Flex Framework Posters

The mail just arrived with our Flex Framwork posters and they are massive. There are three posters in all (two that we think are B0 size and one we think is A1). We're trying to convince the manager we'll need to move to a larger office to fit them on the walls. He keeps suggesting dark rooms at the other end of the building. The posters are very impressive and will be very useful if we can think of a way to display them in the space available.

Silverlight Vs Flash

There is a lot of discussion emerging comparing MS's Silverlight and Adobe's Flash. I will use this post to keep track of this discussion:

• JD on EP : RIA degradation 16-04-07
• Ted Patrick : M$ Silverlight vs. Adobe Flash Player: "Begun the clone war has..." 16-04-07
• basement.org Flash, Silverlight & The In-Between OS 16-04-07
• ZDNet Mary Jo Foley : Microsoft seeks to redefine RIA with Silverlight 16-04-07
• Rags to Riches : Microsoft SilverLight (aka WPF/e): for RIAs?? … I don’t think so. 17-04-07
• Flexed :Silverlight, Sparkle and Flex 17-04-07
• arulprasad : "RIA degradation"? whats all that fuzz about? 17-04-07
• BIT 101 : Obligatory Silverlight Post 18-04-07
• Dave Wolf : Wake up and see the Silverlight 19-04-07
• Dave Carbetta : Why Silverlight Is A Phenomenally Important Announcement For Adobe Flex 19-04-07
• Tim O'Hare : Another Silverlight Rant! 19-04-07
• Ryan Stewart : The Register Hates Silverlight, But Gets Some Facts Wrong 23-04-07
• Kurt Shintaku : INFO: Top 10 reasons why "Microsoft Silverlight" can succeed 23-04-07
• FlashComGuru : Silverlight? Flash? They are both as bad as each other... 24-04-07
• Charles Freedman : Flash and Silverlight, maybe 2 strangers passing in the crowd 1-05-07
  
• Vincent Maher : Microsoft Silverlight a serious challenger to Adobe Flash? 1-05-07
• WebOrb : Thoughts on Silverlight, Adobe, Flex and us 1-05-07
• Michael Arrington : Why Silverlight Is Important 01-05-07
• Flex Blog : Microsoft hits hard in the RIA space 01-05-07
• Ed Burnette : Dissecting Silverlight 01-05-07
  
• midnightmuse : My Flash is bigger than your Silverlight 03-05-07
• Jesse Ezell : Silverlight vs. Flash: The Developer Story 03-05-07
• Grant Skinner : A Flash of Silverlight 04-05-07
• These Days Labs : My thoughts on Silverlight (it’s a toy) 04-05-07
• JD on EP : Silverwatch 07-05-07
• Chafic Kazoun : My thoughts on why Silverlight isn’t for Flash Developers, and what does it really mean for Microsoft 08-05-07
• David Coletta : Apollo is Adobe’s edge over Silverlight 21/05/07
• Ryan Stewart : Adobe and Microsoft’s Different Approaches to the Development Platform 22/05/07
• tombray : Silverlight & Apollo: Why history won’t repeat itself 22/05/07
• Team Tech : A perspective on Apollo vs Silverlight vs JavaFX vs Flash/Flex 22/05/07
  
• Chris Duckett : Mixed Emotions : 25/05/07
• Scott-Bradley Pearce : Flash In the Pan 07/06/07
• Chris Duckett : Lights out for Silverlight 07/06/07

Noise on the Wire

Over the last few days there has been an excess of noise on the feeds around three topics:

• Microsoft's Silverlight
• Adobe Media Player
• Adobe Creative Studio hits stores

There's not much actual information around the first two mostly speculation and FUD. The third has been coming for a while with a launch a few weeks ago and some online presentations since then.

Everyone will be watching CS3 with interest as it is the first big release since Adobe swallowed Macromedia. This will tell us a lot about the impact of this merger. At work the ability to easy integrate between the design and web teams will decide how quickly we upgrade. For my personal client work it will be about integration with Flex and so I'll probably wait and see what happens with the next Flex release (later this year).

Flex and ActionScript Error Codes

Just a quick post in case you haven't seen this posted elsewhere. The Flex docs team have created a wiki page for documenting Flex error codes and common solutions. If you've ever stared at a Flex error message and scratched your head wondering what it could mean then you'll understand the potential of this document. I'd encourage everyone to participate in promoting and extending this resource.

Sidebar Massage

After studying the Site Overlay results in Google Analytics I realised my blogs sidebar needed a minor makeover. The core of the makeover is changing my Labels to a cloud (instructions here). This meant the Label widget would take up much less room and consequently could sit much higher in the sidebar. I also removed the My Profile widget and moved the profile link into the Links widget. Finally I added a link to my account on BlueDot . Not sure why I hadn't done this earlier.