I completely agree that it has been poor communication from Adobe, especially after what they have announced at AdobeMAX this year. So, timing could have been better and the messages that they initially shared could have been better formulated. Adobe acknowledges this and have sent out their apologies for that as well. But the harm was already done. I even saw people leaving prerelease and other programs (I can’t mention by name) furious about what happened and turning their backs on Adobe entirely. I respect those decisions, but come on, is it really such a bad thing?

For those of you who are not quite up to speed on what exactly is going on at Adobe. Let me briefly state the latest developments.

Let’s start with LiveCycle. For those of you who don’t know what LiveCycle is, it is a product that allows you to define information workflows, mainly based on PDFs. So, for example, you could fill out a job application form in a PDF, digitally sign it with you eID card (in Belgium at least) and send it to a specific email address. The PDF attachment gets picked up from the mailbox and the information is extracted and put in a database. After that a “thank you” email is sent to the applicant, while in the mean time the HR manager is notified of a new application. Upon approval by the HR manager in the so called “workspace” a new PDF is sent to the unit manager, notifying him that he should interview this candidate, together with the candidate’s résumé. After the interview the unit manager can then input his findings in a evaluation form and LiveCycle will pick that up as well to put it into the database and notify the HR manager that the evaluation has been submitted. Would the candidate be rejected, the can be marked in the “workspace” again for example, an automatic email will be sent to the candidate notifying him of his rejection.

Now, this is just one example of what LiveCycle can do. Even though Adobe is shifting its focus towards other strategic solutions, they will continue to develop LiveCycle (as you can read here), invest in finding new customers and product support is still guaranteed, so you’re not left alone with your solution if you’re currently using LiveCycle.

As for dropping the Flash Player on mobile devices, I don’t think that is a bad thing. You see, if Adobe wants to keep the same version of the Flash Player on all devices (desktop, mobile, tablet) then a lot of code will have to go in checking whether or not things certain features are available. This requires a lot of effort and slows down progress on the features that matter the most. I mean, come on, when did you actually use a Flash based website on you mobile device? Either it wasn’t mobile optimized causing frustration in content that is not scaled properly, or it just was overkill for a mobile device.

Now Adobe has the opportunity to focus on the desktop platform and make full use of the GPU hardware acceleration and other cool features that require more processing power than what the other devices can offer at this moment. It is clear that Adobe wants to move in the direction of gaming with Flash, which I have been expecting for some time now.

Remember, I just said that the Flash Player will be dropped on mobile. That does not mean that the cross-device AIR solution is being dropped. On the contrary! AIR for mobile devices will continue to be developed by Adobe and is one of the key products/features they will maintain. So you don't have to worry about your cross-device development.

However, the Flex SDK is going to be put into the Apache project, bringing along a new produt name as well, since Adobe won’t own the SDK anymore. Once the incubator is accepted, the product will be called "Apache Flex". You can read all about the Apache Flex Incubator right here.

That means that from that point on the SDK will be developed and maintained by the community. That will be a good thing in the sense that probably we’ll get more features more rapidly developed. But – and there’s a big "but" in here – I do see a problem in the adopt of the Flex technology in big companies. You see, what companies want is a support contract with time frame commitment. They want a red phone to the help desk when they encounter serious problems and at the moment they are paying big money for that. Once Flex is owned by the community, Adobe probably won’t be doing anymore support, because it is now up to the community.

This lack of support is what could harm Flex in the high end business companies. But then again, this will also lead to new opportunities for companies such as multimediacollege in the sense that we can now write and publish our own training material, as well as provide support contracts for helping out companies who need assistance with some Flex problems.

So, is Flex dead? Definitely not! And it isn’t dying either. We will have a huge community supporting the development and some highly skilled developers working on the features. I wish I had some magical device that allows me to see into the future to see what will happen with Flex when it becomes completely Open Source. But for now, I’m not yet worried about it’s future…

In a second part join Tridib Roy Chowdhury, Senior Director of Products, and Priyank Shrivastava, Senior Product Marketing Manager, for an exceptional meet the team session where you will get the highlights of ColdFusion and ColdFusion Builder roadmap. This is also your best chance to come and raise your hand for questions and/or recommendations you have about ColdFusion.

PROGRAM:

18.30: Coldfusion powered AJAX Applications with jQuery
19.45: Meet The Team
21.00: Free drinks and networking

This event is free of charge, but seats are limited. Make sure you register quickly!

The CFUG team, Cyril & Steven

Today Adobe announced their new list of Adobe Community Professionals for 2011. And of course I am very happy to be part of this small community. But next to that list, they have launched a new list, namely the Adobe Community Champions.

The lists are refreshed annually, so no one on the list can just assume they are on next year’s list, which in my personal opinion is a very good thing, because it keeps all of those great contributors actively involved, helping the community to flourish. It’s just a great recognition and appreciation of what you have accomplished in the past year.

