Mike Potter

November 22, 2006

Adobe Open Sources ActionScript Media Gallery Code

The ActionScript code that is used by Photoshop Lightroom and Photoshop Elements to create beautiful slideshows is now completely open source.  You can download the ActionScript source code from the Adobe Media Gallery website.  There are also sample galleries, a getting started guide, documentation, mailing lists, forums and instructions on how to contribute to the project.

This work continues Adobe extensive involvement in open source technologies.  I can't remember a company changing so quickly so fast.  A few months ago we had very little in the way of open source software, today we're working hard on things like Tamarin, part of the Mozilla project, the Adobe Media Gallery, ActionScript 3 libraries for popular web services like Flickr, Mappr, YouTube and more (we're working right now on open sourcing the eBay libraries that were the basis of the eBay Apollo application shown at MAX), the Flex / Ajax bridge, the Adobe source libraries and more.

technorati tags:adobe, opensource, tamarin, photoshop, lightroom, actionscript, mediagallery

November 07, 2006

Open Source Developers and Adobe

In case you missed it, Adobe and the Mozilla Foundation have teamed up.  Adobe will be contributing source code for the ActionScript virtual machine, via a project to be hosted at Mozilla.  Mozilla's CTO, Brendan Eich, says that this is the largest contribution to the Mozilla Foundation since its inception. You can check out the code now via CVS from mozilla/source/js/tarmarin on lxr.mozilla.org.

From a developer point of view, this means that you can build applications for Flash Player 9 that will use the same code structure as applications for Mozilla 2. No longer will you need to learn two seperate languages.

Many people are saying that this is the largest contribution of open source software from Adobe as well.  In fact, Adobe has many open source projects that are run by Adobe.  Here's a partial list of them:

Adobe Source Libraries at http://opensource.adobe.com (currently down, but you can get it from Google's Cache.

ActionScript 3 Libraries - We will be adding the eBay library, which is the basis of the Apollo application shown at the MAX conference, to this set of libraries as well.

Adobe Spry Framework - The Spry framework for Ajax allowes web developers to add Ajax functionality to their web pages.

Adobe Flex / Ajax Bridge - Used to connect your Flex application to JavaScript, and vice versa.  Allows you to build sites similar to Google Finance.

Adobe PDF has been an open specification for a long time.  While the code to Adobe Reader is not open source, the open format has allowed many developers to build PDF creation and reader tools.

technorati tags:opensource, flex, spry, fabridge, pdf, adobe

November 06, 2006

Hello from new digs in Ottawa

The entire Adobe Ottawa office today moved into a fantastic new building at 343 Preston St. The new building is absolutely fantastic, a big kudos out to everyone who was involved in the move. A voice message from Bruce Chizen this morning welcomed us to the new office, telling us that planning for the move started two years ago. Again, congrats to everyone who worked hard to make sure that work was disrupted as little as possible. My desk was all set this morning, with working Internet and phone service. So far, only minor problems for a few employees.

The past few weeks have been very busy. The MAX conference in Vegas was great. I posted a few entries a while back, but haven't posted an update in a while. My introduction to LiveCycle Designer sessions were very well attended. In fact, the entire LiveCycle track was well attended, with many sessions filling up entirely with ex-Macromedia people trying to figure out what LiveCycle is all about and wondering how to get started with it. Watch this Breeze session for an intro to LiveCycle, and then download the LiveCycle Toolbox to get started with it. LiveCycle is really starting to gain momentum: two of the MAX award winners were based on LiveCycle technologies.

Last week I attended the Zend Conference in San Jose, CA. I met with a number of great people, and presented an introduction to Rich Internet Applications to PHP developers. The slides from my talk are available here (warning: 3MB PDF), and I believe that the session was recorded. I'll post a link when I find it. For those of you who attended the session and want to get started with PHP and Flex, the PHP RIA SDK by Adobe is the best way to get started with the two technologies.

technorati tags:adobe, php, adobemax06, livecycle

October 24, 2006

Morning Keynote at MAX

Tuesday morning in Las Vegas brought a great keyonte presentation from Kevin Lynch, Shantanu and others.  First off, the Blue Man Group performed for 15 minutes or so, getting the crowd pumped up.  Shantanu then gave an overview of the past year, showing some video of Adobe and Macromedia customers talking about the two companies joining.  The show then continued on, with Adobe employees showing off new features in Photoshop, Fireworks, Dreamweaver, Flash and more. Ben Forta showed new features in ColdFusion, and also new features in LiveCycle Designer and Acrobat, as well as some new features for the LiveCycle server products.

