Schwartz starts by defining a test case. This is in essence a question; How can I future-proof my career? Once you know the question, you can then set about identifying key influences on your question–e.g. technological change–scenarios that may bring about the change–e.g. new competing technologies, lack of technological development in your sector, or the collapse of a key stakeholder–and finally, future implications.

Here is what Schwartz says in more detail:

1. List driving forces

What variables, trends and events will affect your mission? The first step is to list them. Next, divide them into uncertainties (such as economic, political and social conditions) and relative certainties (such as global population growth and climate change). Finally, rank the items according to their importance, from most to least significant. The result: a catalogue of factors that will determine the future of your area.

If I take web development as an example:

• Pace of technological change.
• Number of companies using the chosen technology.
• Number of people available in the industry (permanent and contract).
• State of the [digital] economy.
• Competing technologies, e.g. Ruby on Rails vs ColdFusion, AJAX vs Flash, offline vs online, desktop vs mobile.
• Support of the community, e.g. open-source software, tutorials and application servers.
• Support of key stakeholders, e.g. Adobe’s support of Flash, Flex and ColdFusion.

2. Make a scenario grid

Now it’s time to map out possible futures. The two most important uncertainties from the top of your list form the axes of the grid, with each of the quatdrants representing a potential future. Some may be more likely than others–and some may seem downright improbable–but they all depict the interplay of key forces. Thus, they’re within the range of possibility and deserve attention. They help you prepare for a range of possibilities and bolster core actions with those related to the future you deem most likely.

3. Imagine the possible futures

Sketched as a grid, these 4 possible scenarios are so abstract that it would be hard to recognise them if they merged. Make them more concrete by fleshing them out into imaginery, but plausible, news stories of the forces at play.

To continue the web development example:

• Global financial crisis prevents companies investing in technology. They cannot raise the adequate funding to push through key development projects, even if it means increasing efficiencies within the company.
• Adobe drops support for ColdFusion causing turmoil in the community. Railo picks up a lot of business, but can’t scale to fill the demand. Far-sighted companies migrate to other suitable platforms.
• Ruby on Rails booms under the paradigms: Convention over Configuration and Don’t Repeat Yourself, eating into ColdFusion’s key mantra: Rapid Application Development.
• Key advances in technology on the desktop and mobile continue at pace. Micro-payments allow people to create relatively cheap applications that appeal to a mass audience. Development frameworks allow developers to transfer their skills between technologies without the need for significant retraining.

4. Brainstorm implications and actions

Now it’s time to develop strategies for coping with each of the four possible futures you’ve imagined. Start by listing all the implications of each of the scenarios and then come up with actions that would enable you to prosper under any of the new conditions. Some actions would apply to almost any scenario: these should form the basis of your plan, since they help you to prepare for a range of possibilities. Bolster these core actions with those related to the future you deem most likely.

Examples of possible implications:

• Scarce funding.
• Limited demand for new technologies.
• Few companies to work for.
• Few new projects to work on.
• Increased competition for places.
• Increased demand for people with key skills, e.g. mobile.

and possible actions:

• Concentrate on existing technologies.
• Develop and exit strategy, e.g. cross-train into a new technology.
• Cultivate your network, make new contacts at major development houses.
• Polish skills in areas of uncertainty.
• Start your own cutting-edge business.

5. Track the indicators

The main value of the scenarios is that they sensitise you to the way the future is unfolding. Over time, the world is likely to gravitate toward one of your four quadrants. The trick is to recognise the shif in progress. As you monitor the news, look for signals that a particular possibility is becoming a concrete reality. Keep a file of news relevant to your scenarios, jotting down a quick note, along with the date, whenever you come across a significant story. Evaluate these developments on a quarterly basis so you can track the trends. Keep adjusting your action strategy to anticipate the future as it emerges.

Of course it is possible that none of your four quadrants becomes true. If this is so, you will need to go back and re-evaluate your scenario grid. Keeping a critical eye on your grid and apace of industry developments, you can be assured that the future will not change so quickly that you’ll miss an opportunity.

