Ted Patrick > { Events & Community } > Adobe Systems

David Mendels (MX Products - Macromedia) emailed me some corrections to my blog entry. David's corrections are posted here in an unedited format to allow readers to get a full perspective.\0

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a) There is no reason Flex apps should be 1 or more megabytes. We are targeting internet, not just intranet. The Whitman Hart Executive Information System application I showed in the keynote was something like 200K.

b) I am not aware of any former IBM Lotus engineers on the project---components or Flex. Nothing against 'em, but I can't imagine where this rumor comes from. We do have folks from the Flash team, the Dreamweaver team, the JRUN team, the ColdFusion team, and some very strong folks who joined more recently from a whole bunch of different backgrounds. Again, I am not sure if it would mean anything anyway--they had some great engineers on that team.

c) The Flash team did not rebuild most of the Flash Authoring UI using the JSAPI. Not sure where this rumor might come from.

d) One can argue that Flex imposed requirements on the 2004 components or the other way around. But the design goal was a common component set so that teams could work together, and Flash Pro could be used to create custom SWCs that Flex programmers could use in their applications. I still think this is the right design goal. Developers are not going to choose one way and one way only to build their Flash RIAs, rather, many will use a combination of Flash and Flex and I think if we can keep the components common that is in everyone's interest.

e) I am not sure where you got the pricing speculation. This is also rumor. Yes, we have indicated that it will be priced like other enterprise server software, and yes, this will price it out of some projects without a doubt; but we are not done on the pricing and the numbers you report are far enough off what we have been discussing as to potentially be misleading. You are right to caution folks on this front, and I would as well; but until we publish (and first, finalize) our plans, it may be premature to be scared off.

Anyway, you have a lot of good points and food for thought. As much as I am excited about what we are doing at Macromedia, I agree that the community will drive more innovation than we ever could.

Thanks,

David
Macromedia

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Thanks David for clarifying the issues more completely. I do appreciate the fact that Macromedia listens to end user opinion and the fact that you addressed your concerns directly is great for everyone. I certainly do not want to be seen as publishing incorrect information hence I posted your corrections unedited. As far as the corrections, I am happy to wait and see how these issues play out long term as I still feel my sources of information were fairly solid and honest else I wouldn't have published the information in the first place.

Depending on your perspective you can take a collection of individual facts in many different directions, only with time can we see which perspectives were correct or distorted. David, thanks for contributing your perspective and correcting some obvious misunderstandings and rumors.

Cheers,

Ted ;)