Kevin finished the demo by showing some Apollo demos, including some work that my group has been doing lately with eBay.  An eBay Apollo application was shown, and this was built using the open source eBay libraries that we've been working on lately.  We'll be working on making those libraries available in the next few days or so.

After that it was off to my first session teaching users LiveCycle Designer. A few problems getting started, but for the most part thing went fairly smoothly.  One more session today, then one on Wednesday and another on Thursday.

Photos and videos from the keynote to come, as soon as I get a chance to download the photos.

technorati tags:adobemax06, max06, adobemax, adobe, lasvegas, apollo, ebay

October 23, 2006

Hello from Max in Las Vegas

Adobe MAX is well underway here in Las Vegas. Day 1 brought a few surprises with the ActionScript and Flex posters, but we managed to find them and hand out a few dozen throughout the day. I've been practicing my session for the next few days, working on my presentations and walking through the tutorial to make sure it still works with the latest version of LiveCycle Designer (no worries, it does).

I'm looking forward to the keynote presentation tomorrow. Ben Forta told me that the first 10 minutes of the keynote are going to be something that you won't want to miss. If you're in Vegas, then you may want to take it easy tonight... Head to bed around 5 AM so that you can make the keynote without any problems. :)

Its great to meet so many people here, people who I've been working with over the past few months yet never met, and others who I've worked with for a while and haven't seen in a few months, including some team.

I'll post more tomorrow, including some photos, after the keynotes, my presentation and a few hours at the MAXUP unconference.

October 19, 2006

MAXUP Reminder

Ted Patrick is continuing planning work for the MAXUP get together next week in Las Vegas.  If you're attending MAX and have some spare time, or just want to hang out, showcase some demos, talk to other developers who are working on similar projects, then check out the MAXUP barcamp page, add yourself as an attendee (its a wiki, you can edit the page yourself), let Ted know via the Yahoo Group that he's setup, and then think about how you're going to participate.

MAXUP is what's known as an "unconference" or a community get together.  The one rule is that you must participate: there's no sitting around and listening.  Showcase your work, demo things that you're working on, ask questions, argue about Mac vs. Windows etc...

You can get more details on MAXUP here, here and here.

technorati tags:adobe, adobemax06, maxup

My MAX Schedule

I've seen a few posts about this from others... Here's my MAX schedule:

Arrive Sunday, 2:30 PM or so. Check out Casinos.
Monday: MAXUP for most of the day, and working on my presentation from 9:30 to 10:30. Monday evening, welcome reception.
Tuesday: Hands on Designer Course, presenting. 10:30 - Noon. Check out the Flex and LiveCycle booth in the afternoon. Hands on Designer Course, 3:30 - 5. MAXUP during break time.
Wednesday: Hands on Designer Course, 10:30 - Noon. Work in the Flex booth, 2:30 - 4 PM.
Thursday: Work in the Flex booth, 7:00 AM - 9:00 AM (is anyone really going to be at the booth at 7 AM?) MAXUP during the day, present Hands on Designer Course, 3:30 - 5 PM.