The 13 points made by Kevlin were:

• 0. Prefer code to comments.
• 1. Follow a consistent form.
• 2. Employ the contract metaphor.
• 3. Express independent ideas independently.
• 4. Encapsulate.
• 5. Parameterize from above.
• 6. Restrict mutability of state.
• 7. Favor symmetry over asymmetry.
• 8. Sharpen fuzzy logic.
• 9. Go with the flow.
• 10. Let code decide.
• 11. Omit needless code.
• 12. Unify duplicate code.

You can see a video of Kevlin’s presentation on the JAOO website.

Take this scenario. A company I once worked for had what can be described as a business directory built upon a licensed, yet bastardised, version of a popular ColdFusion-based CMS. It didn’t work that well! The decision was made to redevelop the application in Java. It took two years to reach the same level of functionality! What happened next? Ruby-on-Rails is what! The rest is history and beyond the topic of this post.

So, in effect, the application almost went full-circle in its development paradigm — both ColdFusion and Ruby-on-Rails can be considered Rapid Application Development environments, Java, certainly not. Why did the decision makers not stick with ColdFusion and put time aside to actually build it properly in the first place? To put it simply, they lost faith in ColdFusion; it was largely mis-understood.

The weakness of every programming language does not lie with the language itself per se — albeit it can have an important influencing factor — but rather with the ability, or indeed inability, of the developer to leverage the language in the most efficient and optimal way.

ColdFusion, like every other programming language has had and I’m sure still does have its fair share of poor developers; those people simply working with it as a means-to-an-end, rather than those passionate about the language, those people programming without understanding the fundamentals of programming or the implications of their poorly written code. This is apparent from .NET to Java, ColdFusion to Ruby, JavaScript to ActionScript.

Let’s not dilly-dally, bicker or insult one another about which is best, which one is dying and which one is not worth the computer it is compiled on. What is important is to understand the merits of each language and decide which one best suits the application, not only in technical terms, but also in terms of time-to-market, cost of development, availability of a skilled workforce etc.

ColdFusion, whether rightly or wrongly in some people’s opinion, can sit proudly amongst its peers and provide a truly compelling alternative.

Here’s how (in no particular order):

1. Low Total Cost of Ownership – frequently, ColdFusion is described as expensive, it simply isn’t especially if you consider the natively supported functions. But to put it bluntly, if your company cannot afford the cost of ColdFusion standard, or indeed ColdFusion hosting, you have bigger things to worry about regarding the profitability of the company; you won’t be able to afford much of anything! The problem becomes not the product. ColdFusion applications are quicker to develop and developers are vastly cheaper to employ than their peers in Java or Ruby, just look at ITJobsWatch for examples.
2. Rapid Application Development – ColdFusion vastly simplifies tasks. What would take other languages numerous lines of code to produce is efficiently encapsulated either in a tag or function or as a setting in the administrator. This is a simplistic yet indicative example: where else can you connected to a database simply with one line of code or indeed simply by name? ColdFusion changed the idea of specifying development time in terms of months and years to weeks and months or small features a matter of hours and days. Simplicity is not the mother or all evil. To be pragmatic, simplification reduces costs.
3. Rich Internet Applications – ColdFusion may or may not have pioneered the RIA paradigm, but it has played a significant supporting role to Flash and now Flex. ColdFusion natively supports Flash remoting, providing the all important data access tier.
4. Platform Maturity – ColdFusion 8 is built upon the latest version of Java (1.6). Along with internal improvements to the ColdFusion application, this has afforded ColdFusion unprecedented speed improvements and stability.
5. Language Maturity – with each major release of ColdFusion comes many language enhancements added to the core. This means that previous addons, for example image manipulation, which came at a premium are now standard. Adobe and other companies that produce CFML engines are now participating in a CFML advisory committee, which aims to set standards for the core language. This is not only a sign of maturity but a letter of intent by the industry that will mean your application will work on any engine, assuming no proprietary functionality is used.
6. The Ultimate Middleware – ColdFusion sits comfortably between any backend and front end system. Be it interfacing with a host of databases, Java, .NET, COM, Corba or connecting to classic HTML or rich Flash, Flex and AJAX frontends with little or no configuration.
7. Feature Rich – what other web technology natively supports PDF generation, charting, enterprise-level search, AJAX, image manipulation, Atom and RSS creation, Zip and JAR file manipulation, a server monitor, Flex integration, encryption libraries, all important database connectors, webservice creation, XML manipulation, inbuilt reporting application (similar to Crystal Reports), email, FTP to name but a few? I hazard a guess at none, unless you’re happy to pay a premium.
8. Platform Independent – since ColdFusion 6, when Macromedia redeveloped the entire application in Java, ColdFusion has been platform independent. You can install it on practically any machine.
9. OpenSource Alternatives – BlueDragon and Railo are both significant alternatives to Adobe ColdFusion and both have opensource alternatives, the latter of the two having recently joined the JBoss community. Adobe are also considering providing a free edition to academic institutions.
10. The Future – many commentators have mentioned Hibernate as a significant addition to the next release of ColdFusion, version 9. But having seen the prerelease notes, that is not all that will be added. Alas I’m under NDA, but rest assured, there is going to be a significant intake of breath when developers get hold of the next release. ColdFusion 8 was firmly geared towards middle management with fuzzy additions, ColdFusion 9 is set to re-address the balance with compelling language and functionality enhancements.

