages Rapid Development, Check out how easy it is to create a web service there as compared to Java/.NET and other technologies (ROR etc)
4. Acrobat Connect - Web conferencing, check this out guys it looks promising
5. For UI design patterns check out xd.adobe.com ( Adobe guys have come up with UI design patterns that helps us in deciding what kind of UI is required for the data that we get from the Backend)

Lunch Time: Lunch was nothing less than fantabulous. Amazing time, met lots of flex developer. Anand Vardhan, the manager of Pune Flex User Groups.

Post Lunch, it was even more interesting Vyshak Venugopalan from Adobe Started discussing about Flex in 30 Minutes, it was a funny session with every one clapping on a "Hello World" Application that was created in seconds.

He then illustrated things like
1. Adobe Illustrator CS 3 - Skinning of vector drawing
2. Adobe Photoshop
3. Adobe Fireworks CS 3 - RIA designing and layout and an example was shown with Fireworks

After the Tea break, it was Raghu on Song with how to create web applications with Flex. He showed us a demo using the Google Image mash which uses JSON and how it was integrated with flex application.

By the time this application got over, it was 6PM. I then caught up with Raghu and Vyshak had a technical discussion with them. Raghu and Anand are on work for Flex Users group meeting in Pune. This community is increasing exponentially thanks to Anand Vardhan. Next week I will meet Raghu at BEA Flex Conference, "SOA with Flex"

Guys, I can only tell that Flex HackDay is coming soon, we will be pushing that forward. Just check this space for more updates on the HackDay.

Thanks to Raghu, Vyshak for spreading the word around on Flex and How cool it is for flash, java developers to develop a smashing application.