With the arrival of .NET 3.5, WPF and the RTM of Silverlight 2, .NET developers have more choices than ever for designing, developing and deploying compelling applications with rich user interfaces. However, there are other mainstream alternatives that don’t fall into the .NET camp. Wh...

Many Flex and Flash developers were waiting for these news for a year. The public Beta 1 of new Flash Builder 4, Flash Catalyst and Flex 4 SDK (previously codenamed Gumbo) has been released by Adobe. First, about the name change. What used to be known as Flex Builder is Flash Builder n...

I'd like to share with you my experience of working with LiveCycle ES 8.2. This strong player in the BPM space version has been released in July of 2008.

Eighteen months ago Flex 2 was released, which literally changed the way people think of rich Internet applications. Since then lots of things have happened in the Flex community. In 2007 Adobe announced that Flex will go open source, and now it has happened. All ActionScript 3 and Ja...

In my opinion this is THE biggest announcement that I?ve heard from Adobe since the release Flex 2 in the Summer of 2006. This is bigger than open sourcing Flex. This is bigger than AIR. Here's the news: Adobe is open sourcing AMF protocol and messaging under LGPL V3. Christophe Coenra...

The AMF file format is a binary file format representing a serialized ActionScript object. This file type is used in many places within the Flash Player and AIR for data storage and data exchange. In Flash Player 9 and AIR, the flash.utils.ByteArray class is the primary way AMF is hand...

'The Java backlash,' writes Bruce Eckel, 'has been building up steam, and we're starting to see some fundamental shifts because of it.' Java has been around for 10 years yet applets are not the primary way that we interact with the web. Applets are not ubiquitous, and everyone got exci...

Adobe has announced that a large portion of the next version of Flex goes open source under Mozilla Public License (MPL). Here's the partial list of what becomes open: mxml, compc, and ActionScript compiler, command line debugger FDB, Flex framework and RPC libraries and testing infras...

Neil Balthaser has been awarded a Patent relating to the online production of RIAs using RIAs over a remote connection. I find this incredible given the number of Flash applications that were around at that time that must have existed to be listed as prior art that would have shown qui...

Immediately available in English, French and German language versions - with a Japanese version due out next month - 'Acrobat 3D' has just been launched by Adobe. The company's goal is to help extend 3D visualization, communication and collaboration across geographically dispersed orga...

'Adobe Systems Incorporated and Macromedia, Inc. ... announced they have either received or been notified they will receive all regulatory clearances necessary to complete Adobe's pending acquisition of Macromedia. The companies expect to close the transaction on December 3, 2005.' Wit...

Normally this section of MXDJ has articles on specific features, best practices, or development topics du jour. Diving into the great new tools and features is necessary and helpful, but aside from the sheer excitement of digging into new technology, why bother designing and developing...

Adobe Systems and Macromedia have announced that the stockholders of each company have now voted in favor of Adobe's proposed acquisition of Macromedia at their respective special stockholder meetings, held August 24.

With increasing frequency, employees (called 'crewmembers') at JetBlue Airways are being asked to fulfill some of their training requirements online. The aviation industry is policy-intensive, and airline employees - everyone from flight attendants, to pilots, to customer service and g...

Macromedia this morning announced an update to its Web Publishing System (WPS), with a host of new enhancements and robust capabilities, including RSS activity feeds and deployment management.

Is Flash video 'The Big One' for Macromedia or is it just another rich-application goodie among its host of offerings? Chris Hock talks exclusively to MX Developer's Journal about Flash video and begins by situating Flash video in the overall spectrum of Macromedia's steadily widening ...

'We've had a tremendous response,' said ColdFusion product manager Dave Gruber, speaking exclusively to SYS-CON.TV (http://www.sys-con.tv) just 9 days after the release of ColdFusion MX 7. 'I couldn't ask for a better nine days.'

Staff within Macromedia 'tried to anticipate various reactions' to its recent decision to package Yahoo! Toolbar with its Flash player, John Dowdell - author of the popular online 'JD's Forum' -blogged yesterday. He is open to the possibility, he wrote, that there may be 'a potential s...

This year it looks certain that a new participation record will be set, as more than 4,000 votes have already been recorded in just the first seven days of voting, as more than 50,000 SYS-CON Media readers are estimated to cast their votes in this year's Readers' Choice Awards. Highlig...

