« Heading down to San Jose for Flex 360 | Main | Make Flex Development More Like ASP.NET »
March 05, 2007
Flex 360 Keynote
I gave the keynote at Flex 360 this morning and overall it went well. I showed a number of cool examples, including some that hadn't been seen before, that I think help illustrate what makes Flex magical.The first example I showed was something I wrote, which is a partial implementation of SVG as a set of Flex components. The way it works is different from actual SVG implementations, in that there is no interpretation of XML. Instead, I have a set of Flex components that, when you apply the rules of how MXML maps ActionScript objects to XML, look like SVG. So you can embed SVG into your Flex app and the Flex compiler turns it into a set of objects that render the SVG content.
I also showed a bunch of examples that are available on the web that illustrate what I think are important concepts in Flex. The examples are are really cool and look great. The first one illustrated the way Flex allows you to build new things via composition. The finished example was Doug McCune's very cool MXNA navigator. You can see it here. This was built from other components, such as Ely Greenfield's fisheye component and Josh Tynjala's treemap component, as well as the work of Alex Uhlmann and Ben Stucki. Doug talks about how he did it here.
I showed some other examples such as Ely's LightTable example, which you can find here as well as two applications that are stretching how one thinks about Flex apps.
The first is Picnik, which is very nice image editing program. What I think is interesting about it is that it looks like a standard web app, but is implemented in Flex. This might seem like a contradiction to some. After all, should one really create something that looks HTML-ish in Flex? To me, the answer is, if that's what you want to do, go for it, as long as you create a compelling user experience. I think Picnik has created something that's functional, responsive and easy to use.
The second example I showed was Virtual Ubiquity's word processing app, code-named Buzzword. They're still in stealth mode, but you can find the latest information at their site. This is a really amazing app and goes far beyond what you see in AJAX based word processors. For example, it does advanced text wrapping around images in ways that you can't do in HTML.
Mike Downey joined me on stage to demo Apollo and he showed Buzzword running as a desktop app. He also showed a bunch of other Apollo stuff, some of which I believe hasn't been seen before. Of course, people seem to be going crazy every time they see Apollo stuff, so I probably should have done the demo myself so that Mr. Downey wouldn't upstage me, but he does a great job and is a nice guy as well, so it was great to have him there.
Of course, since this was a keynote, there had to be a snafu, and there was. While cmd-tabbing between applications on my MacBook, the entire machine locked up! At the time, I thought that it could be because PowerPoint is a Rosetta based app. However, afterwards, someone told me their theory as to what happened. They said that they've had lockups on their Mac when cmd-tabbing after having added a secondary monitor as in a presentation scenario. His Mac was a G4 PowerBook, not an Intel Mac, so the Rosetta angle wouldn't apply. It's an interesting theory!
Anyway, I was able to reboot and everything else went well. There's a great buzz at the conference and I'm sure there will be lots of posts detailing more of what goes on at Flex 360!
Posted by Mark Anders at March 5, 2007 10:25 AM
Comments
Wish I was at Flex 360! I'm a long time web developer but a newbie to Flex. I have never been this excited about a technology and believe Flex is the real future of the web (and not these AJAX/Comet hacks). Also think no company is better at creating standards (Acrobat and Flash are great examples).
I plan to push Flex to its limits this year and I'll make sure I don't miss next years Flex 360!
Also thanks Mark, I've read the "Programming Flex 2.0" rough-cut and it sounds like your ideas had a large influence of what Flex 2.0 is today.
Ryan
Posted by: Ryan Campbell at March 5, 2007 12:27 PM
Look forward to additional posts from this 3 day event. I hope to make in time for the next such event.
Please consider making the sources of components available like Ely Greenfield. The more examples and patterns there are, the better it is for the dev community to exploit the capabilities of this exciting platform.
Posted by: Anand at March 5, 2007 03:17 PM
Hi Mark,
Didn't attend the conference, but I'm really interested to learn more about any improved support for SVG in Flex. I read on Ryan Stewart's blog (http://blog.digitalbackcountry.com/?p=698) about the improved SVG support, and now here, and was wondering about two things:
* can you manipulate the SVG DOM and have updates directly? If so, would you use SVG DOM APIs or use ActionScript APIs on the converted object?
* can you render SVG animations?
Thanks for any further information on both topics.
Posted by: Antoine Quint at March 5, 2007 04:59 PM
Hi Mark,
First of all, thanks for the great keynote at 360Flex! I was the one who came up after your presentation and told you about my similar experiences with my 15" Powerbook G4 (1.67) locking up during a presentation when I tried a command-tab. My presentation was built in Keynote and I was demonstrating my Flash-based mashup www.runningmap.com so I needed to flip between the Flash IDE and a browser and Keynote. I had built the presentation earlier and tested it many times, and I use a DVI-connected external monitor. So the only thing I can think of is that at the presentation, I brought the computer out of sleep, plugged in the DVI to VGA adapter. Then mid presentation I tried to alt-tab and Boom. Shrug. I felt for ya, big guy. But this in no way marred what was an excellent presentation on your part. Me? I laid on the ground and sobbed in a fetal position.
Posted by: Randy Troppmann at April 11, 2007 12:51 PM