ColdFusion evangelism needs to step up a gear! Adobe certainly doesn’t afford much marketing budget to the product, prefering The Community do the hard work. It is not always easy convincing the decision makers that ColdFusion is a good product of choice, without Adobe’s unnerving support, but we have to work hard, break down those barriers, encroach on events outside the comfortable sphere of the ColdFusion world and demonstrate ColdFusion’s match-winning ability.

ColdFusion isn’t dying, it’s simply niche. Every niche has its place.

UPDATE: If you would like to view the ensuing debate regarding ColdFusion prompted by Aral Balkan, feel free to do so. This post should serve as a positive reminder of ColdFusion’s virtues, alongside the need for a balanced and polite debate.

For the seasoned Flex developer, we’ve been accustomed to using the Flex Component Explorer as a reference. However, this is set to change with a great new application called Tour de Flex.

Tour de Flex is a desktop application, built using AIR, with the goal of providing a way to explore Flex’s capabilities and resources, including the core Flex components, Adobe AIR and data integration.

Created by James Ward, Greg Wilson and Christophe Coenraets, Tour de Flex has three main purposes: provide non-Flex developers with an overview of what is possible; provide seasoned Flex developers with a visual reference tool; and finally, provide commercial and non-commercial Flex developers a platform to showcase their skills.

Probably the greatest feature of this application is the integration of a variety of third-party components, effects and skins. The application contains examples from the following and we are told that this list will be regularly updated when new content becomes available:

• Acrobat.com Share
• Amazon
• AOL Instant Messenger
• Cocomo
• Ebay
• Flickr
• Google Language
• Intuit Quickbase
• Last.fm
• Photoshop.com
• Salesforce.com
• Scribd
• Smugmug
• Twitter
• Yahoo Weather

Below is a selection of screenshots from the application:

(Click on the images to see a larger view)

Included with the Tour de Flex project is an Eclipse plugin, built by Holly Schinsky, that provides a search interface to the 200+ examples available in the main Tour de Flex application. The plugin allows you to search by component name, tag or author and double-click any item in the results to immediately see the component in Tour de Flex.

To install the plugin, add the following URL to your Eclipse software update sites:

http://tourdeflex.adobe.com/eclipse.

Once installed, a new Tour de Flex view is available to add. The plugin has been tested with Eclipse 3.4 and with Flex Builder 3.x.

The official Tour de Flex page and install can be found on the Flex.org website.

