{"id":184,"date":"2009-07-05T20:13:01","date_gmt":"2009-07-06T01:13:01","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.insidethewebb.com\/?p=184"},"modified":"2013-03-18T07:35:05","modified_gmt":"2013-03-18T12:35:05","slug":"interview-with-mark-anders-primary-developer-of-rich-internet","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.carnaghan.com\/interview-with-mark-anders-primary-developer-of-rich-internet\/","title":{"rendered":"Interview with Adobe’s Primary Developer of Rich Internet Applications Mark Anders"},"content":{"rendered":"
<\/p>\n
Anders recently addressed the “Flash on the beach” conference for Flash designers and developers, where he discussed the future of Flash applications through Adobe, and also building Rich Internet Applications through Adobe’s Flex. I got an interview with Mark, discussing the exciting future of Flash and what it means for designers and consumers.<\/p>\n
What I’m really focused on is all of the stuff around building rich internet applications (RIAs). I work across lots of product teams, including the Flash Player and Flash authoring teams, as well as the Flex framework and Flex building teams.<\/p>\n
Flex is now at version 2, and it’s a rich internet application authoring environment.<\/p>\n
Flash started as an animation tool and became an interactive media product, but it’s really geared towards designers. The problem is, the tooling and all the pre-build pieces of code (such as the component library) is still based on an animation paradigm.<\/p>\n
Flex provides another way of doing Flash content, but one that’s optimized for applications. So, for example, you have components that can pull in data from the net and display it in a really rich way, such as interactive charting and tabular displays of data. It has lots of pre-built components that people can use to structure their applications.<\/p>\n
People aren’t trying to create the most beautiful things with Flex, but rather things that have rich interaction. They’re not really concerned with branding. Most Flex apps have a common look and feel, because they just use our components and don’t bother with custom skins. Flex is more about interaction, whereas Flash is all about movement, but there is an area inbetween – a lot of people do stuff in Flash and then import these assets into an application. There are areas like this where Flash and Flex meet, and one of the things we’re working on is helping to bridge that gap.<\/p>\n