September 26, 2006

We're looking for a University Student in Canada

Are you currently enrolled in a computer science or engineering program at a university in Canada? We're looking for volunteers to help co-ordinate events that we are planning at universities across Canada. The ideal candidate should have the following qualifications:

• Is an active member of student population with strong communication skills
• Is involved in extra-curricular university programs and / or be a member of student associations / committees
• Understands technical concepts and stays current with emerging technologies
• Proven experience and ability to create, maintain, and manage a blog
• Demonstrates good time management skills and ability to work independently
• Experience in planning and managing events is highly desirable

• Organizing student events that are open to all students and members of the faculty. The purpose of each event would be to educate and provide information to the attendees on Adobe’s current and emerging technologies. A budget will be provided to pay for costs associated with the event. One event per study term is expected, and the Ambassador will be responsible for all stages of planning and managing the event with collaboration from the Adobe Enterprise and Developer team.
• The Ambassador will be given opportunities to present at the planned events, sometimes in conjunction with Adobe technical evangelists.
• Become an Ambassador for Adobe’s products within the student body and provide valued feedback to the Adobe on how students and faculty use their technology in studies, and the user experience of using Adobe technology.
• The Ambassador will work closely with the school’s student organization and be responsible for preparing and aid in advertising for any Adobe on-campus events.
• The Adobe Ambassador will be the conduit of information between the university’s student population and Adobe. Regular on-going communication and feedback on the program in general is expected.
  
• The Adobe Ambassador will maintain a blog, and will publish information on Adobe technologies, news and articles, information regarding upcoming events, and more.

The positions are currently open and available to students at the following universities in Canada. They are not available at any other university. We'll be expanding the program in the future, but we're limiting it to the following schools: University of British Columbia, Simon Frasier University, BC Institute of Technology (BCIT), University of Western Ontario, Waterloo University, University of Ottawa, Queen's University, University of Toronto, McMaster University and McGill University.

If you have any questions about the position, please post them in this blog.  If you would like to apply, please send your resume to adoberep@adobe.com.

technorati tags:adobe, university, canada

September 18, 2006

Adobe and developers... We're getting there

Over the last several months, Adobe has made enormous progress with software developers. In the few short months since the Macromedia acquisition, we have released new products, opened access to SDKs and continued to create communities of open source software.

With today's announcement of Acrobat 8, you may have missed the fact that the Acrobat SDK is now free.  Previously available for a $99 membership, the Acrobat 8 SDK will be free (as in beer) when its released.  As well, all previous versions of the Acrobat SDK, including the existing Acrobat 7 SDK, are available for free.  Email Request_A7SDK@adobe.com for access to the Acobat 7.0.5 SDK or download the other SDKs.

Here are some other key developer activities in the past few months:
We released the Flex 2 product line, and the Flex 2 SDK, which is also free (as in beer).

We released two RIA SDKs: one for PHP developers and one for Ruby on Rails developers.  Both of those are free, as in speech.  Head to Google Code for the PHP RIA SDK by Adobe or the Ruby on Rails RIA SDK by Adobe.  Join the mailing list for either of them (PHP, Ruby), they're fairly active.

Free and open source ActionScript 3 libraries prodiving easy APIs to Flickr, Mappr, Odeo, YouTube and more.

The Flex / Ajax bridge is free and open source, allowing you to connect Flex and Ajax applications.

The Spry framework for Ajax was released on Labs with a BSD license, prodiving an early look at our Ajax framework.

opensource.adobe.com continued to release version of the Adobe Source Libraries, which are available to developers building cross platform applications.

We opened up access to XPAAJ so that ColdFusion and Flex developers can build PDF Forms based on LiveCycle technologies.  This removed a $1495 Adobe Enterprise Developer Program membership.

We expanded Adobe developer support to cover both LiveCycle and Flex developers.  Now, if you need support for either of those two products, a $1495 membership will give you one year of unlimited email support for Flex or LiveCycle. Get Flex developer support via the Adobe store or purchase LiveCycle developer support via the Adobe store.

I'd say that's not bad for our 9 months or so as a combined company.  Did I miss anything?

technorati tags:adobe, developers, sdks, opensource

August 18, 2006

MAX Sessions by Track Now Include Dates and Times

I was just browsing the MAX event page and noticed that the dates and times are now added to the session details.  So, now you can start planning out what sessions you want to attend. If you're interested in LiveCycle Designer, I'm giving the Hands on LiveCycle Designer course on Tuesday at 10:30 AM and 3:00 PM, Wednesday at 10:30 AM and Thursday at 3:30 PM.