Below is a list of Flex and AIR frameworks that will allow you to get up and running and develop highly-collaborative applications. The introductions are by the frameworks themselves, but I’d like to here from you about your experiences using them.

Cairngorm

Cairngorm is the lightweight micro-architecture for Rich Internet Applications built in Flex or AIR. A collaboration of recognized design patterns, Cairngorm exemplifies and encourages best-practices for RIA development advocated by Adobe Consulting, encourages best-practice leverage of the underlying Flex framework, while making it easier for medium to large teams of software engineers deliver medium to large scale, mission-critical Rich Internet Applications.

More information can be found on the Cairngorm project’s website.

PureMVC

PureMVC is a lightweight framework for creating applications based upon the classic Model-View-Controller concept.

Based upon proven design patterns, this free, open source framework which was originally implemented in the ActionScript 3 language for use with Adobe Flex, Flash and AIR, has now been ported to nearly all major development platforms.

Two versions of the framework are supported with reference implementations; Standard and MultiCore, though only the Standard version has been ported to other languages so far.

More information can be found on the PureMVC project’s website.

Mate

Mate is a tag-based, event-driven Flex framework.

Flex applications are event-driven. Mate framework has been created to make it easy to handle the events your Flex application creates. Mate allows you to define who is handling those events, whether data needs to be retrieved from the server, or other events need to be triggered.

In addition, Mate provides a mechanism for dependency injection to make it easy for the different parts of your application to get the data and objects they need.

More information can be found on the Mate project’s website.

Swiz

Swiz is a framework for Adobe Flex that aims to bring complete simplicity to RIA development. Swiz provides Inversion of Control, event handing, and simple life cycle for asynchronous remote methods. In contrast to other major frameworks for Flex, Swiz imposes no J2EE patterns on your code, no repetitive folder layouts, and no boilerplate code on your development. Swiz represents best practices learned from the top RIA developers at some of the best consulting firms in the industry, enabling Swiz to be simple, lightweight, and extremely productive.

More information can be found on the Swiz project’s website.

Guasax

Guasax is an ease of use programming framework which provides the creation of an ordered and scalable application with Adobe Flex. The lifecycle of the Guasax framework is based in the MVC pattern to take on our program actions. The Guasax framework helps you to maintain your business logic tier highly decoupled from your presentation logic tier.

Guasax takes reflection and introspection techniques as well as the Inversion of Control (IoC) pattern to execute the operations which we have pointed at and to make a decision about itself. Guasax is not intrusive on your class model. You don’t have to extend your classes in a framework class to use it.

More information can be found on the Guasax project’s website or on their Google code project.

Model-Glue: Flex

Model-Glue: Flex brings implicit invocation, Model-View-Controller design, and cleaner, less repetitive integration with backend services to Flex and AIR applications.

It shuns repetitive, boilerplate code in favor of helper classes and expressive APIs.

More information can be found on the Model-Glue: Flex project’s website.

Gaia

Gaia is an open-source front-end Flash Framework for AS3 and AS2 designed to dramatically reduce development time.

Gaia is targeted at anyone who develops Flash sites. It provides solutions to the challenges and repeated tasks faced with front-end Flash site development, such as navigation, transitions, preloading, asset management, site structure, deep linking and SEO. It provides speed and flexibility in your workflow and a simple API that gives you access to its powerful features.

More information can be found on the Gaia Framework’s website.

UPDATE: Some more frameworks that I overlooked.

Parsley

Parsley is an application framework for Flex/Flash/AIR applications written in AS3. It contains the following modules:

IoC Container (Configuration and Dependency Injection) – Inspired by the Spring Framework it brings the concept of anIoC(Inversion of Control) container to ActionScript. It is useful for configuration and wiring of applications. It helps building a well structured architecture and decoupling the individual building blocks of your application. Configuration is based on XML files.

