Flash Player by itself is fairly powerful and significant contender and its only going to get ‘more’ power behind it. You have to but look at FLASH 8 Player in its current form to hazard a guess as to whats coming up around the corner with say FLASH 9, more power and better focus on something else.

Flash offers more then ‘just installed on everyones machine’ it also offers a uniform view accross multiple platforms without taking a technology case statement to deploy. That spells out gold for Enterprise then furthermore its also now got significant amount of traction in the mobile space so again, things can get hotter here.

Sparkle is great and has got sex appeal, but in truth what we are saying is the first initial testing grounds of Microsoft, in that this is not the final draft. This would be more of the ‘daily’ rush build of what’s to come. So i think all orange and apple comparisons should be held back for atleast AVALON 2.0 or significant upgrade in the WPF/E.

So now we have 3D Capability… hmm… Does anyone else think that Enterprise Market could give two hoots unless it fit a specific purpose? in that could you see ORACLE E-Business developers going ‘yay, 3D is here, finally, lets get some more funding budget wise and remake all our crap in 3D’… its got nice potential in concepts such as say… Mapping or Engineering but in mainstream application delivery its pretty much like saying that all applications around the world can now skin in a cool ‘Alien’ look… ‘great, take that under advisement but if its not going to do anything application specific, then faaaaaaaaaark off’

Adobe and Macromedia merge is painfully slow and we at omniEffect cannot wait for this to go ahead, as this means more muscle power and more ‘hooks’ into bigger things.

Jess has done yet another smart move, he’s seen the light in terms of ‘mainstream flash development’ and opted for ‘FLEX Architect’ role. Something I myself have done, and accumulating the rewards for my choice.

FLEX has a shit load of power already and more to come with the expected FLEX 2.0 + ZORN .. and MM haven’t even talked about the upcoming ‘new components’ that go along with this new technology build.

Don’t write Flash Player off yet, its not done and by no means is it getting more crappier in terms of perfomance.

All I can say is; wow, just wow. I have not read enough into Avalon yet, but it appears you can build applications using XAML (for those comfy with HTML) or C#. Other features:
1) Access to a 3D API
2) Better drawing tools/more complex vector graphics
3) Option to build a browser based app or desktop app at a whim of a dropdown menu
4) Allows you to use Visual Studio as the IDE

For once in a long time, I am actually excited, overwhelmed, and all around worried about an MS product. I think Flash will always be around for the cartoons and coffee break games. But I think as far as RIAs go, Flash is sunk. Why use such a limited language as AS2.0 when you have C# at your disposal? Why play around with positioning movieclips and keyframes when you can build a GUI with XAML? Why use a bug ridden and all around crude IDE like Flash when you have Visual Studio?

And if this thing can interface with the new version of DirectX– including Direct3D (hardware accelerated 3D), DirectPlay (multiuser apps) and DirectInput (joysticks), I don’t see how Flash could even come close.

Lets hope that with Adobe’s help, the next iteration of Flash will be much more groundbreaking than the current. Vista is still a ways off… there is time…. but as things are now, I’d be worried for Adobe/Macromedia.

And man, is it just me, or does the timeline look exactly like Director’s?