Just saw this over at Ted Patrick's blog. Looks like Adobe is going to work with Google and Yahoo to allow spiders to crawl Flash SWF content. This is big time if indeed true. A big client objection to full Flash sites is going out the window. I assume the spiders are looking strictly at text fields and not source. Anyone know definitively?
My suspicions concerning Apollo were confirmed tonight, much sooner than I thought, with the release of Adobe AIR (Adobe Integrated Runtime), formerly Apollo and Flex 3 Moxie beta. Get the scoop over at onflex.org and head over to Adobe Labs to download both. If Moxie is as half as good as Ted Patrick made it look and sound, it will be a tremendous development tool. I can't wait to get my hands dirty with it.
In the final installment of his weeklong series on Flex 3 "Moxie", Ted Patrick wrote about the Apollo specific additions to the upcoming Flex update. Interestingly, many parts of the screen shots he included in the post have file names blurred out. Could it be that Adobe will be unveiling Apollo's real name when they release the betas of Moxie and / or Apollo?
Lost in the shuffle of Microsoft's acquisition of aQuantive, is Avenue A | Razorfish. As the largest interactive agency in the world, Razorfish carries an immense amount of clout in the industry. Does anyone think for a second that the $6 billion purchase price didn't include Razorfish's army of developers converting to Silverlight for development of their RIAs? I suspect this purchase was as much about establishing a credible channel of Silverlight developers and evangelists as it was to answer Google's purchase of DoubleClick. While I still believe Flash and Flex will be the RIA and interactive development platform of choice, Microsoft certainly can't be accused of not trying.
Before I question his sanity, I will disclose that I mostly agree with everything Michael Arrington says and writes. He knows his stuff...usually.
Michael recently wrote a post in which he made what I think are outrageous assertions concerning Microsoft's Silverlight and Adobe's Flash and Flex. The following quote from the post particularly shocked me:
"For those of us watching the demos at the Mix conference the immediate importance of it was apparent - Silverlight will be the platform of choice for developers who build rich Internet applications. It makes Flash/Flex look like an absolute toy. After the keynote, the main topic of conversation in the hallways centered on just how effectively Microsoft carried out its execution of Adobe."
Those are some fairly presumptuous remarks, especially coming from someone who, to the best of my knowledge, is not himself a developer. Interestingly, none of the comments I've read from any of the developers at Mix or other developers who have had access to Silverlight come close to resembling what Arrington has said. Now, this is not to say that Silverlight can't be succesful. I think it can and competition to Flash and Flex will only benefit everyone. I'll wait, however, to declare Flash and Flex dead until after someone who knows what they're talking about (specifically developers) gives me some compelling evidence.
According to this story, Microsoft is preparing to open source parts of their recently announced Silverlight framework. Why do I get the feeling that Microsoft has a team of people sitting around waiting for Adobe to do anything noteworthy so that they can immediately start working on copying it?
Adobe has finally given us developers something to work with. The alpha version of Apollo was released tonight on Labs. Download and rejoice. And love the fact that they're still not giving us file access.