MVC Framework – The MVC (Model View Controller) framework helps decouple the view layer from other parts of the application. It borrows the concept of a FrontController from Cairngorm, but instead of advocating the use of BusinessDelegate and ServiceLocator patterns, the framework integrates the FrontController with the IoC container.
More information can be found on the Parsley Framework’s website.

Prana

Prana is an Inversion of Control (IoC) Container for ActionScript 3.0, and more specifically the Flex framework. It enables you to configure objects and components in a non-intrusive way by describing them in an external XML document and having them loaded at runtime.

At its core is a Spring-ish application context and IoC container. The XML dialect for the application context is aimed to be Spring compliant.

The framework also contains utility classes for configuring and extending Cairngorm and PureMVC applications, a Reflection API and general utilities.

More information can be found on the Prana Framework’s website.

Arp

Arp is a pattern-based framework for Flash and Flex. It supports both ActionScript 2 and ActionScript 3.

More information can be found on the Arp project’s page on the Open Source Flash website.

Happy 13^th Birthday ColdFusion.

Adobe ColdFusion has had a long and illustrious life. The first version of ColdFusion–written almost entirely by one person, JJ Allaire and then called “Cold Fusion”–was released in 1995. This first version, although revolutionising how web applications were built, was primitive by modern standards, doing little more than database access.

Although originally built in Visual C++, Allaire, around 1999, took the decision to rewrite the entire ColdFusion engine in Java–a project named “Neo”–which would allow for greater portability among different platforms. The rewrite, released under the monicker MX 6, would prove to be somewhat problematic and a wholescale update to the version resulted.

In 2001 Allaire was acquired by Macromedia. This union brought with it the integration of Macromedia’s Flash platform via Flash Remoting; a huge step towards rich Internet applications.

In 2005 it was the turn of Macromedia to be acquired and they merged with Adobe. A period of instability in the ColdFusion world resulted, brought about by the knowledge that Adobe was a company that developed tools, not programming languages. However, following a successful release of ColdFusion 8 in 2007 and the announcement that a version 9 would be developed, code-named “Centaur”, fears about ColdFusion’s future have subsided–albeit the continued debate over “ColdFusion is Dead” remains boiling in the background.

The primary distinguishing feature of ColdFusion is its associated scripting language, ColdFusion Markup Language (CFML), which compares favourably to its rivals, JSP, ASP.NET, or PHP and resembles HTML in syntax. “ColdFusion” is often used synonymously with “CFML”, but it should be noted that there are additional CFML application servers besides ColdFusion, and that ColdFusion supports programming languages other than CFML, such as server-side Actionscript and embedded scripts that can be written in a JavaScript-like language, known as CFScript. Adobe ColdFusion also includes native support for Flex, PDF, Verity and the embedded Derby database amongst a host of other features.

ColdFusion 9 is set to be an exciting release, much like its predecessor, with more features added to the core tag set, whilst also integrating other technologies such AIR and Hibernate.

Exciting times lay ahead. Let’s hope Adobe takes full advantage with such a fine product.

See Also:

• ColdFusion Wikipedia entry
• ColdFusion Markup Language Wikipedia entry
• Railo – Free, Open Source alternative CFML Engine
• SmithProject – Free, Open Source alternative CFML Engine
• BlueDragon – Free, Open Source alternative CFML Engine

But the landscape is changing and the UK is challenging for its share of the scene. 2008 is seeing a renaissance in the ColdFusion world following on from the buzz created around the release of ColdFusion 8 in 2007 and the eagerly anticipated future release of ColdFusion, codenamed Centaur. This buzz has resulted in not one but three conferences for 2008: CFUnited Europe was held in London in March, Scotch-on-the-Rocks was held in Edinburgh in June and soon we will see the return of CFDevCon.

The inaugural CFDevCon one-day-conference was held back in 2006, in Croydon, but in September 2008 it is heading down to what is arguably one of the creative capitals in the south of England, Brighton. The conference has not only become a two-day conference, but its scope has moved beyond simply Adobe-based products, with the introduction of Microsoft-based technologies, specifically IIS7.0, Silverlight and SQL Server 2008 and technology-agnostic topics such as Regular Expressions, Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) and Accessibility.

