One of the main forces driving the innovation and the development of the software at Adobe is seeing where developers are pushing the edge of what's possible to implement, and then enabling more developers to accomplish that kind of work.

Taking the way-back machine to 2001, you would see the web being widely used and the early signs of web sites containing not only pages but also interactive applications. These applications were primarily using HTML forms and relying on web servers for processing the form information. A handful of leading edge developers were working to implement a more responsive interaction by taking advantage of client-side processing with ActionScript in Flash. One of the earliest examples of successful interactive applications was a hotel reservation system, which moved from a multi-page HTML form to a one-screen, highly interactive reservation interface that increased their online reservations by 89%.

Clearly, responsiveness matters as it creates a much more effective, engaging experience. However, in 2001 there was a lot to be desired in terms of performance, power of the scripting language, ease of debugging, and design constraints for applications within browsers.

We did a lot of brainstorming and talked extensively to developers at that time and decided to embark on a mission to enable this trend, naming the category "rich internet applications" (RIA). To better support RIAs, we aimed to create:

During the dot-com bust, we held onto the vision of enabling this future world of rich internet applications. We continued to invest in building out a range of technologies and prepared for the day that innovation on the web would ignite again. The days of innovation have now returned in full force and I am delighted to see rich internet applications coming into their own with Web 2.0. Developers are creating applications with a range of technologies and frameworks that tap into the distributed creativity of the internet -- taking advantage of HTML, Flash, Flex, Ajax, and balancing logic between the client and server.

The new virtual machine has been delivered now in Flash Player 9, enabling ActionScript 3 to run an order of magnitude faster and implement the most recent work on the ECMA standard for the language (JavaScript follows this same standard). This modern implementation has also now been released as open source with the Mozilla Foundation as the Tamarin project, enabling the Flash Player team to work with Mozilla engineers and others in the open source community to continue optimizing the virtual machine and keeping up with the most recent standards work. This core scripting engine will be incorporated over time in Firefox, bringing more consistency across scripting in HTML and Flash.

The development framework has also been delivered today as Flex, enabling rapid development through common patterns for interaction and data management, with the whole framework built in ActionScript 3. The Flex framework is available for free, and the framework source code is included so you can see exactly how it works. You can use any editor to write code using Flex, and a specific IDE is also available, called Flex Builder.

As we saw innovation on the web returning and were pursuing this vision, that's when we decided to unite efforts across Adobe and Macromedia. While Macromedia was driving rich Internet applications with Flash, Adobe was innovating in delivery of electronic documents, among other areas. We both saw over time that Macromedia would be adding electronic document capability to RIAs and that Adobe would add RIA capability around electronic documents. Rather than pursue those paths separately and duplicate efforts, we joined forces to deliver our vision for the next generation of documents and RIAs, bringing together the world's best technology for electronic documents and the world's best, most pervasive technology for RIAs. It's really a powerful combination of technology and teams.

After we announced the merger, we created a "clean room" team to plan for our next generation of software, drawing on everything we've learned to date as well as from the potential of bringing Flash, PDF and HTML together in the new Apollo environment for rich internet applications. The Apollo project is actually our third attempt at creating this new environment. The first two attempts were part of an experimental project called Central which was code named Mercury and then Gemini after the United States space program, and the current work code named Apollo. We learned a lot from those first two projects, and as I like to remind the team, Apollo is the one that actually went to the moon.

With Apollo, you can leverage existing web development skills (HTML, Flash, JavaScript, Ajax, Flex) to build and deploy RIAs to the desktop. Just like web publishing allowed anyone with basic HTML skills to create a website, Apollo will enable anyone with basic web development skills to create a desktop application. The HTML engine in Apollo is WebKit, which is open source and is also used Apple's Safari browser.

Apollo enables people to more easily maintain a connection with information in their web applications. Just like a desktop app, Apollo applications have an icon on the desktop, in the Windows start menu, or in the OS X dock. Also, when you're running a web application today, it's a separate world from your computer. You can't easily integrate local data with your web app. For example, you can't just drag and drop your local contacts onto a web-based mapping application to get directions to your friend's house. With Apollo applications you will be able to this kind of integration as it bridges the chasm between your computer and the Internet.

