As developers who use the (formerly) Macromedia toolset, we’re used to having almost more information than we can take being on tap. The official information source that is the Developer Exchanges have always been a massively useful place to go for hints, tips and news about our favorite products.

As far as I can see, Adobe’s equivalent, which appears to be made up of the free Resource Center and the very not free, at US$1495/year, Developer Resources isn’t nearly so forthcoming with the usefulness.

I’m on a project now where I could really use some access to deep information on the Adobe Intelligent Document Platform and the LiveCycle product range – and not just whitepaper-type stuff, mind you – real, deep technical material with tutorials, howtos and the like. Presently, I just can’t find it, and I’m clutching at straws more than a little. Pretty soon, I’ll be getting heat from the pointy-haired bosses to make a decision I won’t have enough material to make…

Adobe are going to need to make a significant shift in their mindset and be much more forthcoming with large volumes of useful technical material for their developer base.

David Yang, a Flash guy, has it right.

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Many former Macromedians, Adobe staff and other community bloggers have already given their 2c worth on this subject – check MXNA, the ‘Goog or Adobe Blogs. I figure I ought to have my say as well.

The general feel out there among the “on the inside” bloggers appears to be a good one. People are apparently looking forward to working together and are pretty excited about the possibilities of the coming together of all these technologies.
I was fairly cynical about the acquisition when it was announced, but I have a much better feeling about it now than I’ve had at any point up to now. It looks like Adobe see the value in the Macromedia product line and are looking for opportunities to merge and enhance functionality.

Given my current work, I’m really looking forward to seeing what’s going to happen in the space where the LiveCycle products meet ColdFusion and Flex. We have a large, in-house developed, forms delivery package which uses a number of technologies – ColdFusion, WebSphere MQ, Java interfaces and some other bits and pieces I’m yet to get my head around (I’ve only been in this job a week).

Adobe, and now the former Macromedia have a big job on their hands with many facets – they need to keep life in the product range and move it forward, they need to maintain and grow staff confidence in the acquisition and where it’s taking the “new” Adobe (which will be a difficult job) and they need to keep their collective developer and user communities on side, which may yet be the biggest challenge.

I hope this all works. Good luck!

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Hey, Macromedia! What’s up with the Flash EULA?

Perhaps after the party celebrating the approval of the Adobe-Macromedia merger, some three-quarters smashed legal intern got their hands on the EULA draft and played around. On first glance it seems that:

• you can’t install the Flash Player software on a portable computer (s 2(a))
• you agree implicitly to allow Macromedia to audit your computer and slug you with a bill if they’re unhappy about the way you choose to use Flash Player (s 2(b))

These are probably liberal misinterpretations, but even so, they show that whoever was responsible for the EULA didn’t do their homework, and certainly didn’t pass the draft over enough sets of eyes before publication. Some of these statements are just dumb. Others, well… It would seem, reading the commentary at Slashdot (which at times is astoundingly unreliable, and at others, spot on), that at the very least, the EULA requires users to surrender rights which are not surrenderable under European/UK law. At best, Macromedia are guilty of inadequate research and incomplete due diligence. At worst, it appears that consumer- and user-base-friendly Macromedia is trying to become the new EULA playground bully.

Since when can’t I install Flash Player on my notebook PC (it is, and it’s staying there, and be buggered if Macromedia are going to audit anything!)?

Another case of a software company getting too big for its boots? I’ve met and talked with enough Macromedia staffers to know this isn’t their intent, but I’d be interested to hear from the proverbial horse’s mouth just what the story is.

Over to you, Macromedia…

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I’ll have some extra free time next week while I’m away from work at a conference. I’m planning to use that time to do an update of the ACME Guide based on a couple of emails I’ve received.

Before I begin, I’d really like to receive some feedback from you folks out there using the Guide as to what you’d like to see added or updated in it. Post any suggestions as comments to this post – apologies for forcing you to register with TypeKey beforehand, but this way, I really don’t get any blogspam.

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WTF!? The entire Macromedia-centric blogmos is going nuts about the Adobe acquisition of Macromedia. Just check the Goog

This isn’t one I would ever have picked… and I’m not certain it’s a good thing. There are too many concurrent spaces in tools offered by Adobe and Macromedia for this to be truly good. I think it will actually ultimately stifle competition and innovation.

Here are the problems I see (note these are pure speculation):

• Photoshop and Illustrator lose their only serious competition – goodbye Fireworks and Freehand;
• the dilution of the Macromedia web development toolset in favor of the Adobe tools – Dreamweaver gets eaten by GoLive;
• another loss of focus for ColdFusion in a market space desperately in need of a strong presence – I just don’t see it being a priority for Adobe;
• Flex going the way of Spectra (down the toilet). It’s overpriced and under-marketed and I don’t see it being a big player for Adobe;
• Whither Flash? Will it be absorbed into the Acrobat toolset. That’d be my guess.

I’ll be delighted if I’m proved wrong, and frankly, I hope I am. It’ll be interesting to see whether the whole thing gets past the US regulatory authorities and the stockholders…

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I’ve just posted a new version of the ACME Guide on its home page. There are a just few minor changes in the Guide, allowing for some stuff I missed in the Apache config and some updaters and hotfixes released by Macromedia.

In more ACME news, I have been working on a guide for Eclipse users for installation, configuration and use of the Eclipse Web Tools Platform (WTP) project. It’s nearly ready to go, and will nicely complement the original ACME Guide.

The new guide, ACME Web Development on steroids – The Eclipse Web Tools Platform Project, will just about lock you in to Eclipse forever – you won’t need any other tools! Look for a release announcement around the start of May.

Also, I’ve been a little concerned about the file size for the ACME Guide, especially now it’s over 6Mb. I can compress the images (there’s no compression at present), but there is an obvious loss of quality that comes with that compression. If you’re bandwidth-starved and would like a more lightweight version, let me know by commenting here and I’ll make it available if there’s enough of a need. Also, if you happen to know of a nice OpenOffice.org-to-PDF converter (not FlashPaper, as it doesn’t do bookmarks) which is more efficient than OOo itself, let me know.)

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Well, MXDU has begun with a quick overview of a couple of snazzy Flex apps and then the presentation that may already take the cake for coolest of the conference – Tim Buntel of Macromedia doing a "Tiki Lounge"-themed, no speaking involved, lounge music soundtracked run through of the new features in CFMX7, complete with live coding!

It was teh r0xor!

I only hope Kai Koenig and Sean Corfield’s upcoming talks are going to be as cool. Well, Kai’s beginning, so I’ll sign off. Check youse…

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