As with all great conferences, CFDevCon has a great line-up of speakers with the likes of Sean Corfield, Hal Helms, Peter Elst, Peter Bell, Aral Balkan and Simon Bailey, to name a few, all presenting sessions.

So, lets get excited people, support the conferences and user groups and evangelise ColdFusion.

So who could the contenders be? Here are two extremely promising applications built on the Flash platform:

SlideRocket

SlideRocket is a rich Internet application, built on the Flash platform, that provides for every part of the presentation lifecycle. It integrates authoring, asset management, delivery and analytics tools into a single hosted environment that allows you to quickly create stunning presentations, intelligently manage your assets, securely share your slides, and measure the results.

There are already a number of companies that are striving to be the web-based presentation application of choice, including Google, Zoho and Empressr.

SlideRocket is the first online productivity application that embraces business level features such as collaboration, robust security, dynamic data binding and business integration with applications like Salesforce.com. SlideRocket aims to differentiate itself from other presentation products by including a community marketplace where content and services can be shared and transacted. SlideRocket also embraces the best of the Internet with features like asset tagging, web content mashups, embedded data services and seamless rich media support.

It’s absolutely one of the best presentation creation applications out there. And because it’s built on rich Internet application technologies you can add interactivity and create a cinematic experience that I haven’t seen done any where else.

Ryan Stewart, Adobe’s Rich Internet Evangelist writing in ZDNet – SlideRocket – the king of presentation applications.

(click on the images for more detail)

SlideRocket has been designed from the ground up with extensibility and portability in mind as well. To this effect, third party developers will be able to build components into slideshows using the application’s APIs, creating compelling presentations.

You can find more information on the SlideRocket website.

blist

Blist makes it easy for anyone to create private or collaborative databases.

Blist is not alone in the online database market. Zoho DB, DabbleDB and Trackvia are all web-based tools that provide users the ability to create and administer databases.

Although Blist’s simplicity makes it seem like you’re not dealing with anything more complicated than an online spreadsheet, the Blist user interface is actually hiding a complex relational database backend.

Unlike other online database systems, such as Zoho DB, using Blist doesn’t require the user to know SQL to use all it has to offer. This makes Blist great for users who need more than an Excel spreadsheet, but who don’t want to delve into the complexities of a database software application like Access.

(click on the images for more detail)

Blist’s focus on making database creation and management a straightforward process, built on an always available, rich Internet application suggests it can fill a niche. Demand will prove the depth of such a niche, but if it grabs enough attention from people as regular users, it will become an extremely interesting prospect for acquisition.

You can find more information on the blist website.

So why the big deal?

Software is moving from being packaged, where you develop for a particular operating system and put it in a box, to being developed and distributed over the internet and being designed to run across operating systems. That’s where all the innovation has moved to. Software isn’t as OS-specific anymore, it’s moving to rich internet applications. It’s a sea change in how software in general is being built.

Adobe’s Kevin Lynch on AIR’s Open-Source Road to the Desktop.

What is Adobe offering?

Adobe hasn’t developed a cohesive online suite like Google Docs and Zoho, but they are developing a series of applications that will, given time, challenge for position.

Buzzword

Buzzword, originally developed by Virtual Ubiquity, is a web-based, highly collaborative word processor built on Adobe’s ubiquitous Flash platform. This online editor really excels in “what you see is what you print” (WYSIWYP) functionality. Unlike the slightly clunky Google Docs and Zoho Writer, using Flash allows Buzzword to handle page layout in a way that is not possible with HTML. Buzzword also offers online collaboration via its sharing feature, which, like Google Docs, allows users to invite others to read, edit or comment on documents in realtime. Buzzword stores files online so that they are available in a single repository for document collaboration. Work is underway to support Adobe AIR to allow for offline work.

