{A little over 2 years ago Adobe systems bought Macromedia and added their Flash software to an already impressive repertoire of applications. Since then, there has been much discussion regarding what direction Adobe would take with this very popular development platform. Contributing Editor Stan Coplan adds his thoughts and expands on the web development tools sector for 2008. ed}
If you were worried about what Adobe would do with Macromedia's Flash and other tools fear not. Thermo is on the way. Will Thermo replace Flash? From what I can tell the answer is no. Thermo will produce output that feeds Flex Builder. Flex Builder is an Adobe programming tool used to produce the SWF files that play in flash. Thermo will take your layered Photoshop files as input and produce MXML (XAML) output for use in Flex Builder. MXML and XAML and similar XML formats are used to describe a user interface (UI) in a human readable but very structured format.
As part of the conversion process it is easy to transform a text field from Photoshop into a text-input field for Flex Builder. In fact there are many possible transformations available. This makes it very easy to convert a graphic design directly into a mix of graphics and programming components. So the hand-off from design to programming should be very smooth, much better than what we have available today, if Thermo lives up to its promise. It’s possible that MXML and XAML will replace CSS, and the browser will become a container for Flash or Microsoft's Silverlight. Of course, that could all be changed by new products like Adobe AIR that bridge the desktop-web divide.
If you haven't yet seen the Adobe Thermo demo check it out in this 3 part video series from MAX, Adobe's annual tech-fest. Part 1(of 3)
The coming challenge to Adobe's Flash is Microsoft's Silverlight. Like Flash, Silverlight is a browser plug-in with the objective of delivering a new type of web experience that is consistent across browsers because it is not dependent on HTML, CSS, JavaScript and other client-side technologies that are implemented differently in each browser. The goal for Flash, Silverlight and similar browser plug-ins is to deliver an identical user experience regardless of the container.
Flash of course has a huge lead in installed base. Even Microsoft continues to use Flash on its own website and in promotional materials.
Microsoft's Expression suite of development tools (Web, Blend, Design, Media) are designed to streamline the web development process from end-to-end. Despite the idea that software development should start with things like wire-frames, business analysis and other rigorous strictures we all know this is not how most development happens. A designer is asked to mock-up some screen designs, which then proceeds to a prototype, followed by some testing and finally a business analysis and formal design to "fix" the deficiencies of the original mock-ups.
It is quite common to see a prototype thrown aside when it comes time
for application development. Both Adobe and Microsoft are trying to
address this problem. Adobe has a reputation for producing designer
friendly tools, Microsoft for programmer friendly tools. Adobe made
its mark making tools for the MAC then realized that porting its tools
to Windows would bring great returns. They also recognized a great
opportunity in the web so they bought Macromedia and with it Flash.
Microsoft made its mark with Office and servers for business then found
that owning the desktop is not enough, so they gave us Internet
Explorer and FrontPage. Both companies know that the competition for
the future centers on the web, and technologies that will bridge the
desktop-to-web divide. The fact is that Microsoft’s competition is not
Adobe, its Google. But Adobe’s competition is Microsoft. So it seems
that Google and Adobe have a common competitor.
So what else is out there for developing AJAX and .Net web apps? Take a look at Visual WebGUI by Gizmox.
It promises a lot... "Visual WebGui replaces all of the ASP.NET
methodologies which were designed for developing sites, with WinForms
methodologies, which were designed for developing applications." It's
open source, supports SilverLight, promises to bypass the need for
programming client-side JavaScript (it uses a thin client) and "Deploy
your Visual WebGui application as a desktop application or a web
application enjoying the best of both worlds." Basically it’s AJAX on
steroids.
And if you want to use Adobe's Flex as a cross platform app development tool take a look at WebORB from MidNight Coders, which promises "connectivity between rich clients created with Flex, Flash or AJAX and server-side applications developed with .NET, Java, Ruby on Rails, PHP or XML Web Services."
Microsoft has a plan for moving out to the web in bigger and better ways. Does Google have a plan for moving to the desktop, or are they just waiting for Microsoft to play their game on the Internet, their home turf? Waiting is never a good idea and Google looks like they are very busy, but they are not going head-to-head with Microsoft on the desktop…. Yet.
So where does that leave us? Let's see... Microsoft buys Yahoo, Google buys, um, Adobe! Microsoft gets a declining portal and some marketing muscle, Google gets some great graphics and design tools, some server technology, RIA (rich internet application) development tools (Flex is already open source), Flash in every browser and mobile device, and AIR as a gateway to the desktop.
Perspectives 
