Extra! Extra! Read All About it!

These are times of great change and innovation in the networked application development space. We are now getting glimpses of what the future will look like. The foundations for the UIs on the applications of the future now are in place.

Take for instance “Street View” on maps.google.com. I will be over at Adobe next week. Here is a tinyurl into maps.google.com for Adobe’s address. http://tinyurl.com/2t7uwe On the top edge of the map itself, select the link for “Street View”. On this particular map (as of this particular date), clicking “Street View” adds clickable blue lines that bring up 360° views from street level.

I am highlighting “Street View” on maps.google.com for two reasons. First, it is simply amazing. This is yet another example of how the web is going beyond anything that previously existed before. Yes, in the old days we had maps. But no, the maps did not also have 360° photos of the street view. First San Jose, and then all the world! And a few decades hence we will have a back catalogue of historical views from that exact longitude and latitude. Simply amazing.

Secondly, this is yet another instance of Google, one of the powerhouse showcases of AJAX UIs, incrementally adding Flash Player based content (Flash/Flex). Google using Flash/Flex for “Street View” and charting on finance.google.com are major strategic commitments. And nobody knows better than Google the relative merits of AJAX vs Flash/Flex.

The rate of momentum now building in the swing to RIAs is very impressive. The two key technologies now widely employed for RIA UIs are AJAX and Flash/Flex. And Microsoft, the producer of a third would-be contender, Silverlight, is planning on coming on fast.

As a credit to technology publisher Sys-Con.com, yesterday they put up a very solid live “RIA Shoot-Out” that discusses AJAX, Flex, Silverlight, and JavaFX. The recording of the very intelligent roundtable discussion is on-line here:
http://tv.sys-con.com/read/385147.htm

Many on the panel are familiar to me: Mike Potter of Adobe, Yakov Fain of Farata Systems, and Coach Wei of Nexaweb. Overall I am very grateful to Sys-Con for producing this event. I hope that this will be the first of many.

Lastly, every day this week Adobe Evangelist Ted Patrick has been highlighting what is new in Flex 3. Monday: Designer/Developer Workflow; Tuesday: Code Enhancements; Wednesday: Components and SDK Enhancements; today architectural changes that will enable Flex 3 to deliver Dramatically Smaller Flex SWF Files; and tomorrow details regarding Apollo.

Ted has put a substantial amount of material up providing details, including lots of screen captures. Basically, Flex 3 includes features further bolstering Flex as the RIA UI technology of choice, and with Apollo extending Flash/Flex to a new runtime, Flex 3 is laying the foundation for yet another round of innovation in the networked application development space. When you have a chance, I highly encourage you to look through the great material that Ted has put up.

This entry was posted on June 7, 2007 at 4:06 pm and is filed under Flex. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response or trackback from your own site.