Adobe Max – Day 1 round-up
I’m really stoked that I got to go to Max this year. All the stars were in alignment and I was definitely due. For the last few years, I’ve only heard about all the wonderous stuff coming out of Adobe and announced at Max through meetings at LAFlash. I finally realized that it was time for me to step up and hear things direct. And wow…
I bought a bunch of Adobe shwag at the conference store. They had Flex and Flash baseball caps (I got Flex), as well as AIR hoodies (got one for me and another for Mike). I also picked up a Flash chimp figurine. They were supposed to have Flex robots, but there was a screw up in manufacturing/shipping so I don’t know if those are going to actually get released.
Here’s the sessions I attended:
Television on AIR: Creating Custom Media Player Experiences
For background, I had attended the NewTeeVee conference last week (which I should also blog about) which was predominantly about the convergence of broadcast (i.e. television) and web-based media. It was a super-deep conference with a lot of big players (Hulu, Netflix, Canoe Ventures, YouTube, etc.).
In contrast, this session should have been called “Intro to video codecs and DRM in Flash”. This was a huge disappointment, not exactly what I was expecting at the great Max. I was worried. Until…
Prototyping Adobe AIR Applications with Fireworks CS4
Much better session. Fireworks is an extremely specialized app for web graphics, which also includes a modest amount of storyboarding features based on HTML/CSS. With such, it’s possible to create rough interactive walkthroughs of websites, AIR apps, etc. Select “Create AIR Package” to make standalone samples.
Introduction to Thermo and the Next Generation of Flex
This was the granddaddy session of the day. Demand was high. The workshop classes were sold-out before I even registered. But at least I could get first-hand knowledge of Flash Catalyst (Thermo) and Flex Builder 4 (Gumbo). They gave away pre-alpha disks in this session which expire in March.
Lots can be said about the improvements in FB4 and Thermo. Said by everyone else but me. The big news – Beta 1 will be released “spring ‘09″ and Beta 2 in the fall.
Filthy Rich Flex: Graphics and Animation
OK, I thought this was going to be about advanced techniques and how-tos for Flex designers. Nope. Was the lead designer for the Flex SDK Team. So a little disappointed that I wouldn’t learn new shortcuts, but much bigger score for learning all the new design stuff being put into Gumbo. The big one is the Animation class, a robust replacement for the Tween class. I left this session feeling like Chet Haase was my Flex hero.
