kuwamoto.org

Hi folks.

There have been a lot of exciting announcments this morning, but I’ve just been too busy to write anything about them. (…and truth be told, that’s also the reason I’ve been too busy to write over the past few months. We’ve been heads down working on a public alpha release!)

Here’s a my quick personal take on our announcements:

(1) Flash Player 8.5 with new VM — This is a big deal in my book. Having a real VM that does JIT compilation, has a real notion of interfaces, classes, etc., with the option of strong typing makes the platform much nicer to program in.

(2) Framework and compiler in the tool — We did this because we recognize that developers are key to successful platforms, and we want to allow as many people as possible to build RIAs with Flex. Meanwhile, we’ve developed great server data features that comprise Flex Enterprise Services, which we aren’t ready to show quite yet…

(3) New framework — The team has done a lot here to simplify the framework and make things more flexible. The team has also added some cool new functionality. Not much more I can say at this point, but I’ll talk about it after the alpha bits are available.

(4) New tool — Over the past year, we’ve been building a new tool from the ground up on top of Eclipse (which, in hindsight, was a great decision), and it’s starting to take shape. There’s still a lot to do, but it’s at a point where we feel it’s ready for people to start playing with, which is very exciting for all of us.

Finally, if you don’t subscribe to the edge newsletter, you may not has seen the article by Dave Mendels which is worth checking out.

P.S. I’m writing from the Web 2.0 conference (where the wireless connectivity is great, naturally). Kevin Lynch presented on Flex, Flex Builder, and the new player just 30 minutes ago. I haven’t yet had a chance to walk the halls to see what people thought, but generally, people here seem pretty interested in Flash, which is great.