JD on EP

The only problem of Flash is that it happened as an "accident", wasn't thought or designed to become was Adobe pretend it is now. I don't care about what MS says, but I do care when I go to telecoms and companies to propose services and when we tried to put in evidence that it was running on the FlashLite platform, they just said "No, thank you".

"...It seems that from querying people related to the product that MS is not completely familiar with all that is going on with Adobe as they still think of Flash as a gaming and animation environment and they think of PDF as a static environment. Both statements have not been true for quite some time now..."

Err.. You're kidding right? You do realise there is quite a lot of ex-Adobe / ex-Macromedia employees sitting in Microsoft right now and just shaking their head at that one comment.

[jd sez: Scott, that was someone else. If there are actually are other staffers shaking, then I might suggest a remedial reading course.]

I'd even argue most in Microsoft understand Adobe better then Adobe staffers themselves.

A guy visits Microsoft for 15sec and assumes he has the pulse of our approach with products going forward. I've been at Microsoft 3 months now, and I can say simply this. We have a strategic approach that's beyond Flash offerings, Flash feature for feature is somewhat small compared to the forward direction we are heading and it's not about Flash vs WPF/e or WPF. It's much bigger then that, only it's clear you for instance aren't getting that.

Bottom line is Endry is right, Macromedia's orginal focus was Multimedia. Give the devs/designers the capability of using Flash IDE to produce Audio/Video/Animation online. You guys screwd up when you decided to shift focus away from this core piece and decided you needed to get some of that enterprise action by riding on the pipedream that just because Flash Platform is buried deep within corporate firewalls, that somehow this would open up more revenue streams.

I say this with total respect for the approach initially, but somewhere along the line it has gone pairshape and while some Adobe staffers may reject Microsoft for all it stands (that' cool, different strokes for different folks), I and many others like me whom have switched from Adobe/Macromedia to Microsoft have uncovered a world of potential and possibilities.

In the time it has taken to build WPF, WPF/e and the tools that are used to make them while at the same time we've built an operating system on a size that's never been done before - do you think for one minute these guys are fumbling their way through the approach? (I'll give my respect to the teams outloud, what they have done in 2 years outstrips Adobe's approach in the same amount of time).

C# for example is a piece of the overall puzzle that gives me a passport into all Microsoft products. ActionScript? it gives me a passport to FLEX..

Focus on Flash IDE for the core bread and butter that got Adobe/Macromedia to the runtime table in the first place and less screwing around with LiveCycle.

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Scott Barnes
Developer Evangelist
Microsoft.

A friend once told me, "don't edit peoples posts anymore dude, it looks like you're shouting them down"... tip for ya (i've done it in the past, but he was right).

Anyway, David's got some insight into what makes them tick, what they see and don't see... worth a read, if you're trying to understand Microsoft's "experience" rap.

I think your trailing comments are hinting in the direction of your preference around David's quote.

John,

I'm Chris Bernard and I work for Microsoft also (So I’m a paid hack just like you and our resident pitbull Barnes). You and I are in agreement that saying things like 'Flash is evil' is a stupid thing to say. It would have been very easy to give some quantifiable reasons about things they don’t like about Flash if they wanted and they didn’t really say much but you’re also leaving it up to the reader to infer the context in which those statements were made—which is not nearly as nefarious a picture as you paint.

But this mashup of a post isn’t going to encourage those folks to stroll over here and have a dialog if that’s really what you want. You also ignore the fact that a good chunk of that talk was a very self-critical look at MS and where we are with some parts of our technology as well. I rarely see folks on your site of fence pausing for that self-reflection.

This post somehow tries to connect David’s experience (which you link as Understanding Flash Smack) as somehow related to these guys and the impression that they gave Brian. You also misattribute the quote to Dave, he wasn’t at a Microsoft sponsored bootcamp at all, he wasn’t at the talk with Chris and Don and he hired a third party to work with him on Blend (Also note that Don is not a staffer at Microsoft). If anything you should have called the link to his story Microsoft Blend Smack. I don’t think he’s saying anything disparaging about Adobe at all. He’s simply sharing his own frustrations and successes with the tool. You do the same thing over at Scoble’s blog when you make a sweeping statement that Microsoft pays for all the work that people do with WPF when in fact none of the projects that were shown over there by the firm Thirteen23.com were created with any funding or oversight from MS. Just like we do occasionally pay folks to create stuff for us I would suspect you do also, again--this is manufacturing drama over something both groups do.

Your mashup post takes three different threads and tries to connect the dots where there are none. There are so many legitimate ways to elevate the level of discourse (in fact like David’s post attempts to or the FULL post that Brian put up) that we have about both our technologies that you don't really need to really need to obfuscate facts. Both companies make enough mistakes and say enough stupid things that reaching like this does your employer no favors.
You’ve added so much to the community over the past five years that there’s simply no need for you to manufacture drama, Adobe has a great story and is making some powerful promises with Flash, Flex and Adobe just as Microsoft is with it's own stack, I'd be concerned if the end-state goal was to to have the MS-version of Flash, I can assure that is not the case and the interactive community in general would/should have reason to scratch there head if that were the case. I DON’T think this is a zero-sum game at all and will politely disagree with Chris and Don.

If we jump ahead five years I think we’re going to see lots of Flash, Apollo, WPF and WPF/E based technology out there and we’ll have a much clearer picture of the scenarios that drive a customer to one set of technology, the other, or both.

In conclusion, I'll extend an offer. If you ever want ME to comment on something MS says I'll do my best as long as you'll provide me the courtesy over at my Blog when someone over at Adobe does the same thing. We can be the diplomats in this whole process. Cheers.

Chris Bernard
User Experience Evangelist, Microsoft
www.DesignThinkingDigest.com

Yes, a remedial reading course might help. A writing limit may help too, a "skip intro" for text.

"You and I are in agreement that saying things like 'Flash is evil' is a stupid thing to say." Actually, I've been agnostic, seeking to understand what they were trying to say, and whether they even confirm the third-party report of their speech at all. It's pretty simple.

(fwiw, the only search results for "Endry Deloir", at Google, Yahoo, and Live, is on my weblog.)

jd

b.s jd :) you're post's last sentence agreed with Dave's position. You started out with the pitch "i'm just a student of all this" but you didn't follow through and you ended with a confirmation that you thought dave's post had merit. Thus my response "you're on crack if you think that's going to fly with the whole of MSFT" rant :)

Key words are "worth a read" if you're trying to understand Microsoft's "experience" rap"

Is there a jd guide to blogging rule book lying around as you keep coming up with these "rules" about posting comments etc and i'll be damned if i can find it :) how about you respond to Endry Deloir's comment? or is that to in the "to hard pile" :)

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SB / Microsoft.

Update: Chris Anderson has a post (dated Apr2, but I didn't see it Apr5) acknowledging Ben's transcript, and saying " I only have one objection with his transcription", that being a potential dogging of the IE team by a missed quote. I guess that means he stands behind the rest of the transcript, although it would still be good if he just said what he means, himself.

Nothing new at the blog of Don Box.

l'm pretty sure Microsoft will lose, only because they're trying to hard "to win". The world actually isn't a zero-sum game, so they will have difficulties in achieving their stated goal.