(click on the images for more detail)

You can find more information about Buzzword on the Adobe Labs website.

Share

Share is a free web-based service that makes it easy to share, publish and organize your important documents. Each document you upload to your Share account is assigned a unique website address. To share a document with someone, select the document you want to share, enter the person’s email address and an optional message, and set whether the files will be publicly accessible or restricted only to the recipients. Recipients will get an email with a link they can click on to download the document. You can also link to your documents, or embed flash previews on your own website, blog or wiki. This concept is not new, with Scribd and Issuu being an alternatives.

(click on the images for more detail)

You can find more information about Share on the Adobe Labs website.

Photoshop Express

Adobe Photoshop Express is an online Rich Internet Application (RIA) where you can polish, sort, store, and show off up to 2GB of photos. Furthermore, you can crop, rotate, smudge, tweak, twirl, pinch, correct — or any combination you like — the images. The tool isn’t like its more powerful offline sister, it is more like the photo editing website Picnik. What’s interesting about the Adobe offering, is the fact that Photoshop Express comes with 2GB of free storage for your photos, which makes it less of just an online tool, and more of an online service. The 2GB trumps Picassa‘s current 1GB.

(click on the images for more detail)

You can find more information about Photoshop Express on the Adobe Labs website.

Brio

Brio, currently in Beta, is a personal web-conferenceing service that enables you to instantly communicate and collaborate using your own online meeting room. Brio offers screen-sharing, full multi-party video, VoIP, teleconferencing, whiteboarding, chat and shared notes; all via the browser.

To start a meeting, just go to your meeting room and invite others to join you at the same URL. As the host, you will need to download a small Brio add-in in order to share your screen. Meeting attendees will not need to download any software unless they will also be sharing their screen. There is no need to schedule meetings in advance.

(click on the images for more detail)

You can find more information about Brio on the Adobe Labs website.

Integration and Offline Access

Although each of these tools work independently of one another, using different sign-ons, it is a very real possibility that Adobe will adopt a similar route to that of Google, Microsoft, Yahoo and Zoho and integrate their online products into a single cohesive unit with one sign-on; the Adobe ID.

Plans are already afoot to integrate the Buzzword and Share tools, both of which sit naturally together. What would be more interesting would be the integration of Photoshop Express with these tools so that you can, for example, edit images embedded in a Buzzword document.

The Future

Adobe has stiff competion from the offline, desktop applications. This is where AIR enters the picture. Adobe said, as far back as September 2007, that they would create a version of Buzzword in AIR. This has yet to be envisaged, but the rumblings from Adobe suggest that this development is still in the works. Bringing Buzzword to the desktop would be an extremely significant step, making it a very real alternative to desktop word processors.

All that is required now for Adobe is to implement a spreadsheet and presentation application. Whether they buy in these tools, or use their existing skill set is the question. On current form, and if the acquisition of Virtual Ubiquity and its Buzzword product is an indication, Adobe are likely to be keeping a keen eye on existing technologies being developed by third parties. For example SlideRocket is a viable contender for presentations – built in Flash and with an AIR client; the user interface even looks similar to the above products. Or there is blist for spreadsheets that again is built on Flex/Flash technology.

Keep an eye on Adobe Labs for their latest developments. You will notice developments in areas such as RSS with myFeedz, colour theming with Kuler, and a competitor to Microsoft’s Sharepoint and Google’s Sites called JamJar.

Download the ActionScript reference for RIA development (PDF 1.3MB)

The Adobe technology platform contains two primary runtimes. Flash Player is browser-based, and Adobe AIR is desktop-based. Because Adobe AIR is built on top of Flash Player, the Flash Player APIs are available within Adobe AIR. Consequently, Adobe AIR APIs are not available within Flash Player. The Flex framework is built on top of the Flash Player APIs, so it runs in both Flash Player and Adobe AIR. However, a number of Flex APIs take advantage of AIR APIs, and thus work only within Adobe AIR.

More information about this guide can be found on the Adobe Developer Centre Website.