Long, long time ago there was a company called Adobe that changed the aim of a great platform like Flash, so Flash became from “write once, run everywhere” to a platform where developers could create games, mobile apps and desktop apps but not everywhere.
But a day Adobe decide to collaborate with Microsoft to create a Flash Player with amazing performance on tablets and on desktop too, and that moment my brain started to imagine a new future, maybe impossible, maybe a nightmare or maybe a dream…come with me in this fantastic story!
We can start with Adobe side, they donate Flex framework to Apache foundation, so MXML, FalconJS, Blaze and so on are now in this great foundation where communities are working on the new release of Flex framework 4.8.
Adobe is working a lot on HTML5 and JS side to create new tools for designers and they are moving fast on mobile side too with Phonegap.
Adobe stuff are mainly (or trying to be) cross-platform, so contents made with Adobe solutions work on Android, iOS, Mac OS X and Windows.
In the other hand we have Microsoft with C# (that is powerful and easy to write for a Flash Platform developer with good skills in development), XAML (the Microsoft answer to Flex), WPF, XNA and Silverlight; an ecosystem dedicated mainly to Microsoft OS from desktop to XBox.
Microsoft is trying to promote JS on develop contents for its new operating system: Windows 8.
Microsoft has Expression Studio that is the “poor baby” for a web designer that is more comfortable with Photoshop, Illustrator, Flash so with the Creative Suite!
Last week everybody read about the Adobe and Microsoft partnership for delivering Flash Player on Windows 8 (desktop & metro), but if they are working on that, maybe a day they’ll talk about AIR… this is they key of the story.
Try to imagine.
Adobe has a total penetration of Flash Player on desktop, with AIR you can work easily on desktop and on iOS, Android and QNX OS (BlackBerry one) then they are working on new tools for the future of web on HTML 5, CSS3 and JS like Muse, Edge and Dreamweaver too.
Microsoft has a lot of money they don’t have a cross platform ecosystem (there are some third party solutions like Mono but are not the same), they have strong technologies and partnership (Nokia for example).
And what do you think will happen if Microsoft plans to buy Adobe?!
Imagine a day where a developer using Visual Studio and writing C# and XAML could define to export own project on desktop with AIR, or better on mobile OS or in a browser in HTML5 with the same (I mean the SAME) base of code, same tools of development and an amazing integrating workflow from the idea to the software delivery…so WOW!!!
Bringing the powerful of Microsoft and the smart technologies of Adobe could be an amazing opportunities for both companies, and for developers too, to innovate in the best way ever the multimedia era.
This could be a real dream… what is missing now, probably, is to find a driver that lead the multimedia scenario because everyday we receive tons of emails about new framework, new technologies, new programming languages and developers are scared to bring a direction because probably it will not be the right one, probably next week or next month they will have to study another one and another one again…
Dear reader, try to imagine a world where you can really focused on create the silver bullet software, without think which will be the new JS framework or which are the new features of the latest Flex release… a world where you have only to think about contents in the best… maybe it could be a dream or maybe could be a the best place to live… sorry… to code.
UPDATE
There is another fact that I remember only now… by the end of 2010 Adobe and Microsoft CEOs meet in Microsoft headquarters to talk about what?!
It could be another indication of my conspiracy theory… maybe we’ll have some surprises next year!
lucamezzalira.com 