I believe Apollo represents the beginning of a new medium as the best of the web and the best of the desktop come together. These applications are fun to build and if you start early, you'll be able to deliver capabilities in your applications that others won't have yet -- especially in terms of increasing the presence of your application on the computer and bridging the web and the desktop. This is an alpha version of Apollo, and the Apollo team is looking forward to your feedback and wishes -- there are also mailing lists and forum discussion to reach other people working on Apollo or to report issues you find.

The Apollo team and I are very much looking forward to seeing what everyone creates, and to the next generation of applications ahead. We have an opportunity to keep pushing the boundaries of what's possible on the internet to make the experience more engaging and effective for people around the world.

Tim O'Reilly wrote a great overview of what he means by Web 2.0, which are essentially design patterns and business models for the next generation of software. The shorter term results are things like easier sharing of photos with your friends and family, finding the most interesting things to read, and getting new insights on information by combining data like rental listings with their locations on a map. Longer term, this "architecture of participation" could mean harnessing collective intelligence across the Internet to solve increasingly difficult problems around the world, as also envisioned by Doug Engelbart.

In terms of building applications for Web 2.0, I believe the key underlying theme is the separation of data and user interface through open data formats, RSS/Atom feeds, and programming interfaces made publicly available. This enables not only a revolution in machine to machine communication, as all the excitement about web services has been about, but also human to machine as we're seeing with remixing applications and new user interfaces on data.

There is clearly a resurgence in how HTML can be used to deliver application user interfaces and terrific progress has been made on that. In addition, Flash brings capabilities that HTML doesn't currently have, and they can be used together to great benefit -- in fact, Flash has already been architected to fit perfectly in the Web 2.0 model. For example, Adaptive Path has been working on a great new application called MeasureMap that helps people track traffic on their blogs and is being built with a combination of HTML and Flash on the client. Another is how Flickr is using both HTML and Flash, for example implementing the organizer and slideshow with Flash and the photo index with HTML. The language in Flash is ActionScript which is the same as JavaScript, both ECMA standard languages, and it's very simple to call between code in HTML and Flash, enabling smooth integration with a free open-source integration kit. This is not about Flash vs. HTML or Ajax. It's using Flash + HTML with the Ajax approach to build Web 2.0 applications (to be fully buzzword compliant).

There are many examples of applications built in Flash, though building them is not what a lot of people would call easy as the current Flash authoring tool and programming model were optimized for more creative uses such as animations. What we're working on now are a set of technologies to make building applications and components much easier and for the results to run much faster.

These technologies include the upcoming Flash Player 9 which has a new virtual machine that runs several times faster -- it has been in development for over two years and is aimed squarely at providing a high performance Web 2.0 client runtime with a just in time compiler, runtime error checking, support for E4X (which makes XML a first class data type in scripting so you can easily use XML in code) and compliance with the standard ECMA language definition. The second technology is the Flex Framework, a programming model that enables developers to use an XML based language to build apps much more intuitively along with integrated scripting. And third, a tool called Flex Builder that is being developed on the Eclipse open source framework, is designed for developers, combines code editing with visual layout of applications, and has a compiler built right in. For a demo of how quickly you'll be able to build applications with this, please check out the video where you can see a photo search app built in about five minutes.

A major advantage of using the Flash Player for Web 2.0 applications is consistent development across operating systems and browsers and a lot less overhead programming around differences and needing to debug and test on every configuration. The Flash Player has more reach than any browser or operating system, and is being distributed faster than any other technology I know of on the Internet today which means innovation on client technology can be deployed to over 80% of people on the Web in about a year and then reach 98% a little while later.

This transformation of Flash from purely an animation engine to a runtime for rich media and rich internet applications has been happening for several years now, though many people aren't yet aware of these capabilities. Some things I find many people don't realize about Flash include: an active open source community around Flash; support for more sophisticated local storage than what the browser provides along with more control for users; Google does in fact index Flash; two-way live audio/video communication is built in along with support for synchronized data transmission for collaborative apps; Flash supports accessible applications including integration with screen readers; it's actually the most widely distributed video player on the web; it supports sockets (which enable push of data from servers rather than the request-only model) in either XML or with the new client in any binary format.