Nokia and Macromedia today announced a licensing agreement that will integrate Macromedia Flash technology into Series 60 Platform. Nokia has also agreed to support Flash in its other software platforms. The agreement will provide opportunities for the 1.8 million registered deve...

'The new version of ColdFusion extends the Internet to mobile devices and delivers groundbreaking rich forms support, reporting, and printing solutions,' says Gruber, ColdFusion product manager at Macromedia on his SYS-CON.TV interview today with MX Developer's Journal chief-editor Cha...

'I get excited every time we release a new version of ColdFusion,' writes Tim Buntel. 'I usually hit the road and talk about the release to customers at their companies, user group events, and conferences. I start the conversation by saying, 'This is the best ColdFusion ever! Wait ti...

By now you've probably heard about Captivate (formerly RoboDemo), Macromedia's tool for creating engaging software simulations, demonstrations, and tutorials. You've decided to take the plunge and create your first 'captivating' demonstration, but how do you get started? This article w...

Did the geek-fest just finished in Las Vegas, Consumer Electronics Show (CES) 2005, herald the return of technology and the beginning of the 'post-PC' world?

The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation - whose watchword is 'We believe that the world's toughest problems can be solved - if we work together' - is giving $3M to help those struck by the natural disaster that's wreaked such havoc in South Asia. Amazon.com has helped channel even more, $3...

No sooner had we begun our reader-driven quest for the top twenty software people in the world than - by popular acclaim, as they say - we're going to extend the field to choose from...from forty to over a hundred. Here we bring you a sneak peek at the sixty contenders that we'll be ad...

One thing was abundantly clear at the 2004 MAX conference in New Orleans: the third-party Flash market is growing rapidly. This is due to Macromedia's decision to provide APIs and open standards. The result of this decision is that the Flash developer will now have a virtual cornucopia...

SYS-CON Media today announced further details of the upcoming cross-platform technology event, Web Services Edge 2005 East - International Web Services Conference & Expo (www.sys-con.com/edge), to be held in Boston at the Hynes Convention Center, February 15-17, 2005. More than 3,000 i...

The challenge of enterprise-level collaboration is to make data sharing effective and keep costs down. Applications built with C++ or Java must be delivered to the end-users' desktops along with some piece of the collaboration software. That can be a headache for IT departments because...

At its annual developer conference, Macromedia provided a glimpse of new features that are under consideration in new releases of ColdFusion and Macromedia's Flash Player. The conference itinerary could be viewed using mobile phones.

As a Web developer, trainer, and conference speaker, the question I am asked most frequently is, 'Where is this industry going?' My answer is one simple word: Flash!!!

I am a Web application developer. That can mean a number of things these days, but in my case, it means I write code on both the client and the server to make a complete 'application.' For many of us, the client-side code is JSP - JavaServer Pages. Perhaps, like me, you find JSP to be ...

'Flex' - Macromedia's code-based way of building applications that target the Flash run-time - is being extended from today in an attempt to woo Java developers into bringing the power of Java to the Flash Player. 'You can still edit and code as a Java developer, but as you're doing it...

SYS-CON Media is inviting BEA, Borland, IBM, JBoss, JOnAS, Macromedia, Microsoft, Oracle, Orion, Sun, and Sybase to an 'Application Server Shoot-Out' at the upcoming Web Services Edge Conference & Expo, in Boston next February. The shootout will be a live competition aimed at finding o...

'Macromedia is. . .looking forward to lighting up the new digital world,' said chairman and CEO Rob Burgess, while announcing last week Macromedia, Inc.'s financial results for its fiscal first quarter ended June 30, 2004.

The University of Pennsylvania's Wharton School of Business, considered by many to have one of the best MBA programs anywhere, has been raising the interest of IT professionals for ten years.

Macromedia has announced that a free update is available from today for its Flash Web applications program, Flash MX 2004. The update, version 7.2, applies to both Flash MX 2004 and MX Professional 2004.

So far, all the information about Blackstone, the next major version of ColdFusion, has been third-hand, based on what bloggers have been saying after seeing Ben Forta preview the product. Now you can read information straight from the horse's mouth, courtesy of 'The Blackstone Tour Re...

CSS has been around for years, but many Web designers still do not think it is ready to be used extensively because of the host of browser rendering inconsistencies that exist. However, by knowing a few CSS hacks and tricks, you can learn how to write code that is cross-browser compati...

A couple of interesting and ingenious CF apps have caught Eric Jones's eye recently. Follow the links and see for yourself.