Those of you interested in Adobe Flex and PHP will be happy to know that David Zuckerman will be giving two sessions: One on Tuesday at 10:30 AM and one on Wednesday at 4:15 PM.

technorati tags:adobe, adobemax06, adobemax, php, flex, livecycle

July 26, 2006

Adobe Forums Changing

technorati tags:adobeforums, adobe

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July 14, 2006

JamJar: Adobe's First 'Web 2.0' Application

Yesterday afternoon, Adobe released a preview of JamJar on labs.adobe.com, which is "a demonstration application built with Flex 2 that provides a private and persistent canvas for small groups to easily exchange digital content."  I think the best way to think of it is that its similar to an Flash version of MySpace.

I'm a huge fan of JamJar, I think its really cool and one of the best client applications, even in its current test form, that Adobe has released in the past few years.  Others aren't so happy with it.

Here are some reasons why JamJar is Adobe's first Web 2.0 application:

• Its the first Adobe application to serve up Google ads from Adsense as the only revenue stream (currently).
  
• Its the first Adobe application that really needed an Invite a friend link in the menu bar.
• Its one of the first applications from Adobe that doesn't install on your hard drive.  Yes, the company that brought you Creative Suite and its over 1 GB install, has created a program that doesn't install anything on your machine.
  
• It integrates my photos from Flickr.
• Its better than any other social networking web creation space, because changes happen in real time... No more reloading of pages to see what text would look like as Times New Roman rather than Arial... Change it and you see it immediately.
• Real time collaboration / file sharing!  If two people are in the same JamJar space at the same time, changes to the space are reflected on both people's view, in real time.  A long way to say that we can have a real time discussion in JamJar, or when you add a file to JamJar, and I'm on your space, I see it immediately and can download it right away.
• Control who can do what to your space... When you invite friends to your space, you can make them authors (meaning they can read or write to your space) or just visitors (read only).
  

Here are some reasons why its not a true Web 2.0 application:

• No RSS feed for new items.
• No way to create new JamJar components.
• No APIs to add items to your space from outside JamJar.
  

I'm looking forward to more JamJar releases, and I urge you to test it out if you can.  Currently the JamJar server appears to be down.

Apologies for the click-bait in the title.  I'm not a big fan of the term 'Web 2.0'.

technorati tags:jamjar, web20, flex, myspace, socialnetworking, adobe, realtime

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July 10, 2006

More Information on Adobe MAX Posted - Including Registration Form

We've announced more information about Adobe MAX, including details on all the sessions that will be taking place during the conference. Here's the press release, here's the agenda, here's the list of tracks and here's the registration form.

If you're developing software or solutions with Adobe software, then you'll want to attend.  There are sessions on Acrobat and Breeze, LiveCycle, Mobile, RIAs, Web Design and Development and more.

Also announced are the 2006 MAX Awards, which will "honor the most effective and compelling customer work in eight categories: achievement (high return on investment); advertising and branding; industry innovator; interactive process management; media and entertainment; mobile and devices; rich Internet applications and Web development; and training and collaboration."  Adobe will accept submissions starting on July 17th, entries must be submitted by September 1st.  I'm not sure where you can submit your entries, but a list of last year's finalists is available online.

If you're blogging about this, please tag your posts "adobemax06" in Technorati.  We'll use that same tag for Flickr photos of the event.

technorati tags:adobemax06, acrobat, livecycle, flex, ria, conferences, adobe

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July 07, 2006

LiveCycle, PDF and Open Source

A few blog entries ago, I explained why I thought the release of Flex was good for open source developers.  One of the comments, from Will Pollard, asked for clarification on how LiveCycle fits with Flex and open source.  In particular, why would someone use LiveCycle as opposed to any of the free PDF creation tools that are out there. 

To start with, LiveCycle is a bit more difficult to access than Flex... Unlike Flex, you cannot download trial versions of the Adobe LiveCycle server products.  (You can download a trial version Adobe LiveCycle Designer and start building out PDF forms.)  Currently you need to be a member of the Adobe Enterprise Developer Program to download the LiveCycle software, including the very easy to setup LiveCycle Toolbox.  (The toolbox is a pre-confirued install of all the LiveCycle software.  For an explanation of LiveCycle, check out this Breeze presenation I did for Adobe Developer Week.)