There are over 200 ACPs and around 80 ACCs which is just too many to mention here. However, I do like to mention a couple of my friends who made it on the list as well:

• Peter Elst (ACP for 9 years in a row)
• Cyril Hanquez (ACP)
• Guust Nieuwenhuis (ACC)
• Weyert De Boer (ACP)
• Koen De Weggheleire (ACP)
• Elad Elrom (ACP)

You can find the full list here. I want to convey my congratulations to everyone who made it onto the list and I hope you will all continue to be as inspiring as you are now. I know I’ll try to be

First of all, I’ve been doing some real crazy stuff at multimediacollege, which has made it one of the most busy years of my career. With 3 new wonderful colleagues this should be more manageable next year.

Besides my job as instructor and consultant at multimediacollege I’ve also published my first book, which covers the designer-developer workflow subject using Flash Builder 4 and Flash Catalyst CS5.

I’ve also done a workshop at Flash And The City in New York, which was a great experience, since I consider this to be a great event with some awesome speakers. I’m hoping to make it there in 2011 as well.

The second biggest highlight this year was being selected to do a designer-developer workshop at AdobeMAX in Los Angeles. This was like the ultimate goal for me this year and I achieved it! But unfortunately (and that’s actually a wrong word for what’s about to follow), I eventually couldn’t make it to LA, because on October 25th, my beautiful wife gave birth to my third son Yantis, which renders that event the most memorable moment of 2010.

For 2011, I have a lot of things planned and it’s going to be a crazy year as well, since I plan to attend and speak at more conferences. I also have a couple of international opportunities coming up and I want to throw myself into the world of technical writing as well. So, that means there’s enough to do. Therefore I’m going to enjoy this last week of 2010 and take the time to relax a little.

With this I would also like to take the opportunity to wish you all a merry X-mas and all the best for 2011. May you’re year become as crazy as mine

BlackBerry announced the fact that they are going to produce a tablet rival for the iPad. It will be called the PlayBook and it’s a 7″ tablet with a screen resolution of 1024×600 and 1GB of RAM, which is a hell of a lot more that that iPad-thingie. Now in itself not that shocking, right? Wrong, because the interesting fact is that the PlayBook will have full Adobe AIR support.

And the news gets even better. BlackBerry is having a developer promotion that will get you a free PlayBook when you develop an application for the device and get it published on the BlackBerry App Store. And it doesn’t have to be a pure ActionScript project; you can even use Flex to create your app. Isn’t that awesome?

Now, there’s just one small glitch. Even though BlackBerry has released the SDK to allow developers to start creating nice apps, the actual device is not yet in production. But don’t let that hold you back, because Michaël Chaize has a very nice tutorial on how to install the PlayBook simulator and get started on your first PlayBook app.

So get cracking at an awesome AIR app and get your free PlayBook. I know I’m thinking of something to develop…

Well now, this morning at 1:40AM my beautiful wife gave birth to our third son Yantis. Mother and son are both doing excellent. Below you can find an early picture.

I know I was supposed to give a workshop about the designer-developer workflow using Flash Builder and Flash Catalyst and I was so looking forward to it, but Mother Nature decided otherwise.

So, although I’m very sad not being able to be there, I’m sure you can all understand the reason why. And I’m sure that you are now in very capable hands of the Flash Catalyst team members who are taking over my workshop: same content, same exercises, teacher who knows even more about the products than me.:-)

Anyways, have fun! And I’ll hopefully be seeing you next year at MAX.

Steven

Marta Gal kindly accepted to give a presentation on “ColdFusion MX application running on CF8, Fusebox 4, Import/ Export of real estate data with XML OpenImmo Standard”. She fell in love with ColdFusion in 1999 has always remained passionate about the technology. She created several successful international ColdFusion FuseBox projects and is currently developing business intelligence software with ColdFusion, PL SQL and EXT JS.

It wouldn’t be an exclusive event without something exclusive to show you. We have something special in mind involving ColdFusion Builder. We can’t exactly say what it is right now, but we promise you, it’s going to be worth it to be there. When you join us on April 1st, you’ll also get an awesome free ColdFusion T-shirt. There will be drinks and opportunities to do some networking afterwards.

The event is free of charge, but seats are limited, so register now! I’m looking forward to meeting you all there…

Well, he actually did this very well and he has recorded the first part in a video. He even was kind enough to answer my question about round-tripping between Flash Catalyst and Flash Builder. Thanks Lee!

Just click here to go directly to the answers to all our questions. Or at least part of them…

But all that hard work is now done for the first time, so it should become a little easier for the next couple of tutorials. So, if you fancy the visual side of tutorials instead of just reading the blog post, you can now view my very first one here. Of course, you can still read the blog post on the subject in the blog section of the Flexpert website.

Enjoy !!!