Andrew Shorten @ Adobe

At Flash on the Beach in Brighton this week I spoke with a number of Flash designers and developers, asking what they wanted to see for the Flash Platform in the future – here is what they had to say (3 minute video):

I also asked everyone I spoke to about the importance of the Flash Community and events like Flash on the Beach – here’s what they said on that topic (4 minute video):

Thanks to everyone who went on camera to provide their opinion and thanks to John Davey for another excellent Flash on the Beach conference.

If you’ve got anything to add on these topics then please leave your thoughts in the comments!

At Flash on the Beach in Brighton this week I spoke with a number of Flash designers and developers, asking their thoughts on how Flash Catalyst might impact their workflow for producing rich Internet applications – here is what they had to say (3 minute video):

Following on from the inagural meeting of the Adobe RIA usergroup at Skills Matter in London last month, details of the next two sessions have been published.

The first is an Introduction to BlazeDS and LCDS, taking place next Wednesday (23rd), which will include information about LCDS 3 and the data modeler plug-in for Flash Builder 4. More information about the event and registration details are here.

Then on October 21st, Borre Wessel from Lab49, will present a session covering the development of the Morgan Stanley Matrix application – included will be a discussion on the patterns and practices that made Matrix possible, the challenges faced along the way and guidance for those embarking on a large-scale Flex project. More information about the event and registration details are here.

I hope to see you at one or both of these meetings.

Every year for ‘Flash on the Beach‘ our marketing team manages to outdo themselves in terms of what can be Adobe branded – we’ve had stickers, badges, rock and T-Shirts over the years; in an exclusive i-happen-to-be-in-the-office-today shocker I can reveal this year’s FOTB Adobe schwag is…

The Adobe Flash Platform Rubik’s cube:

and Adobe Flash Platform chocolate:

Be sure to stop by the Adobe stand next week to pick-up your schwag, chat with a number of the Adobe people who are attending (including myself, Serge Jespers, Mark Doherty, Mark Anders, Richard Galvan, Lee Brimelow, Robin Charney, Marcus Lynch and Thibault Imbert) and see demos of Flash Catalyst, Flash Builder and the Creative Suite products.

Following the news last week that Microsoft and UK-based retailer Tesco announced a commercial agreement (no details of the financial arrangements were published) it is interesting to see that one media company who previously adopted Microsoft Silverlight for its online TV catch-up service has completely replaced the Silverlight-based player for one built using Adobe Flash Player.

ITV, owner of the UK’s largest commercial television channel in terms of audience share and advertising revenue, had been using Silverlight since the launch of the service, but if the ITV forums and other reports are anything to go by, the use of Silverlight had certainly caused frustration for many visitors to the site trying to use ITV Player.

I have no inside knowledge as to what caused ITV to walk away from Microsoft’s technology and instead use Flash Player to stream programmes such as Coronation Street, Emmerdale and X Factor on the ITV Player; it seems though that a combination of the reported technical problems experienced by end-users and the relatively low distribution of the the runtime, which required most visitors to install Silverlight, proved to be too much of a barrier for end-user adoption, especially when compared with the successful use of Flash for BBC iPlayer, 4 on-demand and Five TV’s Demand 5 service.

Note: it looks as if ITV are still in the process of updating their site so expect some minor issues whilst they finish the process.