Also, there is currently support for integration with backend infrastructure through web services or REST interfaces from the Flash Player today. The new Flash Player 9 has even stronger enterprise data connectivity including client support for Flex Enterprise Services which enables use of message queues, integration with JMS, remote procedure calls, and data synchronization. This enables not only simple applications like photo viewers, but also sophisticated business applications.

We're making this next generation available in early stages so we can collaborate with the community around it and make sure we're all building the right stuff. Alpha releases of Flash Player 9 and Flex Builder will be available for hacking Web 2.0 applications starting at the MAX developer conference on October 17 and posted at macromedia.com/go/web2.

As the amount of information people interact with increases it can become quite overwhelming, and we need better techniques to deal with the flow not only from a data capture perspective but also from a user interface perspective. In a way, there may be more information to pay attention to with the introduction of attention trust feeds!

One approach to this is to provide ways to scale the amount of attention required at different points in time, rather than attention being an all or nothing affair. Below is a diagram showing the relationship between the current focus of attention on some information and its degree of presence on the display. As focus increases on particular information, more of the display can be used to represent it, and as focus decreases that information can be relegated to a smaller or even no presence on the display.

Good applications should support the fluid transition between these levels as the user focuses on various information throughout the day, and developers need frameworks and tools to help present this information effectively across the web.

For example, you might be looking for a rental apartment and interact with a great rich UI showing available apartments on craigslist and might use that in context with a mapping application to understand relative locations. After choosing the apartments you're interested in, you might add a small display to your desktop to observe new listings that appear via the craigslist RSS feed so you can keep an eye on the range of what's available. When you get a better idea of what you want, a notification can be set to just let you know when a new listing becomes available that matches your criteria. Occasionally the focus of attention may increase again to explore more detail and then shift back to a low level. Once you find what you're looking for, you can of course ignore the information completely.

Technically, this works using two techniques:

1. Calling from ActionScript to JavaScript on a web page. This is accomplished by using getURL in ActionScript, for example a function named "displayPost" can be called from ActionScript to JavaScript:

  getURL("javascript:displayPost(" + postId + "," + feedId +")");

2. Calling from JavaScript to ActionScript. This was more challenging to do successfully across browsers, as the only time browsers support passing variables into Flash is when it's first loaded on the page. We've solved this by creating a JavaScript class that dynamically loads a very small Flash object to receive a function call, which immediately passes that information to the target Flash app on the page.

This kind of connection can enable a lot great combinations of Flash and JavaScript on web pages. We're working on a toolkit that contains a better description of these techniques and the code that supports using them.

I've gotten to know Bruce Chizen, Shantanu Narayen and others at Adobe over the past few years (I've known some other folks at Adobe for even a longer time) and we all share a common vision for the future of content and internet applications across multiple operating systems, devices and media. There have been times when this led us to conflict as we worked in similar areas, but today we find ourselves having worked on different parts of this vision and are in a very complementary position with our technology and our customers.

Together we will offer an incredible set of products.

Before I left I learned my flight was part of the new p.s. service on United between San Francisco and New York, which sounds good, but it appears that p.s. is currently pretty subtle as the change is largely the addition of a chocolate truffle at the end of the flight. Now, I am a fan of chocolate truffles, so that's all well and good, but was looking forward to the three-pronged power outlets, inflight DVD players and other innovations -- it seems the marketing materials are somewhat ahead of reality.

p.s., what I would *really* like is inflight wireless broadband

One of the side effects is that the current state of an application is not displayed in the browser's location URL, since RIAs don't need to make server requests for every user interaction like traditional HTML applications would. For example, selecting a book at Amazon.com currently displays a URL with a lot of application state information:

http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0262620952/qid=7556/
sr=1-1/ref=sr_1_1/102-5500034374543/102-0044014-6974543?v=glance&s=books

This is referred to as a REST (representational state transfer) architecture. A lot of this information is not very human readable, but embedded in there is the ISBN number for the book: 0262620952. Placing the state in the URL is useful in a couple ways: other internet applications can integrate with Amazon using a book's ISBN number to show books, and people can get the ISBN number from the current Amazon URL and do other things with it such as Jon Udell's Library Lookup bookmarklets which show whether the book is available at your local library. Recently Jon posed a question: can rich internet apps can be web-friendly in this way?

