Off to FlashForward

I’m getting all packed up to head to FlashForward NY 2005 this week. The event is looking great this year. They seem to have made some adjustments, and their speaker lineup looks great too. It also helps that it’s in NY, one of my favorite cities. I’ll be giving a session on “Mission Critical Application Architecture and Flash” where I will spend half the time discussing my approach and thoughts and the rest fielding questions on RIA Application Architecture.

IÂ’ve also got some exciting personal news to share this week at the conference that I will post here too once itÂ’s time. Looking forward to meeting up with everyone, if you are there make sure to say hello!

A review of FDT, the Commercial Flash Eclipse Plugin

I had the chance to spend a bit of time playing with FDT this weekend, a commercial Eclipse plugin in development and wanted to share some thoughts.

IÂ’ve been an avid PrimalScript user for a while now, I wonÂ’t get into PrimalScript vs FDT discussion now as FDT is still in beta and so is PrimalScript 4.x. I also donÂ’t want to get into open-source vs commercial products. I am a firm believer that if a tool meets my needs and speeds up my workflow then the cost is usually negligible. At the end of the day it will always depend on your workflow/needs.
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At CFUnited this week, speaking about Flash and .Net Integration on the Desktop

IÂ’m attending/speaking at CFUnited this week. CFUnited is the largest ColdFusion conference, and this year looks to be a great event. The CFUnited team has done a great job with the session lineup, speakers, and the venue which is being held in a brand new facility.

My talk will be on Flash and .Net integration on the desktop. For people who have Flash applications currently delivered through the web or would like to build a Flash application and deliver it as a desktop application, in this session I will go through an alternative approach to using 3rd party projectors or Macromedia Central that in certain cases will meet your needs more easily.

In the session I go through embedding the Flash OCX control in a WinForms applications, communicating to and from Flash to WinForms and other tips, and debugging techniques that help when building such applications.

Although this is not a ColdFusion specific application, IÂ’m hoping itÂ’s a session people will find interesting especially if they are looking to take a Flash application that talks to a ColdFusion back-end to the desktop

I live a mile away from where CFUnited is being held and will be in and out of the conference all week. I will be there most of the day on Thursday. Feel free to flag me down and say hello! MXNA has a temp CFUnited smart category which is a good way to keep up with what is happening this week at the event

A Big Day for Flash, Flash Platform and Macromedia Joining the Eclipse Foundation

Seems like a big day in announcements from Macromedia.

First, Macromedia launches a portion of its website dedicated to the “Flash Platform”

Some intersting documents on the Flash Platform

and

Macromedia announces their intentions to deliver an IDE for rich internet application development based on the eclipse platform.

It’s great to see Macromedia marketing the “Flash Platform” in such a prominent manner and to see Macromedia working on a developer oriented IDE.