In 1935, in the depths of the Great Depression, several men took it upon themselves to create an event to "change the conversation" from one of uncertainty and insecurity to one of optimism and wonder. New York needed a shot in the arm and they thought a major event would draw both immediate stimulus and long term benefit to the region. Four years later the New York World's Fair opened with the slogan "Dawn of a New Day."

"The eyes of the Fair are on the future – not in the sense of peering toward the unknown nor attempting to foretell the events of tomorrow and the shape of things to come, but in the sense of presenting a new and clearer view of today in preparation for tomorrow; a view of the forces and ideas that prevail as well as the machines. To its visitors the Fair will say: "Here are the materials, ideas, and forces at work in our world. These are the tools with which the World of Tomorrow must be made. They are all interesting and much effort has been expended to lay them before you in an interesting way. Familiarity with today is the best preparation for the future.'" - 1939 New York World's Fair pamphlet

This year's Adobe MAX, while nowhere near as large in scope, was an awesome parallel to 1939 New York. The global economy isn't anything special. Innovation continues unabated. Piles of money are sitting idle waiting for the right reason to get back in the game. Adobe's people worked hard to put forward a vision for where these trends will go and how we will be able to take advantage of them, just like the guys from New York did with the World's Fair.

We came to Los Angeles for the opportunity to hear about the "materials, ideas and forces at work in our world" and learn more about the "tools with which the World of Tomorrow must be made".

What we saw did not in any way disappoint.

Mobility and immobility to the forefront.

Since MAX 2009, the diversity of web-enabled devices has shifted dramatically. Last year was all about iOS and various masked/unreleased mobile devices. This year was about mobile on more pieces of hardware than you could carry home, tablets of varying lineage, and surprisingly, television. This happened practically overnight - the iPad hadn't even been released this time last year, let alone the soon-to-be-released competitors. Nobody was talking television (that we heard, anyway).

We are now designing and building software in a world driven by the complimentary yet wildly different states of mobility and immobility simultaneously. The mobile vision that Macromedia pushed in the early 2000s we once laughed about has now become reality. Our televisions, instead of being "consume-only" devices, are poised to finally and seamlessly become a part of the online world. We as designers and developers, visionaries and builders, are now facing the challenge of targeting both the really-really-small screen and the big screen with our content *and* on more hardware platforms than ever before.

Did anyone really see this coming? In the US, carriers had a stranglehold on the mobile device market until Apple and Google broke it up with a combination of compelling hardware, attractive features and the savvy application of piles of R&D money. A similar situation exists in the cable television world: the cable companies have a lock on the pipe and an uneasy (yet long established) relationship with the content people that is now being rapidly eroded by the success of Hulu and similar services. The Google TV, Boxee Box, Roku and Apple TV devices mercifully save us from the awful UX of the dreaded cable box while adding a pile of new internet-enabled two-way capabilities. These disruptions to the mobile and television spaces open up opportunities on globally accessible, established platforms with wildly differing standards, sizes and capabilities.

We need tools that help us do this efficiently. At last week's MAX, Adobe delivered strongly with compilers and tools for mobile and television based on technologies we as designers and developers already know. We who came to Los Angeles are coming home with the knowledge that we can now build apps for more devices than ever before using the tools we're already skilled with.

Developers will still use AIR, Flash, Flex, ColdFusion and Dreamweaver. Designers will still use Illustrator, Photoshop and Catalyst. We dream, we draw, we build, we test, we release and it all just magically works. Try that with anything other than what Adobe is offering. There's no way it is as easy, as rich or as accommodating. The most important take-away from MAX this year is that evolutionary changes in Adobe's tools are enabling us to keep ahead of revolutionary changes in the way information and entertainment are shared with the world. That should be reassuring (and exciting) news to all of us who use Adobe's tools.

One other fascinating historical parallel to the 1939 World's Fair:

NBC used the event to inaugurate regularly scheduled television broadcasts in New York City over their station W2XBS (now WNBC). An estimated 1,000 people viewed the Roosevelt telecast from about 200 television sets scattered throughout the New York area.

It's about time the internet turned into a "lean back" experience ala TV. We saw the future this week and it's both stunning and immediately available for us to create.

And one more thing...

