Andrew Edwards just posted a case study on his team's experience in using open source Flash tools as part of their development process on the PlaceAd RIA for TradingPost.com.au last year.

In the study, Edwards mentions how their use of open source tools saved them over 110 hours in compile time and allowed them to integrate better with their overall .Net development process. He also relates how it resulted in fewer bugs, "better code" and a "better development environment".

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I was recently at Mix '06 in Las Vegas, courtesy of Lynda.com, along with a group of fellow Flash developers as part of a Microsoft-sponsored initiative to both expose some of us in the Flash world to Microsoft's new Expression line of products and to get our feedback on them.

The Expression line includes the incorrectly-named Expression Graphic Designer and Expression Interactive Designer as well as the Dreamweaver-clone Expression Web Designer.

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David Berlind, executive editor of ZDNet, tells it like it is and I couldn't agree more: DRM is CRAP. (Via Digg.com)

I just got back to the UK from Mix '06 (and was lucky enough to catch one of the fast trains from Gatwick, where I'm seated at the moment writing this entry.) Apologies for not posting more updates during the event after the initial two posts from the first day but the wifi at the convention center was very unreliable and I took the opportunity to rest my wrists a little. Ironically, the conference ended up being a welcome break from the computer :) I'm going to be posting a summary of my thoughts once I've caught up with my list of chores that has been steadily building up over the course of the last week. Suffice to say, the event was very interesting and I'm definitely glad I got to attend.

Sitting at a session on IE7 at Mix '06 and the quick tabs view looks cool. The new Print Preview is also very neat (allowing you to change the margins and see multiple pages). It's definitely looking good. The word that comes to mind is "finally!"

Still, though, I'm so happy that, working with Flash, I haven't had to worry about browser compatibility issues for the longest time.

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