We do want to make LiveCycle more accessible to developers.

To understand how LiveCycle competes with open source PDF creation tools, its important to understand that there are two types of PDF documents: what I call static PDF documents and dynamic PDF documents.  Static forms are created in Acrobat, and are sometimes referred to as "AcroForms".  The PDF file is static (it does not grow or shrink in size), but in Acrobat or Adobe Reader it may contain interactive elements that people can fill out electronically.  For example, if you had an invoice, you would create the template with a set number of rows, and then hope that someone didn't order more items than the number of rows on the document.

On the other hand, dynamic PDF forms can grow or shrink in size depending on the data that is bound to the form.  So, say you have an invoice for products, it could be 1 page for 1 customer, and 10 pages for another customer who orders a lot of items.  To build that, you use LiveCycle Designer and create a PDF form, then use LiveCycle Forms to bind the data (likely in XML format) to the form.  Most of the free, open source tools out there do not handle this type of PDF document.  In fact, I haven't seen any solutions that do this, other than the Adobe LiveCycle set of products.

So, the question now becomes how does Flex fit into this?  The idea is that you would use a Flex front end to gather data, likely on a website.  At some point, you may want to continue filling in the form offline, or send the data to other people.  When the time comes to take that data offline, you pass the data to a PDF form (which was created with LiveCycle Designer), and then users are able to access that data in a PDF document.  They can send it to friends, do offline collaboration etc... When the time comes to send the data back to the organization's servers, a user would hit the submit button in the form and the data would be sent back to LiveCycle Forms, which will extract the data from the PDF form and allow the organization to process the data.

Once the data is in the PDF form, there are other LiveCycle pieces that may be of use as well.  Digital signatures, policy protecting that information, managing the form's workflow are all services that the LiveCycle set of products provides.  In the above example, I've focused only on taking the data off line, but once it is off line, the other LiveCycle products add additional functionality to the document / form.

technorati tags:livecycle, adobe, opensource, acrobat, flex

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July 06, 2006

Adobe Developer Week Recorded Sessions

In case you missed the sessions we had during Adobe Developer Week, they've all been recorded.  There's information on Adobe Apollo, LiveCycle, Flex, ColdFusion, Flex and LiveCycle, security, Ajax, and more.  Check them out at your leisure.

technorati tags:apollo, adobe, livecycle, ajax, flex2, coldfusion

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June 28, 2006

Flex 2 and Future Web Application Development

Flex 2 has been released (CNET coverage here, TechCrunch coverage, Digg the story).  You can buy it from the Adobe online store for $499, or $749 with the charting components included.  The SDK for Flex is free, as in beer, and there's a free version for Flex Data Services included as well.

This release marks an important milestone for Adobe, as my colleague Bill McCoy has discussed in his blog.  Some great web applications have been built with Ajax, but increasingly a number of them are using Flash in areas that the browser cannot handle: rich media integration (You Tube, Google Video and others use Flash to stream video), saving data locally (using the Flash Shared Object), applications that demand higher performance from the client (Flash code is compiled as opposed to Ajax / HTML code).  Google Finance is a great example of using Flex and Ajax together, and using Flash where it makes sense (rich graphics drawn on the client).

Yes, you can do some very cool things with Flex right now.  However, future development looks even brighter from an Adobe perspective.  Apollo will provide additional APIs to web applications that will allow them to integrate into the operating system - users will launch web applications just as they would a regular desktop application (with icons on the desktop / dock / taskbar), the ability to save large amounts of data on the local machine (not limited to the 100K default for the shared object), and perhaps most importantly the ability to develop an application once and then have it run on multiple operating systems (we've committed to making Apollo cross platform).  Watch a developer week session about Apollo.

Take that view of the future along with the ability to create mobile applications that run on FlashLite using the same set of technologies.  Plus, unlike other languages, building a mobile application for FlashLite will work across a variety of devices - anywhere that the FlashLite player is installed.  (Did you miss the announcement of the FlashLite deal with Verizon?)  Can you see why JD was so excited about this deal earlier this year?

