MAX 2004: Keynote videos online is a post from: Blog in Black

Diane’s pics

MAX 2004: Another set of pics is a post from: Blog in Black

Breeze (Tom Hale & Peter Ryce):

- What if you never miss an online meeting/conference call? They showed an integration of cell phone notification calls in Breeze. If I got it right, it’s codename is “Bora Bora” Great idea!

Fireworks:

- Several new features like an improved red-eye reduction, text along free paths etc. Really new is a “Save as…” feature… Hmm, maybe I’m not so enthustiastic as I’m not a designer

Mobiles/Devices (Christian Peterson):

- Chris demoed some tiny Flash Lite animation and how to use the animations in Flashcast also. Cool stuff! Love to play with that in detail!

Flex (Ely Greenfield):

- “Mr. Flex” showed several feature of the new Flex 1.5 charting engine. It’s nice to see how fast Flex 1.5 is now and that the chart resizes itself to a given window size! Drag&Drop within the charting engine also works perfectly! Ely just presented live data charting in Flex… That’s a huge one, but I’m quite sure that this is not in 1.5 right now

Knowledge Base and Captivate:

- There WILL BE a knowledge base soon. Unbelievable They made it. The “somehow-difficult-to-find-content-technotes-area” will be transferred in something completely new…;) They presented a very new structured mechanism to search and find things online.
- Silke Fleischer showed how to record web site browsing from Captivate with recording audio and editing the audio later on. Captivate generates a nice and smooth Flash movie from it.

Dreamweaver (Rob Christensen):

- Some ideas of the next version of DW… a tighter integration of XML and XSLT. Hey, Dreamweaver will not KILL your XML files from the next version on No it will be able to deal with it and to allow building apps with using XSLT to transfer XML formats. Cooooool!
- A much better integration of CSS layouts for building web layouts.
- There will be a Homesite-like vertical toolbar! YEAH!
- Unbelievable: There will be code snippets and code shrinking options with a nice tooltip as a mouse-over effect
- The next release of DW will have a zoom tool which allows to zoom in and out in the design view!

Flash (Mike Downey):

- Mike showed some more demos using the Flash Player codename “Maelstrom”. It’s huge how fast this is going to become! Incredible
- “8Ball” brings a brilliant shadowing effect using filters. Totally easy, just klick on “drop shadow” and it’s there… using the property inspector there are tons of new options, blend modes, alphas etc.
- changing the joins of a stroke using a simple drop-down-list. Same with applying a gradient to a stroke.
- an easy way to change the direction of the gradient and applying further effects to it!

Central (Daniel Dura):

- Daniel shows a Flex Amazon Browser and how to have it running in Central – this is available NOW with Flex 1.5 and Central 1.5. Great, you can make use of the Central API for Flex now…
- Central versions which really embeds in the desktop, like with or without the console or transparent windows on your screen. Additionally he showed totally integrated Central apps running on Windows.

CF Blackstone (Damon Cooper):

- Bluescreen So far to the words of Blackstone being as stable as CFMX 6.1 *g* Damon takes the time to reboot to talk about some new features in Blackstone as Gateways, Multithreading etc. Due to time reasons – no preso..;-(

Now we’re heading for the User Group Reception down in our hotel and after that we’re going over to Mardi Gras World for the Night Event…

MAX 2004: Sneak peak live blogging is a post from: Blog in Black

MAX 2004 User Group Reception and Special Nght Event

MAX 2004: Wednesday sneak peak session

Have fun

MAX 2004: Again new pics… is a post from: Blog in Black

My first session was about ActionScript 2. For my special purpose it was out of focus a bit as it was an introduction with a lot of basics but Leo Schuman did a fantastic jobs presenting the topic clearly and in a very appropriate manner!

Soon up is a hands-on workshop about game developing with Flash Lite 1.1, which I really look forward to, as I just played a bit with that up to now and just created a single game together with my colleague Claudius. If anyone is interested, we should be able to provide it here…;)

After lunch I’m going to take another hands-on dealing with the integration of Cetral 1.5 and Flex 1.5. Highly looking forward to it as I didn’t make it yet to deal further with this integration.

More later…

MAX 2004: Thursday morning is a post from: Blog in Black

It’a amazing how you could leverage your cell phones features in a flash game even!

MAX 2004: Hands-on on building games for Flash Lite 1.1 is a post from: Blog in Black

MAX 2004: My last hands-on during this years conference is a post from: Blog in Black

Tuesdays keynote

User Group Visibility Event during the sponsor reception

MAX 2004 Tuesdays pics online is a post from: Blog in Black

We went to lunch with some people of Macromedia which leaded to have me missing my hands-on session on Flex and Central cause we talked to much with the guys. No, I won’t tell about the topics and with whom we met

During the late afternoon I went to Steven Websters session on Architecting Rich Internet Applications. Holly shit, this was the best session I ever went to during a Macromedia conference. Packed full with knowledge and information about software architectures, design patterns and how to use the stuff for archtecting Flex applications. Usually one could expect that type of session on a J2EE developers conference and not on a Macromedia conference…;) Interesting how the focus changes step by step… Great work, Steven!

