DIGG IT! Once the marketing smoke clears, I think we are going to find that MX 2004 has a few hidden jewels that are hard to see at first.
Personally, the addition of the Scripting API and IDE History is going to change everything. I have used the Scripting API many times with other MM tools and it is simply brilliant. The Scripting API lets you get to every major function of the IDE via JavaScript (JSFL) and allows developers and third parties to extend atop the foundation of a MM core product. Even better is the fact that the History panel, gives developer access to the JSFL commands and data that were performed by the IDE at runtime. This allows you to build scripts quickly:
1. Perform the process in the IDE
2. Save the selected commands from the History Panel externally
3. Edit to hearts content
4. Press play!
If you really want to go deep, add a panel to the IDE via XML and put a Flash interface on that script! It is an interesting fact but most of the panels in Fireworks are swfs executing the Scripting API. The scripting API has evolved into many MM products since the release of Dreamweaver 1, JavaScript and the Scripting API concept was championed by Kevin Lynch at MM. I had the pleasure of meeting Kevin in 2000 during a Lynda Weinman course, if he was excited about one thing it was the scriptability of dreamweaver. As he explained it, Dreamweaver was built inside out from a product perspective. Instead of defining everything a product could do, MM wrote an extensible scripting engine from which a product was defined via script and html. Every feature in dreamweaver is defined in script and html. When you use a feature, you are accessing the scripting API while the UI of the product is defined in html, flash, and JavaScript.
The addition of a scripting API to Flash is much deeper than most realize. This gives the developer low level access to the Flash compiler, File system, FLA format, and to the IDE in general. If you want to add features to MX 2004, simply download the scripting API and get to work. Given the long history of the scripting API in other products, the addition of the Scripting API to Flash should be a profound addition.
GO JSFL!
I certainly see a PowerSDK panel coming to MX 2004!
Nice work MM! ;)
Cheers,
ted ;)
0 Responses to “ Hidden jewels of MX 2004? ”
Post a Comment