Here are a few other links about the release:

The source code derived from the Eclipse code is available for download.

A version of Flash Player 9 for Linux is underway.  Follow the Penguin.swf blog for more information.

Flex.org is a new site that launched today as well, with resources for the community related to Flex.

FlexCoders.net has a list of Flex developers, if you're interested in building out a Flex project and need some help.  If you need work, register there.

For historical Flash designers / developers, Adobe Labs now has a preview of Flash Professional 9 with ActionScript 3.

technorati tags:adobe, flex, ria, ajax, opensource, flashlite, mobile, apollo

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June 23, 2006

Adobe MAX - More Information

Here is some more information from an FAQ that we will be launching next month for Adobe MAX 2006.

First of all, the location.  its being hosted at the Venetian Hotel in Las Vegas, from October 22nd to the 26th.  The Venetian hotel is located at 3355 S. Las Vegas Blvd in Las Vegas, NV.

The cost will be: Early bird (before September 25th) will be $1095.  The regular price will be $1295 and the onsite price will be $1495.  Note that all day hands on training sessions are priced in addition to your registration fee and are not mandatory for MAX 2006.

Attendance will be limited to current and prospective Adobe customers, 21 years of age and older.  Competitor registration at this event will not be accepted.  Children are not permitted to attend MAX 2006. 

Attire is casual for the entire week, but bring a sweater or sweat shirt.  Session rooms in the hotel can be cool (Mike's note: What is the point of going to Las Vegas in October if I still need to wear a sweat shirt!  I'm supposed to be leaving the cold weather in Canada at that time!)

There will be a limited number of rooms available at a special rate that you can book when you complete your registration for MAX 2006.

If you have other questions about MAX 2006, please email info@adobemax06.com.

technorati tags:adobe, max06, conferences

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Sys-Con Announces Real-World Flex Seminar in August

Sys-Con will be hosting and producing a day-long event about Adobe Flex.  The event will take place in New York on August 14th.  If you're interested in Flex or building applications with Flex, this is definitely something that you'll want to attend.

From the webpage, "The list of topics at the Real-World Flex Seminar includes:

technorati tags:flex, ajax, seminar, adobe, actionscript, coldfusion, apollo, mxml

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May 31, 2006

Have you registered for Adobe Developer Week?

Have you registered for the Adobe Developer Week yet? If not, then you should register now. There are a limited number of spaces that we can have in each session, and some of them are very, very close to filling up. Overall, the online conference is 75% full, and it will likely be full by the time the conference comes around.

If you have other Adobe products that you're interested in that we haven't covered in this session, please comment in this blog and let me know what else you'd like to see. We've had a lot of comments thus far, and are using these to try and drive online Breeze sessions for this summer.

May 19, 2006

Adobe Online Developer Conference

Adobe will be hosting a week long, online developer conference in June of this year, focusing on providing information about Adobe Flex, LiveCycle, ColdFusion, ActionScript, RIAs and the Adobe Engagement Platform. The Breeze sessions start on June 12th and run to Friday, June 16th. We will be recording all of them as well, so you'll be able to watch them if you can't make it live, but if you can, join us as we launch our first combined (Adobe + MM) online event.

I'm really excited to be a part of this. Some of the sessions are giving an overview of the products, but others, like Building Applications with LiveCycle and Flex, will showcase some of the early integration work that we've completed to date. I think this is a great idea to show off all the Adobe products, engage the community in intelligent discussions after some brief presentations, and show off the use of Breeze for large scale meetings like this.

I'm interested in your feedback on the sessions we've decided on. What do you think? Are we missing some topics that you'd like to see covered?

March 20, 2006

Adobe MAX Conference

If you're developing solutions with Adobe software, then you should probably book off October 22nd to the 26th... That's when the first Adobe MAX conference will be taking place, in Las Vegas. MAX was the name of Macromedia's largest show, and it will be continuing this year in October. More details should be coming in the next little while.