During the sponsor reception the User Group Management Team started the usual visibility event. This year all UG managers had to talk to other people on the reception, tell them about User Groups and leave them a voucher for joining the big reffle at the end of the night. Fun thing!

MAX 2004: My Tuesday afternoon is a post from: Blog in Black

Sorry folks, I’m just a human and still not upgraded to a blogging robot But I’ll do my best. For example I haven’t been able to blog this morning about the keynote because I took the CTT+ certification exam and didn’t attend the keynote at all – please leave congratulations in the comments…:-)

The next entry is about my todays sessions – finally…

MAX 2004: Complaints on too less blogging ;-) is a post from: Blog in Black

So far I went to a session dealing with how to develop user infaces for mobile applications which was very good and interesting. Now I’m hanging around in another one which is about how to develop channels for Flashcast servers.

Folks, if there is the first carrier in Germany is going to support Flash and/or Flashcast, we’ll see a totally new market of applications. That’s a promise, it’s unbelievable what’s possible to do with that technology!

MAX 2004: Wednesdays sessions is a post from: Blog in Black

MAX 2004: Sneak peak session is a post from: Blog in Black

Today I attended Community College which consisted of several product- or User Groups-related sessions. Not to forget meeting a lot of people again which I usually just meet once a year, like Todd Sanders from Austin CFUG and a bunch of other people.

Starting with 5 pm we visited the MAX 2004 Welcome Reception which took place in the exhibition hall. That one was quite fun as they had some New Orleans band over playing music while people were drinking imported beer (European beer…sic!) and had food…

At 7 pm we took a shuttle transfer back to the Hilton to have a look at the Macromedia Product Support Reception, which was a nice fantastic event also as it was very nice to meet some people who you usually just know from email contact. With this opportunity I met John Cummings (CF support) and Tom Link (Flex) finally.

After some beers starting at 5 pm it’s now time to rest, blog and upload some pics…;)

MAX 2004: Pre-conference day is a post from: Blog in Black

New Orleans impressions

Community College

MAX 2004: Pre-conference night events

MAX 2004: New pics online is a post from: Blog in Black

Macromedia announced that from mid-November on there will be a customized version of Contribute 3 which allows people trading via Ebay to maintain their auctions simple and easy. The product will contain hundreds of templates for auctions so that it should be quite easy to start with.

Additionally, if you already own Contribute 3 there will be a free download containing the Ebay Store Builder Extension. Price for Contribute 3 Ebay will be 99 US$.

MAX 2004: Contribute 3 Ebay is a post from: Blog in Black

- Blackstone ist upcoming – ouppps, that’s “brand new”
- Flex 1.5 is available form now on which means that all 1.0 customers with a maintenance plan get Flex 1.5 for free
- Contribute 3 Ebay will be available during the month (see my last post)
- The next version of the Flash Player (“Maelstrom”) will be shown to the audience during the next days

MAX 2004: new products is a post from: Blog in Black

Additionally there is a new developer program for mobile devices developers, information available on http://www.macromedia.com/devnet/devices/dev_program/index.html

MAX 2004: Macromedia puts much more effort in mobiles is a post from: Blog in Black

MAX 2004: Tuesday morning is a post from: Blog in Black

Kevin Lynch followed with showing a lot of examples apps in the fields of Rich Internet Applications and how that field has developed over the last years. Nice: he presented the Vodafone “Handyfinder” (cell phone selection tool), which has been built by the company I work for.

Additionally we saw some exciting demos of CF Blackstone (delivered by the famous Tim Buntel and Ben Forta – who else , Flex 1.5 and …WOW…the Flash Player 8 release with codename Mealstrom. And guys – this was incredible. I saw apps and movies running in brilliant quality totally smooth, without getting the player to slow down etc. Expect FP 8 to be the killer app in terms of Rich Internet Development – and we don’t just talk about animation – also rendering of UI Components… again…WOW…

MAX 2004: Tuesday General session is a post from: Blog in Black

Some good news, my friend and co-worker Alex also arrived in the US after he got some trouble getting a valid passport to enter the US after the changes concerning the immigration policy after 26th of October…

To expect tomorrow is the CF_UNDERGROUND VI where I’m going to speak about some abstact ideas about ColdFusion and Flex. Or – to be precise, where I intend to speak as due to a strong cold I’m not sure how I’ll be able to talk tomorrow. But no worries – if it won’t work, Alex will give the talk following my slides

There are no final plans for tomorrow night (Halloween). Nice might be “Boo at the Zoo” as Diane and I are big zoo fans and we’re still missing New Orleans in the collection of visited zoos, we’ll see…

More about all that and some pics to expect for tomorrow – need sleep now!

Finally arrived… is a post from: Blog in Black