Flex Summit – Live Updates (Day 1)

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[breaking for drinks, see you tomorrow. this is the end of day one]

Group consensus that we want Falcon brought into the open source as fast as possible.

Adobe is asking what is more important. Productivity features (such as “Edit and Continue”) or Falcon compiler complete?

Falcon Session

Q&A: Once in Apache, will Adobe continue working on this? “It will be open source and the Apache/Flex governance can choose if it is a priority”
Q&A: When? When falcon gets donated.
Q&A: Will this be donated? Yes.

Seeing example apps running. They look really good.

AS code -> falcon front end / falcon js code gen -> google closure compiler -> faster JS Code

Cons:
- not as “HTMLey” (SEO, accessibility, etc)
- potentially not as fast
- harder to leverage future HTML tooling

Pros:
- support existing Flex apps
- leverage FB tooling

Approach
- HTML, JS, SVG
- Still running Flex SDK logic (talking to a “display list” API)

- “Falcon JS” refers to two experimental utilities:
– AS-> JS
– MXML -> HTML/CSS/JS

Falcon JS Session

Monocle demo now. Monocle is a future tool to get data about your running application.

next flex testing engine

experiments with advanced data grids, trees, datepickers, color pickers, etc

demos on new spark components, flex testing framework, and monocle

Q&A: what happened to “edit & continue”? “tabled to falcon discussion”

Q&A: will monocle be open sourced? “no, it will be continued as a proprietary software”

Q&A: will flash builder be open sourced? “no, it will continue to be developed on”.

- Tooling
– Flash Builder
— will release support for apache flex
— removing unpopular and expensive to maintain features: Design View, DCD, and Catalyst workflows
– compilers (will discuss later)
– flash catalyst discontinued (with catalyst cs5.5 support for flex 4.5)
– monocle continues as a priority

[Breaking for lunch]

Lots of discussion about other companies (Apple, Microsoft, Android/Google) working with Adobe and the runtimes. Long story short, they can’t control other companies but they have years of commitment for Flash Player.
“We have every interest that our runtime technology is supported across as many platforms possible”.

Q&A: What is the plan to get trust back? (paraphrase) We are doing it now. Working on it and by executing our plans we will show our commitment.

(I’m not looking to beat up on anyone, but he is eating crow and apologizing for some bad communication by some individuals within Adobe.) He says he is doing this Summit to fix the confusion, provide clarification, and rebuild trust.

“Adobe is committed to building applications with both Flex and HTML5, not just HTML5.”

“Flash isn’t just focused on gaming and video. Gaming helps push the envelop, but everyone can benefit from the improvements.”

- Runtime innovation focused on gaming and premium video
— working on updated roadmap; whitepaper expected in jan.
— will provide answers on concurrency and windows 8

Q&A: What about AIR for desktop? Yes, AIR for desktop is supported.

- AIR (and Flex) continue to be supported on new devices and OS versions for Android, iOS, and BlackBerry Tablets OS (via RIM)

- Apache Flex should target released runtimes (FP11/AIR3+)

Q&A:

“How many people are still involved on Adobe’s side?”
Flex (Adobe) people on Flex “dozens of people”

“What about Flex versions prior to Flex 4.6?”
They will provide continued support. For incubation they focused on 4.6 but will work to include 3.x branch.

Requesting by the audience for contributions:
- blazeds for .net
- server side ActionScript
- alchemy
- lsds
- lccs
- tlf
- gravity
- fxg

Contributing:
- Flex SDK 4.6
- New Post-4.6 Spark Components
- Testing framework
- falcon compiler
- falcon js
- blaze ds

Adobe is making changes. Adobe will continue to contribute, they just can’t be the sole supporters of Flex anymore and are looking for contributions.

1045
Danny Winokur is up, talking about Flex & Flash Platform Updates.

“For years to come Flex is going to be the best way to make applications for the web and desktop.”

Flex – Apache Incubation Proposal
Being written and will be posted after summit.

1015 – 1040
David is done. We are moving on to introducing the room, person by person.

In the room (forgive misspellings):

From Adobe
Andrew Shorten
Deepa Subramaniam
Danny Winokur – VP
Greg DeMichillie
Scott Castle – Tooling
Thibaut Imbert – Flash player
Greg Wilson – Evangelist
Christophe Coenraets – Evangelist
Michael Chaize – Evangelist
Holly Schinsky – Evangelist
Alex Harui – Flex Dev
Slavik Lozben – Flash Player
Carol Frampton – Flex Dev
Garth Braithwaite – Nerd Radio / UX
Michelle Yaiser – Content and Community Manager
Alan Greenblatt – Enterpise
Roy Fielding – Principal Scientist with Day Work and Apache Expert
Alison Huselid – Product Managing Director

Non-Adobe
Alex H. – HSBC
Thomas – UBC
Mike Labriola – Digital Primates / Spoon
Adam Flater – Roundarch
John Rose –
John Quark – JP Morgan
Alec G. – JP Morgan
Mora Howard – VMWare
- missed -
Greg Owen – Effective UI
Jonathan Campos – Miller and Associates / Spoon
Leif Wells – Measure Progress / Nerd Radio / Spoon
Aaron Peterson – Development Arc
Andy Stry – Paychecks
Joao Fernadez –
Joao S. – Financial Sector
Brian Cotek – Government Sector
- missed -
Fabian Nicollet
Dirk Eisman – HMR
Jesse Warden – WebApp Solution

945 – 1015
David Wadhwani is giving us a high level “heads up” as to Adobe’s plans. Nothing is special here, just setting context before getting into the next 2 days.

Q&A:
Where does enterprise fit into this map?
“Primary focus of the company is around digital content create and digital marketing… there is no business without a relationship with IT”

930 – 945
Introductions and a view of agenda. Everything is built around open discussion.

830 – 930
The summit ’20′ are arriving at Adobe in a room made for about 100. Adobe folks are making up the remainder of the seating. We are all just chatting right now. We will be starting in a few minutes.

Throughout the day we will try to continue updating information from the Flex Summit.

Don’t forget to post questions on uservoice.