I believe the answer is yes -- this weekend I created an example showing how rich internet applications can display their current state in the URL as the user interacts locally. This enables a user to bookmark a particular state in the local application, and also enables rich internet applications to be composed with others through REST.

I've also posted the source code for the example, so you can see how it works. If you're developing applications in Flash or Flex I encourage you to display useful state information in this way so others can easily integrate and leverage your application with theirs across the internet.

These are a good example of purpose-built information applications that wrap interactivity around information, making it easier to explore and understand the data. As it becomes easier to build these kinds of applications, I think we will start to see what are essentially disposable applications that are built for short term use and then thrown away -- this is quite different than traditional applications that might take months to create and then be used for years.

The following is the collection that I followed mostly last night during the elections. The Associated Press syndicated a great group of election applications to the Wall Street Journal online as well as C-SPAN and others.

The BBC ran a great RIA that supported drilling down to each state in place on the map:

The New York Times ran a typical overview but also include a lot more background data such as spending by each candidate, and also provided an alternate view of the map arranged by electoral vote power:

The New York Times has also been running a great series of 79 interactive apps around the election events, including full video of debates and closing arguments:

CNN was also running a number of applications for election results in addition to an overview of campaign ad spending by state:

1. Expressive Content

The first category is expressive content, which is of course where Flash originated. While Flash continues to be designed to deliver rich experiences over low bandwidth connections, we're seeing a rapid increase in broadband connectivity which will enable even more richness. The best example of this is video on the web, and Flash is actually the #1 video player, bringing video capability to over 96% of the web. This kind of reach means that viewers don't have to select which player to use, the video can just start playing in place.

Toyota Isis
Philips Home Entertainment
Red Bull Copilot

2. Guided Selling

As many people are beginning to buy things online, there's an opportunity for us all to work on making those interactions much more effective. It can be challenging to find the right products online, configure those products once you do, and go through the check out process. There is a great opportunity to improve this with richer interactivity, and we're seeing Flash being used more and more to help address this. In these examples, you can see Flash is useful providing immediate feedback and reducing errors -- resulting in higher customer satisfaction and customers who will buy more and more often.

Nike iD
Vodafone (click on the Handy Finder item)
ANA (click on the button in the center labelled ANA Passport)
TJ Maxx (press Add to Cart, then Checkout)

3. Visual Analysis

As people begin working with large amounts of information it becomes hard to sift through and understand. This is a great opportunity to build rich internet apps to navigate through specific information. This enables people to get deeper insight, see patterns, and make faster decisions.

New York State Kids
BBC News
University of North Carolina (link not available publicly)

4. Streamline Business Processes

The experience isn't just important on the public internet, it's also relevant inside companies. As people are working with complex processes, there are great opportunities to improve productivity and reduce errors which will of course reduce costs. We showed examples of internal applications which aren't available publicly. They included Mazda's auto sales support application in Japan that works on PCs and on handhelds, as well as Seven Worldwide which has created an ERP application in Flash, which I believe is the largest Flash application in the world built with a couple hundred thousand lines of ActionScript. RIAs are a great solution inside companies as they eliminate installation and maintenence issues of native applications but still retain the rich interactivity of desktop apps.

PC and Mac Zones (screen recording of customer service rep app)

5. Effortless Communication

Flash is enabling richer communication over the internet, particularly with video today, enabling people to get their message across either one-one or one-many, live or prerecorded.

Microsoft
IBM
CNET
Salesforce.com

There are way more examples than we had time to show this morning -- here are some additional rich internet applications that I've come across recently:

NY Times Election Guide
LA Times
NY Times Interactive
CNN Campaign Ad Spending
Mark Fiore

Facing New York
Bob Schneider Music
Music Plasma

Mini USA
Nissan
Mazda
Volvo V50

Hold Everything
Wattyl Colour Visualizer
Grand Canyon Railway

Flickr
Ofoto
AOL.com (need to have an AOL account)
Comcast
Petrobras

Colin Moock was there and captured the demo on video. I normally talk about twice as fast as you'll hear in it, but needed to slow down for translation to Japanese (you can hear the translation happening in the background a bit).

