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posted by [personal profile] sbisson at 07:02pm on 19/04/2007 under , , ,
One of the cool things about my job is getting to meet interesting people and talking about fascinating technologies.

It probably hasn't escaped your attention that one of my favourite technologies of the moment is Adobe's Apollo (read my hefty pieces on it in upcoming issues of Web Designer and PC Plus), and today I spent some time talking to Adobe's Mike Downey about what's happening with Apollo and where Adobe sees it going (his blog is available as [livejournal.com profile] adobe_mdowney).

One of the things we talked about was San Dimas*, eBay's Apollo-based client application. It's a cracking piece of code, and you can now sign up to get onto the public beta when it rolls out over the next month or so. I had a play with it, and I have to say it's the most intuitive way of working with eBay I've found. It makes it easy to both sell and bid - and you can even use it with a web cam to quickly upload pictures of an item.

I'm firmly convinced that cross platform development tools like Apollo are the future of desktop applications - especially when you can convert a Flex-based server application into Apollo in less than two days (quicker for pure HTML/AJAX applications), and developers don't need to work with separate installers, windowing solutions and file systems for each OS they work with. Apollo means one code base will work on the web, on OS X, on Windows and on Linux. That's a huge saving in time and money for any development team.

When the Flash and Dreamweaver Apollo plug-ins come out later this year, things are going to get even easier - especially as you'll be able to go straight from a Photoshop illustration to an Apollo application...

Microsoft is going to have to get the .NET Micro Framework into Silverlight sharpish to even start to compete here.

*Are [livejournal.com profile] marypcb and I the only people to spot the Bill and Ted reference in the name?
Music:: Electric Light Orchestra - Discovery - Need Her Love
location: Putney, London
Mood:: 'busy' busy
There are 9 comments on this entry. (Reply.)
 
posted by [identity profile] ajshepherd.livejournal.com at 06:13pm on 19/04/2007
Party on, dude!

Gosh, where DO they get their ideas for these names. Oh wait...
andrewducker: (Default)
posted by [personal profile] andrewducker at 08:26pm on 19/04/2007
I was momentarily tempted to download Flex and give it a go.

And then I noticed that it was $499.

Which kinda knocks the hobbyist market out.

Oh well.
 
posted by [identity profile] sbisson.livejournal.com at 08:38pm on 19/04/2007
Actually one of the cool things is that you can use the free SDK and the text or HTML editor of choice.... You don't even need to write MXML or ActionScript code, you can just use HTML/AJAX/CSS.

So the hobbyist market is served quite happily!
andrewducker: (Default)
posted by [personal profile] andrewducker at 08:41pm on 19/04/2007
Write code in a text editor?

You want me to give up the IDE?

Really?
 
posted by [identity profile] sbisson.livejournal.com at 08:44pm on 19/04/2007
Actually there's stuff that I don't know if I'm allowed to talk about coming.

Lets just say I understand that dog food is being eaten. But not inside Adobe...
andrewducker: (Default)
posted by [personal profile] andrewducker at 08:45pm on 19/04/2007
I'm sure someone will come out with an alternative at some point. If it a "standard" then other people will write their own IDE, and open source things will appear, as they tend to.

Which will be something to look forward to.
 
posted by (anonymous) at 09:49pm on 19/04/2007
Hi,

I'm the product manager for San Dimas -- thanks for the nice blog entry! I can't say you are the only person to notice the Bill and Ted reference - but I'm surprised that more people haven't noted it :-)

Alan Lewis
eBay
www.projectsandimas.com
 
posted by [identity profile] sbisson.livejournal.com at 10:24pm on 19/04/2007
Cheers! I'll be mentioning it in another DevReg piece on Apollo in a few days :-)
 
posted by [identity profile] saffronrose.livejournal.com at 12:53am on 20/04/2007
I never saw B&TEA, but I used to drive through that town all the time on my way to work...from Claremont to the Mid-Wilshire district (well, my carpool driver did), and to two points in Pasadena (occasionally pronounced Pasad-na), where I first used the net.

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