Towards the end of last year, I was contacted by Macromedia to write an article for the February 2005 issue of their Macromedia Edge magazine. As the topic, I chose "Migrating from Flash to Flex" -- something that is made very simple when you architect your Flash applications with a clear separation of presentation and business logic and using the V2 components, the event model and a form-based approach. I saw the Edge article as a teaser for a longer DevNet article but things were not to be. At the last moment, I was informed that the title of my article had been changed from "An Introduction to Migrating Flash applications to Flex" to "Tips for Using Flash Assets in Flex Applications". The only reason I can give for this is that the article ran contrary to how Macromedia was trying to place the relationship between Flash and Flex at the time: Basically, that Flash and Flex were very different (partly to justify the huge price difference) and that Flash could be used to create assets for Flex. This is also why Macromedia was trying so hard to push Flex as a server when myself and several others (notably Darron Schall) had publicly stated from the very beginning that there was no reason for Flex to be a server. (All this was a tactic to lure J2EE programmers by creating an *expensive* nail to fit the hammers that Java folk carry.)

I've always believed that Flex 1 was an exercise in short-sightedness by Macromedia: We had a chance to really plant Flex as the primary technology for web application development but might have blown it while chasing some high-paying Enterprise accounts. What did Flex lose in the process? Developers. Flex beat Microsoft to market but you wouldn't know it by the number of Flex developers that exist today. What a wasted chance. I'm glad to see that Macromedia has realized this and is opening up Flex 2 to a much wider group of developers by radically altering the pricing. I just hope it's not too little, too late. This is a question of short-term profit versus long-term survival and with Flex 1, Macromedia favored the former at the expense of practically guaranteeing itself the latter. It remains to be seen what the dominant technology for web applications will be.

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Mike just told me that we've had 663 attendees at OFLA Online so far. The conference is still going on. Currently, we are hearing a conference by Firdosh Tangri is currently doing his presentation on the open-source ASWing component framework, based on the Java Swing component framework.

You can join in at any time: The conference is being broadcast over Breeze -- just log in as "guest". Here's the URL:
http://ofla.breezecentral.com/ofla/

... and we already have close to 300 attendees.

To attend, click here:
http://ofla.breezecentral.com/ofla/

Login as guest.

[Update] Ah, apparently it's Qui-Gon Jinn (thanks Josh)... umm, yeah, well, OK, so I'm not a big star wars fan! Beam me up, Scotty! (Yes, yes, *that* was on purpose -- I actually do like Star Trek!.. though the Next Generation and Voyager.) :)

... it's Flash video streaming through the open source Red5 server (click on the image for a screenshot of the full Red5 test SWF).

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We just got notified that there was a double-booking on our original room at City University and that our meeting will instead be held in room U215. There will be signs up leading you there from the main entrance.

More info and to register to attend:
http://londonmmug.org/calendar.php?do=attend&e=25

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