[thelist] Macromedia & "Rich Internet Applications"

[John Dowdell]

At 9:52 AM 3/14/3, Tom Dell'Aringa wrote:
> But MM is talking about giving my front end developers FlashMX
> and DreamweaverMX as a tool instead of what they use now. I
> understand the need for FlashMX if you want to do flash, but
> why DW?

Maybe I'm misunderstanding the question, but both HTML and SWF are useful.
One doesn't replace the other.



> I am not seeing the benefits of RMA - and I'm not simply talking
> about a flash page. I'm talking about how MM explains RMA as a
> technology of choice.

I'm assuming "RMA" here is a typo for "RIA" (shorthand for "Rich Internet
Application"). One of the best writeups I've seen is from the Aberdeen
Group... the latter half is about Remoting technology for binary data
transfer, but the first is about where document browsers cannot migrate,
and how Flash compares to other approaches:
<http://www.macromedia.com/software/flashremoting/whitepapers/pdf/flr_archit
ecture.html>

Summary: Document browsers and HyperText Transfer Protocol are great for
many things, but they're not as responsive or predictable as desktop
applications are. We are bumping up against connectivity tasks that do not
fit into the page-refresh model. A document browser isn't the only thing
which can use the network.



> I'm curious how well these extensions really work.. anyone?

Here's a good independent site of Flash Components, which you can preview
in-browser:
http://www.flashcomponents.net/components.cfm

For info on the development and customization of components, see:
http://www.macromedia.com/devnet/mx/flash/components.html



jd