Kevin Lynch of Macromedia, a Platinum Sponsor of the conference, is showing an alpha compile of “Central.” It seems to make it easy to tie together apps. The first example is of a directory that pulls together info from a variety of sources. It looks a lot like a demo of a portal product but I’m sure it’s much more exciting than that. I just don’t know why. Maybe it’s the way the various apps (e.g., directory listing and the technorati link cosmos for the person’s blog) communicate and update. Via web services?

In another example, clicking on an entry in a directory pulls up an office map with the person’s sube marked. I’m not seeing what this is an interesting example of.

Developers can build Central apps and Central manages the distribution and fees.!

Aha! Tim O’Reilly asks the first question which is basically a statement about why Central matters: It’s like Sherlock on the Mac OS X in that it gives a new way of browsing. It combines the nearly ubiquitous Flash with Web services to treat the Web as a collection of re-usable apps and data, played in a rich client. Thanks, Tim!

Question: If you’re trying to replace the Web with Flash, what do you do about accessibility for the blind? And isn’t this bolted on top of an animation engine [and thus is inefficient]?

Answer: Yes, it is bolted on top. But performance is sufficient. And it runs across all the platforms on which Flash runs. As far as accessibility goes: Macromedia tries to be a leader, with accessibility support for Dreamweaver. Flash supports hooks into the accessibility features of the operating system.

Question: I feel like we’ve rediscovered client/server.

Question: Why not just do it in Javascript and SVG?

Answer: You could, but they weren’t designed for building apps, and with Center you don’t have to worry about a cross platform client.

Question: When are you going to improve the integrated development environment for Flash? We’re tired ot calculating pixel widths in order to resize windows.

Answer: We’re working on it.

[I guess I’m still bothered by the prospect of more and more of the Web being moved onto a proprietary platform.]

This just showed up from “Chris” on the discussion for this entry. I found it helpful:

It’s interesting because of the scale of the userbase (and it autoinstalls), and the fact that it will be everywhere – computers, cell phones, any connected appliance. One of the really neat features is the auto-updating, and working when not in Internet coverage. For cell phones, this is the most important aspect for apps, and one that each developer has to solve themself. Having a central mediator for all this potential traffic is useful.

Categories: Uncategorized dw