Anyone who still dismisses Adobe as a strictly PDF or Flash company doesn't have a clue what they're talking about. Adobe is first and foremost a tools company. Their "bet" is on designers being able to accurately get the vision in their heads to the real world more efficiently, not on locking every designer in to a Photoshop license. The "bet" is on developers being able to deliver their applications to more screens as efficiently as possible, not forcing them to target one specific runtime or operating system. Adobe's very existence depends on shipping tools that meet the needs of those two groups - be they for print, HTML-based web applications or Flash-based web applications. "Targeting" HTML5 is nothing more than a continuation of trends that we've seen over and over with Allaire/Macromedia/Adobe: something new emerges (electronic publishing, the web, animation, browser wars, multimedia, new platforms) and Adobe responds by offering tools to help us bring that stuff to the masses. We're not married to Adobe - we're in a long term relationship with a company committed to the community that supports it. That's the way it ought to be - and their responsiveness to emerging technologies (not threats!) is one of our best assets.

I loved this year's MAX. I left exhausted and inspired to do way, way more on devices I had never expected to touch. That's one very effective conference, and one I plan on attending again next year.

Go. Create. And until next year's MAX, go to your local user group. They'll be talking about this stuff all year long!

Too bad for us we're too busy to make it out to Vegas this week for MAX. I'm counting on all of you who got to go to make lots of blog posts over the next few days to really keep us distracted from getting done what we stayed home to do :-) Come to think of it. my first blog posts here were during MAX 2004 in New Orleans. I installed BlogCFC just as the opening general session was getting underway and just kept going from there...

Should be an exciting and interesting conference with the presentations on CF. Flex. Apollo. LiveCycle and who knows what else. It's an exciting time to be an Adobe developer - the Macromedia experience was great. but the potential for what we'll be able to do with the tools we love when backed up by a much larger company is so much greater.

That last sentence makes me look like a serious fanboy...but I guess that's about right. We're using more and more Flex and PDF in our apps every week - Flex for a better user interface and PDF for easier and more attractive presentation output. Behind all of it is ColdFusion (and consistently using Mach-ii for many good reasons). We've made a pretty good living off of these tools. We enjoy using them. we enjoy learning more about them and for that I think we're all thankful. Happy programmers are productive programmers!

Apollo has me very excited. Now that we've ALL been making the non-techies more efficient and informed with our web apps. they seem to start wanting that same information in an "offline" format as well. Apollo sounds like it will make the creation of those apps easier and faster for us native web developers. Of course. the success of that effort depends entirely on uptake of the client runtime. Not a minor hurdle by any measure. But if we can build them quickly and easily. using a familiar development paradigm (ooh. awful word choice there) Adobe will dramatically increase their footprint on the desktop - in a good way. not just through a bloated Acrobat Reader install ;-)

I'm rambling. so i'm going to get back to work. Please don't hold back on the news from MAX! We back home may have to hold a company-wide mini-MAX at Bethlehem Brew Works this week just to sorta feel connected to you all (minus the lectures. workshops. schwag. long-lost friends and flaky wireless)!

For those not in the know. "BOF" stands for "Birds of a Feather" in geek-speak. At last year's MAX. Ray Camden orchestrated a great BOF session on CFC development. He's asking for help convincing MM to schedule a time slot for it again this year. Pitch in and drop a line to conference@macromedia.com in support of the idea!

Registration for MAX 2005 is now open. Get over to the registration site and save $200 before the end of August!

Rob won't say it. but I will.

Where's the *awesome* ColdFusion content? So much has changed with CF7 that we could spend hours just tearing it apart and thinking of cool. innovative ways to build the core services that business rely on. I see sessions on Flash forms. CSS. and reporting services. One on security (always important). And then there's this.

Will this be a "laptops out" kind of seminar where the presenters are poking at stuff while speaking "geek" and showing the possibilities OR will it be a three hour marketing overview? I'll be at MAX regardless. but i'd have to say this is the only CF session that i'm really interested in attending. Even last year. the BOF discussions were far more valuable to me.

Let's see CF sessions on frameworks (vitally important now). great open-source CF apps. shootouts between top-rated CF software packages. actual implementation of funky-fresh CF apps using the latest features. and a solid session on "how to get your boss to buy CF licenses." I hear a lot of people talking about all of these topics on a regular basis - imagine if we were able to get them great answers at the conference. I know people would show up to all of these.

