Flash tidbits, struggles, revelations, and teaching

Has anyone been able to get AMFEXT for OSX?   I read a few posts regarding AMFEXT on OSX, but it didnt help out too much.

AMFEXT is a PHP extension written in C that implements encoding and decoding of AMF and AMF3 messages for the PHP language. It has been based on some of the experience gained with AMFPP, a native code for encoding and decoding C. The native encoding and decoding is extremely fast and memory efficient respect existing PHP implementation, and the flexibility has been provided using callbacks to the PHP code.

Can anyone recommend a Flex Builder/Eclipse plugin for cleaning up and reformatting MXML within a Flex project?Â

Ok. I am a “Flash guy” so I’m jaded towards Flash, but I work at a company that is a Microsoft partner and I attended MIX today.   So here is my quick and dirty about Silverlight 2.0 while at MIX today.

From a feature/functionality point of view, I think Silverlight can provide nearly everything that Flash can.  I saw plenty of demos today that the average person wouldn’t know if it was Silverlight or Flash. Kudo’s to Microsoft for that. I also saw Silverlight demo’d on a Windows mobile device. They didn’t get into the details, but I assumed it was the same SL content that would run from the web. Kudos again. I know plenty of developers and companies would like 1 development suite to deliver to all mediums. Side note: adaptive streaming for Silverlight is a very nice feature. I didn’t see the implementation, but adjusting the stream content on the fly is something that Adobe should definitely look at for FMS. (I think FMS can intiatate a stream based on bandwidth now, but don’t think it can adjust on the fly — correct me if I’m wrong).

From a developers point of view, I know the developers at my company are super happy that they can work in C# regardless of what end product they are targeting. They can be inside of VS2008 and be very happy that they’ll enjoy all that VS2008 offers. Its a very good IDE so kudos again to Microsoft.

From a designers point of view, okay.. its not so pretty from where I sit.  I’ve been using Flash and the rest of the Adobe suite for ages, and I’ve started to work Flex into my work as well.   The first session I attended was Flash to Silverlight and to be very honest, it was horrible. Things we take for granted in the Flash world are just a pain in the a$$ with SL.  The entire session was done from Visual Studio 2008 and was meant to show how you could translate what you might do in Flash into the Silverlight world using all C#.  First off – a lot of design is done in Flash and not 100% code driven. There are subtleties that, in my opinion, can only be achieved via a timeline. VS2008 definitely doesn’t have a timeline, and Blend’s timeline needs some major work. Another problem however, is that no one really uses Blend. Every developer at my work only will use Blend to draw out a gradient then don’t like/trust its XAML generation. For me, Blend also lacks Intellisense for both XAML and has no code editor for C#. So you are forced to jump to Visual Studio.  I’m sure there are designers that will pick up on Blend/VS2008 and produce Silverlight content. I will probably at some point do the same. But to achieve the ease-of-use that Flash provides to begineers, is going to take some major work on Microsoft’s part to rethink their tools.   I can safely say that there is little chance that the non-developers at my work who use Flash to create training, animations, tutorials, interactive presenations, etc, will every use Blend or VS2008.

To follow up on my post from the other day, there was no mention of any Mac development tools for Silverlight. They talked plenty about being able to run it on Mac, and I saw quite a few Macs there (even one being used by a presenter), but those tools are non-existant for now.

Side note:Â I was glad to see IE8 to be finally on par w/ FireFox and Safari for speed and standards compatibility. I did find it a bit interesting/funny that in the Keynote they preached standards, and then went on to talk about how you can modify your web page to enable Activities and Web Slices.

MIX is this week and its in my backyard. I’m a long time Mac and Adobe user, but I work for a company that is heavily Microsoft influenced. At work, I’m using a Dell PC, but I jump on a Mac the moment I get home. I like both and can work well on both. But my question for Microsoft this week, on the eve of the Silverlight 2.0 beta release, is

“What tools are you going to make available to the Mac content creators out there?”

