kevin lynch
kevin lynch
kevin lynch
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i enjoy making software to help people deliver the best possible experiences, and am currently chief software architect at adobe.note: the layout of this page probably looks strange to you, since your browser doesn't support current web standards. you might consider upgrading to a current browser, or you can just ignore the strange formatting, as all the content is readable by any browser. for a simpler layout, you might try using the handheld version instead.
apollo alpha
it's obviously been quite a while since i've managed to post something here. the combination of adobe and macromedia has been keeping me and many others quite busy and is now beginning to show some of the results of our combined engineering teams -- it's very exciting to see the work we've been up to starting to come to fruition. as part of this, today we released the alpha of apollo and soon creative suite 3 will be released with incredible integration across the whole toolset.
one of the main forces driving the innovation and the development of the software at adobe is seeing where developers are pushing the edge of what's possible to implement, and then enabling more developers to accomplish that kind of work.
taking the way-back machine to 2001, you would see the web being widely used and the early signs of web sites containing not only pages but also interactive applications. these applications were primarily using html forms and relying on web servers for processing the form information. a handful of leading edge developers were working to implement a more responsive interaction by taking advantage of client-side processing with actionscript in flash. one of the earliest examples of successful interactive applications was a hotel reservation system, which moved from a multi-page html form to a one-screen, highly interactive reservation interface that increased their online reservations by 89%.
clearly, responsiveness matters as it creates a much more effective, engaging experience. however, in 2001 there was a lot to be desired in terms of performance, power of the scripting language, ease of debugging, and design constraints for applications within browsers.
we did a lot of brainstorming and talked extensively to developers at that time and decided to embark on a mission to enable this trend, naming the category "rich internet applications" (ria). to better support rias, we aimed to create:
a tremendously faster virtual machine in flash player for actionscript 3
a development framework called flex, making it radically easier to build rias
an environment specifically to deliver rich internet applications to their full potential, code named "apollo"
during the dot-com bust, we held onto the vision of enabling this future world of rich internet applications. we continued to invest in building out a range of technologies and prepared for the day that innovation on the web would ignite again. the days of innovation have now returned in full force and i am delighted to see rich internet applications coming into their own with web 2.0. developers are creating applications with a range of technologies and frameworks that tap into the distributed creativity of the internet -- taking advantage of html, flash, flex, ajax, and balancing logic between the client and server.
the new virtual machine has been delivered now in flash player 9, enabling actionscript 3 to run an order of magnitude faster and implement the most recent work on the ecma standard for the language (javascript follows this same standard). this modern implementation has also now been released as open source with the mozilla foundation as the tamarin project, enabling the flash player team to work with mozilla engineers and others in the open source community to continue optimizing the virtual machine and keeping up with the most recent standards work. this core scripting engine will be incorporated over time in firefox, bringing more consistency across scripting in html and flash.
the development framework has also been delivered today as flex, enabling rapid development through common patterns for interaction and data management, with the whole framework built in actionscript 3. the flex framework is available for free, and the framework source code is included so you can see exactly how it works. you can use any editor to write code using flex, and a specific ide is also available, called flex builder.
as we saw innovation on the web returning and were pursuing this vision, that's when we decided to unite efforts across adobe and macromedia. while macromedia was driving rich internet applications with flash, adobe was innovating in delivery of electronic documents, among other areas. we both saw over time that macromedia would be adding electronic document capability to rias and that adobe would add ria capability around electronic documents. rather than pursue those paths separately and duplicate efforts, we joined forces to deliver our vision for the next generation of documents and rias, bringing together the world's best technology for electronic documents and the world's best, most pervasive technology for rias. it's really a powerful combination of technology and teams.
after we announced the merger, we created a "clean room" team to plan for our next generation of software, drawing on everything we've learned to date as well as from the potential of bringing flash, pdf and html together in the new apollo environment for rich internet applications. the apollo project is actually our third attempt at creating this new environment. the first two attempts were part of an experimental project called central which was code named mercury and then gemini after the united states space program, and the current work code named apollo. we learned a lot from those first two projects, and as i like to remind the team, apollo is the one that actually went to the moon.
with apollo, you can leverage existing web development skills (html, flash, javascript, ajax, flex) to build and deploy rias to the desktop. just like web publishing allowed anyone with basic html skills to create a website, apollo will enable anyone with basic web development skills to create a desktop application. the html engine in apollo is webkit, which is open source and is also used apple's safari browser.
apollo enables people to more easily maintain a connection with information in their web applications. just like a desktop app, apollo applications have an icon on the desktop, in the windows start menu, or in the os x dock. also, when you're running a web application today, it's a separate world from your computer. you can't easily integrate local data with your web app. for example, you can't just drag and drop your local contacts onto a web-based mapping application to get directions to your friend's house. with apollo applications you will be able to this kind of integration as it bridges the chasm between your computer and the internet.
