masuland

… except there is no other.

I strongly believe that the World Wide Web (WWW) in 2050 should still be an open platform for both: their developers and their users. Therefore, it is necessary that the future of the WWW follows the guidelines provided by the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) with their members and ECMA International with their members. Depending on the future strategy of the W3C and ECMA Int, their decisions will have direct implications for the future use of the Flash-Platform (also Java-Applets and Silverlight). In the following I’d like to name a few things that might make Flash (also Java-Applet and Silverlight) development irrelevant in 2050:

1. The W3C and ECMA Int will implement their standards

Flash- and Flex-Coding would still be relevant in 2050 unless the W3C and ECMA Int will decide that it is not just enough to define a standard for the web – and HTML and Javascript in particular. Instead, they would also take care of its implementation of a freely available and open WWW with a _SINGLE_ HTML/Javascript engine (or web browser). Still having so many versions of web browsers out there could mean: the WWW is still very new and we (including the W3C and ECMA Int) probably don’t know yet where it should lead us to.

Benefits:

• HTML/Javascript documents look and behave the same EVERYWHERE!

Risks:

• The risk grows that the development of a single web browser inside the W3C and ECMA Int could be misused in favor to a certain involved company.
• Different web browser stay in competition in growing features, performance and their user community. Removing this competition could result into a weaker WWW.

2. HTML/Javascript will go RIA

Flash- and Flex-Coding would still be relevant in 2050 unless the W3C and ECMA Int does not combine SVG, WebGL, HTML, CSS & Javascript … etc. into a single Rich Internet Application (RIA) document specification – hereby called “RIA-HTML”. For the moment the W3C still considers HTML to be a “text document with additional multimedia features”, whereas, a Flash document can be considered as a “pure multimedia document” (Audio, Video, 3D, Text … etc).

Benefits:

• A “pure multimedia document” similar to MXML/FXG (Flex) or XAML (Silverlight) would be way more expressive

3. HTML/Javascript will be binary with a Semantic Webservice API

Flash- and Flex-Coding would still be relevant in 2050 unless HTML/Javascript cannot be compiled into binary code so that search engines, crawlers and web bots will be restricted to only communicate to the “RIA-HTML” document via a certain separated Semantic Webservices API … for more information read Semantic Web and RDF, OWL … etc.

Benefits:

• Compiled binary HTML/Javascript could significantly be transfered much faster between client and server
• Users don’t have to run through any human-prove task in the web anymore … e.g. “Prove you are human while typing in the letters below: k2eMSlo rUs4Kin”
• Search engines, crawlers or any type of web bots only get the information which is intended for them

Risks:

• Users don’t see what is inside a binary HTML/Javascript anymore (unless there is a “View Sourcecode API” included)

4. Javascript will become a type-safe OOP-language

Flash- and Flex-Coding would still be relevant in 2050 unless Javascript will become a type-safe OOP-language … which means: introducing castable typed objects and more powerful OOP features into the language.

Benefits:

• Faster Javascript code execution
• Better tooling-support for Javascript

Conclusion

We should “occupy” W3C and ECMA Int … because then there wouldn’t be the need to “occupy” Flash … http://www.occupyflash.org/

Surely not Please have a look at the following posts:

http://www.riagora.com/2011/11/flex-is-open/

http://blogs.adobe.com/flex/2011/11/your-questions-about-flex.html

http://www.mikechambers.com/blog/2011/11/11/clarifications-on-flash-player-for-mobile-browsers-the-flash-platform-and-the-future-of-flash/

Based on my article yesterday I’d like to add the following:

I think, for the moment, we all should calm down and watch these two videos first:

http://zaa.tv/2011/04/360flex-denver-2011–day-2-keynote-spoon/
http://tv.adobe.com/watch/max-2011-develop/open-source-flex-what-the-spoon-project-means-to-you/

… and participate in the Open Spoon Project. Adobe tries to involve the Flex community into the development and bugfixing process of the Flex SDK. Some might say that Adobe just tries to benefit from cheap developers to develop their Flex SDK. Others might say that we will all benefit from this community work in future.

I guess, Adobe is only trying to restructure their capacities (around 6000 employers worldwide, maximum of 50 Adobe developers work on the Flex SDK). They will refocus on building tools (Flash Pro CS6 and later, Flash Builder 5 and later, Flash Catalyst CS6 and later) and providing services (Flash Media Gateway, Cirrus, LiveCycle Collaboration Service … etc.) which will surround the Flashplayer. Furthermore, they will continue to constantly release new Flashplayer versions with more and more missing “Java Virtual Machine” (JVM) respectively “Java Applet” features on a yearly basis (Flashplayer 12, 13, 14, 15, 16 … etc). And they will invest into HTML5 – Tools, too (Muse, Edge) … because it is of need to the evolution of the WWW.

AND … I strongly believe that there will be:

- Flex 5 with Flashplayer 11 Stage3D (Molehill)
- Flex 6 with Flashplayer 12 Multithreading … and maybe with a single embedded MVC framework (similiar to Parsley, Swiz, Spring AS, Robotlegs, Mate … and such) and Flex 6 MVC code generation wizards in Flash Builder 6
- Flex 7 with Flashplayer 13 …

I still remain optimistic regarding the future of the Flash Platform, and I really hope that Adobe’s pocket-money hasn’t been consumed before Flex 7 will be released in 2014 …

Well … this was a big one:

“Over the coming weeks Adobe and the Spoon Foundation will be working together to donate the Flex SDK to an established open source foundation.

The project will be jointly led by developers from the Flex SDK team, members of the Spoon Project, key developers from the community and contributors from enterprise companies using Flex.

Continued development will happen under this new governance model.

The Open Spoon Foundation board and officers are excited by these continued developments and looking forward to the collaboration. Details will be evolving rapidly, check back here for continued updates.”

see announcement of the Open Spoon Project:

http://www.spoon.as/2011/adobe-announces-intention-to-donate-flex-sdk/

I expected that this day would come in future, but, I did not expect it to come so soon. I hope that this decision will bring a positive new responsibility to this new growing Flex community and will hopefully be as effective as the Java open source community became in November 13, 2006:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Java_(programming_language)

If not, then I am seeing the risk that all Flash- and Flex-Developers have to go back to the past web browser war years which most of them hated and hoped they never have to go back again:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Browser_wars

If yes, I am very curious about the future of the Flash Platform. Is the complete Flash Platform (Flash Player, Flash Pro, Flash Builder, Flash Catalyst) going to be open sourced within the next 10 years, too? What about Flex 5 running on Stage3D (Molehill)? What about Flash Catalyst CS6 or even later? Who will be responsible for the development of the Flashplayer, Flash Pro, Flash Builder and Flash Catalyst for the next 10 years?