With those kinds of sessions. we should be able to more effectively sell CF and as a result. the RIA vision once we have the framework in place. You're not going to teach a CF guy how to do Flash. but you can teach them Flex.

Focus on your dedicated core and grow from there. Macromedia. You seem to think your core is Flash. Nobody reviles ColdFusion except those not in the know. Many of us who have been around since the Allaire days remember "developer oriented" conferences. At least back then even the small guy could afford server licenses. I don't know of too many small businesses or sole proprietors shelling out the cash for a Flex package. no matter how great it is. CF is a professional grade app server with an entry level price point. Flex is a pro grade app server with a pro level price point. You gotta focus more on the upsell. not the cold sell!

Or maybe i've just grown cheap in my late 20s ;-)

What a week. It's been great to meet up with all of my old friends at the conference this year. Rob. Ray. JB. JG. Selene and Dave. Emily. Elaine. Amy (both of you). Eddie. Todd. Matt. and insert-your-name-here-because-im-still-not-with-it...it was great to party with y'all and celebrate another year of MAX. To the new additions to the crew. thanks for coming out and making this year a heck of a lot of fun.

Oh. that's right. i was here to learn something too...

Sessions that I went to on OOP and Advanced CFC development were awesome and at a sufficiently high technical level that I felt they were very much worth my time. It's pretty much a consensus among the more senior developers here that there aren't many sessions geared towards the kind of stuff that we need to learn - frameworks. best practices for project management. superhardcore coldfusion. stuff like that. Perhaps a PM track wouldn't be a bad idea in the future though I don't know how well it would sell to most "average" folks.

Last year. strangely enough. i got a lot out of the Central late-night coding session. It wasn't about the platform - I haven't touched Central since then - it was more about the opportunity to whip out the laptop and just sit and code among other geeks in an environment where you can get instant feedback. I know we have hands-on workshops here at MAX. but what i would like to see are sorta hybrid BOF sessions where we sit and code something for fun without a 90 minute time limit. For example. a Mach-ii BOF would be great for those who want to follow up Hal's presentation with a little bit of actual implementation. I'm not of sufficient skill to lead or mentor one for Mach. but I would be willing to help sponsor one on something like Farcry.

Many of us learned these technologies and many others just by getting our hands dirty. Maybe that's a way to really add value to the conference experience in a way that isn't at all driven by marketing. but more by the ability to connect the mind of the developer to the keyboard in a place where you can shape that first impression.

Windows BSOD got in the way of this demo. so he talked about the stuff we already knew was in Blackstone ;-)

Central SDK for Flex....ooooh....

Windows Alpha transparency in the player...aaaaah....

auto hiding/docking for the Central console. just hte way it should be.....oooooh....

Chromeless flash apps sitting on the desktop...that's what i've ALWAYS wanted to do!

New Flash Player is gonna blow the drives outta your PC. Performance and graphical rendering are massively improved and sooooo nice to see.

The codename you're looking for here is "Maelstrom."

Authoring Environment ("8ball"): (wish i knew just how cool some of this was) same kind of deal...add drop shadow to movie clips. blend the clips with background bitmaps. stroke drawing improved with ability to change the corner properties. Can also apply gradients to strokes. Shapes: can now draw them in "object" mode so deleting shapes on top of other shapes doesn't remove a chunk of the underlying shape.

Saw this stuff at Community College on Monday - it's new to most here:

The vertical toolbar from HomeSite is back. baby. yeah!

XSL creation is MUCH. MUCH easier than before and absolutely rules. I hated rolling those by hand.

When bound to an XML data source .you can now drag/drop data fields out into the page and have Dreamweaver automatically handle the XSL transformation and insert the proper repeating regions based on the structure of the XML data source. Suh-weet!

Code collapse...long time coming (back). really missed this feature.

A zoom tool...allowing you to visually zoom in on a particularly problematic table layout in design view and figure out what's happenin. I needed this a few months ago!

Record your audio at the same time as you record your screen captures. saving a ton of time going back over your demo and laying down audio after the fact.

Narration is done simultaneously. adding a more natural progression through the creation process.

Great thinking!

(someone take away those damn whistles!)

After the recording is done. you can still adjust the audio/slide timing as well as insert silence if necessary.