i believe apollo represents the beginning of a new medium as the best of the web and the best of the desktop come together. these applications are fun to build and if you start early, you'll be able to deliver capabilities in your applications that others won't have yet -- especially in terms of increasing the presence of your application on the computer and bridging the web and the desktop. this is an alpha version of apollo, and the apollo team is looking forward to your feedback and wishes -- there are also mailing lists and forum discussion to reach other people working on apollo or to report issues you find.
the apollo team and i are very much looking forward to seeing what everyone creates, and to the next generation of applications ahead. we have an opportunity to keep pushing the boundaries of what's possible on the internet to make the experience more engaging and effective for people around the world.
19 mar 07 12:50 pm
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comments (11)
flash is your friend in web 2.0
i recently presented a "high
order bit" at the web 2.0 conference about how flash and html work together
and made
some announcements about building flash applications in a way developers
can relate to more easily.
tim o'reilly wrote a great overview of what he means by web
2.0,
which are essentially design patterns and business models for the next generation
of software. the shorter term results are things like easier sharing of photos
with your friends and family, finding the most interesting things to read,
and getting new insights on information by combining data like rental listings
with their locations on a map. longer term, this "architecture of participation"
could mean harnessing collective intelligence across the internet to solve
increasingly difficult problems around the world, as also envisioned by doug
engelbart.
in terms of building applications for web 2.0, i believe the key underlying
theme is the separation of data and user interface through open data formats,
rss/atom feeds, and programming interfaces made publicly available. this enables
not only a revolution in machine to machine communication, as all the excitement
about web services has been about, but also human to machine as we're seeing
with remixing applications and new user interfaces on data.
there is clearly a resurgence in how html can be used to deliver application
user interfaces and terrific progress has been made on that. in addition, flash
brings capabilities that html doesn't currently have, and they can be used
together to great benefit -- in fact, flash has already been architected to
fit perfectly in the web 2.0 model. for example, adaptive
path has been working on a great new application called measuremap that
helps people track traffic on their blogs and is being built with a combination of html and flash on the client. another
is how flickr is using both html and
flash, for example implementing the organizer and slideshow with flash and
the photo index with html. the language in flash is actionscript which is the
same as javascript, both ecma
standard languages, and it's very simple to call between code in html
and flash, enabling smooth integration with a free open-source integration
kit. this is not about flash vs. html or ajax. it's using flash + html
with the ajax approach to build web 2.0 applications (to be fully buzzword
compliant).
there are many examples of
applications built in flash, though building them is not what a lot of people
would call easy as the current flash authoring tool and programming model were
optimized for more creative uses such as animations. what we're working on
now are a set of technologies to make building applications and components
much easier and for the results to run much faster.
these
technologies include the upcoming flash player 9 which has a new virtual
machine that runs several times faster -- it has been in development for over
two years and is aimed squarely at providing a high performance web 2.0 client
runtime with a just in time compiler, runtime error checking, support for e4x
(which makes xml a first class data type in scripting so you can easily use
xml in code) and compliance with the standard ecma language definition. the
second technology is the flex framework, a programming model that enables developers
to use an xml based language to build apps much more intuitively along with
integrated scripting. and third, a tool called flex builder that is being
developed on the eclipse open source framework, is designed for developers,
combines code editing with visual layout of applications, and has a compiler
built right in. for a demo of how quickly you'll be able to build applications
with this, please check out the video where
you can see a photo search app built in about five minutes.
a major advantage of using the flash player for web 2.0 applications is consistent
development across operating systems and browsers and a lot less overhead programming
around differences and needing to debug and test on every configuration. the
flash player has more reach than any browser or operating system, and is being
distributed faster than any other technology i know of on the internet today
which means innovation on client technology can be deployed to
over 80% of people on the web in about a year and then reach 98% a little while
later.
this transformation of flash from purely an animation engine to a
runtime for rich media and rich internet applications has been happening for
several years now, though many people aren't yet aware of these capabilities.
some things i find many people don't realize about flash include: an
active open
source community
around flash; support for more sophisticated local storage
than what the browser provides along with more control for users; google
does in fact index flash; two-way live audio/video communication
is built in along with support
for synchronized data transmission for collaborative apps;
flash supports accessible applications including integration with screen readers;
it's actually the most widely distributed video player on the web; it supports
sockets (which enable push of data from servers rather than the request-only
model) in either xml or with the new client in any binary format.
also, there is currently
support for integration with backend infrastructure through web services
or rest interfaces from the flash player today. the new flash player 9
has even stronger enterprise data connectivity including client support for
flex enterprise services which enables use of message queues, integration with
jms, remote procedure calls, and data synchronization. this enables not only
simple applications like photo viewers, but also sophisticated business applications.
we're making this next generation available in early stages so we can collaborate
with the community around it and make sure we're all building the right stuff.
alpha releases of flash player 9 and flex builder will be available for hacking
web 2.0 applications starting at the max
developer conference on october 17 and posted at macromedia.com/go/web2.