Sure – a Mac user can load up Blend in VMWare, Parallels or even go into Bootcamp and run it natively. But that is a poor solution. I lose my regular workflow, my fonts, and frankly, I’d rather be on my Mac at home, since that is the choice I made. I’m hoping this week at MIX, Microsoft will address this. If they provide a Mac player for SL, but no Mac tools or tools that aren’t up to par to what is available on Windows, then Microsoft is entering a losing battle against Flash, Flex, and AIR (assuming offline Silverlight is coming in the future).

Adobe knows cross platform tools. They’ve done it for years. I can work on a file on a PC at work, bring it home with me, and continue working on it. Or I can work at home learning new techniques and/or doing a test demo, I carry those files into work and use them in future project. I can share my files with anyone on any platform or share files from others on any platform. Adobe is even working on a Linux version of Flex Builder.

So, Microsoft, if you really want me and many others to embrace or even investigate Silverlight, then hopefully you are producing quality tools for the Mac users out there. If you’re not, or if you are going to produce sub-par tools for the Mac users, then don’t bother — I’ll stick to Flash and Flex and my CS3 suite.

I need to vent. Don’t read any further if you aren’t interested in listening to someone complain.

Cable companies, TV companies, and many others have us between a rock and a hard place and they know it.  I recently switched to DirectTV after having Cox Cable for more than 5 years. I bought a Hi-Def TV a few years ago and got Cox’s HD receiver so I could watch hi-definition TV.  I don’t watch many channels so I only got 2-13 (Limited Basic) and HD channels. That worked for me.  Now after way too many phone calls and a couple of technicans to my house to find out why I wasn’t getting the new HD channels they just brough out, someone finally at Cox finally said “Oh — you don’t get them because those channels are on HD Expanded”.  What? Yeah — turns out they moved all the HD channels, except for local channels, to the Preferred Basic plan. It’s on their web site, but it was supposed to roll out on March 1st, and my HD channels went away about two weeks early. “Yeah..we’re rolling that out early ” says the girl on the other end of the phone.   I’ve had issues w/ Cox TV before (waiting hours for technicians that show up and can’t fix the issues) and the prospect of paying an addtional $34/month to get back what I had a week prior kinda was my last straw. There’s DirectTV after all and competiton is good.   So off I go to cancel Cox and get DirectTV. DirectTV was about the same price Cox was trying to charge me plus they had more HD channels.

DirectTV was able to take my order, and then get me installed almost immediately.  I think it was a matter of days. Now the installer was supposed to come from 12-4 but he called and was running late, and got there at 6:30pm. Fine. Not really what I wanted to be doing at 6:30pm (I was hungry), and he was relativey quick about it.

Now, I’m gone this past week and get home last night. Watch TV, etc. I get up this morning and DirectTV is out.  I’ve had the service for 7 days now. I read the Quick Tips on resetting the receiver – no go. I finally call customer service. They walk me through about 5 minutes of trouble-shooting — “We’ll need to send someone out there. The soonest we can do that is on March 11th.”   9 days from now? I’ve only had the service for 7 days.  I get put on the waiting list in case anyone cancels. So I have to waste another afternoon on the 11th waiting for a technican.   9 days? Seriously?     I’m a brand new customer and by teh time this will most likely be resolved, I’ll have had more off-days than on-days.  I did talk to the billing dept and they said that if I call back once service is restored that I’ll be credited the lost time.

Do content providers have such a strong grip that they can do whatever they want and we just have to take it?  I’m half tempted to just call up DirectTV and tell them to come and get their POS system and return it. I can always download TV shows and movies from Apple to watch on my DirectTV.  No matter what I choose – either waiting the nine days or telling them to take the system back and cancel the service (if even possible), all I end up doing is screwing myself over.  What has happened to customer service? Isn’t competition supposed to benefit the customer/user, not hose them?  Silverlight and Flash/Flex competition will only make the two technologies better. Why doesn’t the benefit of competition cross over to the world of content suppliers like television?

At least I still have a TV in the backroom w/ an antenna so I can watch the news. (atleast until 2009 when that probably will get hosed too).  Hopefully services like Joost, Apple iTunes rentals, and others take off soon.

Ugh… Â Rant Off.