JD on EP

I think it makes sense to augment the capabilities of Central/Apollo to include PDF capabilities. I'm happy with this direction. It also makes sense that the integration of .swf+.pdf will take several years, and it will be done right - as opposed to a rapid lash-up.

But the universal (desktop/console) client (Apollo) needs to hit the streets soon. Developers need to know about it now. You need a compelling economic incentive to encourage developers to adopt the flash platform, as opposed to the competition. We need to know how the 'solutions' layer (ref: to Kevin Lynch's white paper), will enable consumers to try and buy our applications.. Adobe need to establish a market presence now, or leave things wide open to the competition. Adobe need to think about how the desktop and mobile technologies will interact. How these markets will cross-stimulate and encourage growth in use of the flash platform. You need to focus developers on a new class of ubiquitous applications.

When will things start to happen?

Maybe the new runtime should make coffee also? This is the sort of direction that kills an excellent product "let's turn it into the swiss army knife of the web".
How often have we all seen universal turn into unusable.

Thanks for the amends. I'm sure you're well aware that the Flash community's biggest fear in the Adobe acqusition is the idea that the Flash Player will become a bloated, 20-odd megabyte download that will attempt to do everything on the web but only succeed in alienating users. And I'm also sure you have no plans to do this... so please tread carefully!

From my understanding, it would be very possible for a future version of the Flash Player to read in PDFs and display them natively in the FP rather than just bolting on Adobe's current PDF reader.

Well, hopefully that's what you're planning!

I'm satisfied with Adobe Reader for reading pdf-helps and science materials and I really don't need more

Nice inacessible CAPTCHA there, JD.

The world doesn't need another browser that handles PDF and Flash. We have enough such browsers. (Start with Safari.) The last thing developers need is another browser with quirks to work around. Even if you use the Opera rendering engine, which would seem likely based on previous business dealings, I guarantee that the Flash and PDF "integration" will cause further bugs.

Then of course you have to deal with Web-browser, Flash, and PDF accessibility simultaneously. Do you really think that will be nice and easy? Will it not actually be more than three times as hard as making each of those technologies accessible?

Thanks for the amends. I'm sure you're well aware that the Flash community's biggest fear in the Adobe acqusition is the idea that the Flash Player will become a bloated, 20-odd megabyte download that will attempt to do everything on the web but only succeed in alienating users. And I'm also sure you have no plans to do this... so please tread carefully!