12 oct 05 09:52 am
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comments (5)
behind the scenes: flash pro 8
a great behind the scenes look at shipping flash professional 8 has been posted in flash video. the energy and approach you can see here is very much the same across dreamweaver and the whole studio 8 team -- the product teams did an incredible job working closely with the community from start to finish and have produced the best release we've ever done of studio.
10 oct 05 09:11 am
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comments (1)
attention management
steve gillmor and
i were talking about his workshop at web
2.0 about attention trust, and
since i won't be able to attend today i thought i would blog some thoughts i've had
on attention management.
as the amount of information people
interact with increases it can become quite overwhelming, and we need better
techniques to deal with the flow not only from a data capture perspective but
also from a user interface perspective. in a way, there may be more information
to pay attention to with the introduction of attention trust feeds!
one approach to this is to provide ways to scale the amount of
attention required at different points in time, rather than attention being
an all or nothing affair. below is a diagram showing the relationship between
the current focus of attention on some information and its degree of presence
on the display. as focus increases on particular information, more of the display
can be used to represent it, and as focus decreases that information can be
relegated to a smaller or even no presence on the display.
good applications should support the fluid transition between
these levels as the user focuses on various information throughout the day,
and developers need frameworks and tools to help present this information effectively
across the web.
for example, you might be looking for a rental apartment and interact with a great
rich ui showing available apartments on craigslist and might use that in context
with a mapping application to understand relative locations. after choosing
the apartments you're interested in, you might add a small display to
your desktop to observe new listings that appear via the craigslist rss feed
so you can keep an eye on the range of what's available. when you get
a better idea of what you want, a notification can be set to just let you know
when a new listing becomes available that matches your criteria. occasionally
the focus of attention may increase again to explore more detail and then shift
back to a low level. once you find what you're looking for, you can of course
ignore the information completely.
05 oct 05 11:01 am
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comments (0)
actionscript/javascript integration
there's increasing interest in connecting actionscript in flash with javascript on web pages, and we've been working on techniques for accomplishing this well. an example of this working today is the macromedia weblog aggregator report that was developed by christian cantrell and mike chambers. clicking on the feed names loads new html content in place on the page as well as updates the chart in flash. clicking on bars in the flash chart also communicates out to the page to load new html content in place below, all without refreshing the whole page.
technically, this works using two techniques:
1. calling from actionscript to javascript on a web page. this is accomplished by using geturl in actionscript, for example a function named "displaypost" can be called from actionscript to javascript:
geturl("javascript:displaypost(" + postid + "," + feedid +")");
2. calling from javascript to actionscript. this was more challenging to do successfully across browsers, as the only time browsers support passing variables into flash is when it's first loaded on the page. we've solved this by creating a javascript class that dynamically loads a very small flash object to receive a function call, which immediately passes that information to the target flash app on the page.
this kind of connection can enable a lot great combinations of flash and javascript on web pages. we're working on a toolkit that contains a better description of these techniques and the code that supports using them.
10 may 05 03:19 pm
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comments (7)
macromedia and adobe combining
some exciting things afoot here! this has been a move that's been a long time coming as the relationship between our companies has been growing far beyond our early clashes during the frenetic times of the internet bubble.
i've gotten to know bruce chizen, shantanu narayen and others at adobe over the past few years (i've known some other folks at adobe for even a longer time) and we all share a common vision for the future of content and internet applications across multiple operating systems, devices and media. there have been times when this led us to conflict as we worked in similar areas, but today we find ourselves having worked on different parts of this vision and are in a very complementary position with our technology and our customers.
together we will offer an incredible set of products.
more...
18 apr 05 09:48 am
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comments (0)
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currently
working on next generation platform at adobe.
upcoming
october 1-3 chicago
max north america
october 15-18 barcelona
max europe
november 1-2 tokyo
max japan
presentations
flash platform
flash platform videos
internet apps: a new frontier
web 2.0
macromedia: the story
background
i like making software to help people deliver the best
possible experiences. i'm currently chief software architect at adobe.
20 years ago with my first computer, a dec pdp-11.
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the views expressed on this website are my own and do not necessarily reflect
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