While this demo doesn't yet show all the new things we're working on, you can see that there's a big focus on performance and expressiveness.

What's shown:

Realtime video alpha channel: video will have the added capability of a transparent alpha channel, enabling live composition of non-rectangular video on top of background elements (even other background video).

Overall I believe this is shaping up to be the most significant Flash Player release ever. There will be another demo of the future Flash Player in the keynote at the Macromedia MAX conference next week.

]]> Macromedia 2004-10-26T10:10:42-08:00 http://www.klynch.com/archives/000072.html Many people are using blog readers to read entries (such as NetNewsWire or FeedDemon), which is a really efficient way to follow a large number of blogs and another example... 72@http://www.klynch.com/ Many people are using blog readers to read entries (such as NetNewsWire or FeedDemon), which is a really efficient way to follow a large number of blogs and another example of how Internet applications are moving beyond the browser. These readers work by reading an XML feed that contains a list of recent entries.

Unfortunately, these feeds don't contain any of the comments that people make on the entries. So, you need to jump out of the blog reader and into a web browser to see if there even are any comments.

]]> Blogging 2003-10-09T21:30:57-08:00 http://www.klynch.com/archives/000071.html Ok, I'm still immersed. Last week we released the Central Public Beta with a couple of early applications in sync with Intel's One Unwired Day. We're now polishing the Central... 71@http://www.klynch.com/ Ok, I'm still immersed. Last week we released the Central Public Beta with a couple of early applications in sync with Intel's One Unwired Day. We're now polishing the Central SDK (software developer's kit) for its public beta release in the next couple of weeks so anyone with a copy of Flash MX or MX 2004 can make Central applications.

Recently Mike Chambers joined the Central team and this past weekend created a beta developer chat application (get it here) with Greg Burch. It's just a couple days old, so still a lot of features to work on. Since it's in Central, once you get a copy of it you can get automatic updates as the app evolves.

Also, for more info on Central's progress please check out Mike Chamber's recent update at the developer center.

]]> Macromedia 2003-10-01T07:24:34-08:00 http://www.klynch.com/archives/000070.html I'm currently in Arlington Virginia for Kevin Werbach's Supernova conference -- a fine occasion to resume entering thoughts here. I've been concentrating on a redesign of the Central user interface... 70@http://www.klynch.com/ I'm currently in Arlington Virginia for Kevin Werbach's Supernova conference -- a fine occasion to resume entering thoughts here.

I've been concentrating on a redesign of the Central user interface based on our usability testing and feedback on Beta 1, which has taken my attention. Beta 2 is now on the way, we are headed to a new design that I am excited about and we will be increasing the number of beta testers. Now I can participate in other conversations again, such as what's up with Echo and RSS :)

My experience is that design work requires full immersion and not many distractions in order to see the task and data patterns well, brainstorm with the team, understand test results, and come up with ways to best structure the interface. What I am finding about blogging is that when you're active, you're pretty constantly thinking about whether everything might make a good blog entry! I'll try to be better about posting a "be back soon" note next time I'm that immersed.

Today I will be speaking on a panel led by Cory Doctorow called New Platforms, New User Experiences. I won't be attending FlashForward in New York this week -- the first one I will miss -- I hope everyone has a great time there as always!

]]> Blogging 2003-07-08T04:57:24-08:00 http://www.klynch.com/archives/000062.html I'm now in Toronto for the Flashinthecan conference, and will be speaking tomorrow morning. You can tell it's Canada since CBC is playing hockey news in the background behind Tom... 62@http://www.klynch.com/ I'm now in Toronto for the Flashinthecan conference, and will be speaking tomorrow morning. You can tell it's Canada since CBC is playing hockey news in the background behind Tom Green and Colin Moock.

I've been very occupied the past couple weeks trying to keep up on communication after the announcement of Central. We've had a few thousand requests for the beta SDK so far, though we'll need to start small with the beta to make sure we can support it well and then will grow it as we get experience. It's totally exciting that there is a lot of interest -- I hope we will see a lot of applications get created.

]]> Blogging 2003-04-13T20:41:03-08:00