At 10:05 a.m. Pacific time on the 16th of July 2009, Sun Microsystems’ fate was sealed. At that exact moment, shareholder voting closed, and the motion to accept the acquisition offer from Oracle was approved. There was little fanfare.
I’m not sure when this data was published on Adobe.com, but as part of the revamped “Flash Platform for enterprise applications” page, there is a link to a set of statistics that relate specifically to the availability of Flash Player within enterprise organizations.
We’ve published statistics about the general availability of Flash Player for some time (based on results from a survey undertaken by Millward Brown), which as of June 2009 shows that 98.8% of internet-connected computers can display Flash Player 9 content, whilst 86.7% can already display Flash Player 10 content.
The enterprise-specific results have been compiled by Forrester Research, based on data from over 50,000 of its corporate clients. The headline results are as follows:
* 96.8% of corporate users can view Flash Player 9 content (this is the version of Flash Player required to access applications built using Flex 3 SDK)
* Within 3 months of release (the survey data comes from December 2008), Flash Player 10 was already available to 36% of customers within enterprise organisations
The quick adoption of Flash Player 10 within the enterprise is encouraging for those considering the deployment of Flex 4-based applications once the final SDK is released - I’d recommend that you keep an eye out for updates to this survey data to see how adoption of the latest player continues over time.
For those considering deployment of Flash Player within an enterprise environment, check out the resources here for IT and administrative professionals.
6 months of 3D in flash in 10 minutes from Galdric on Vimeo.
Adobe is in the advanced stages of bringing the Flash Platform for the Digital Home directly to the TV screen. This allows Adobe to embed its Flash software onto computer chips that go inside televisions, Blu-ray players and other set-top boxes so that applications and widgets (such as a Flash-based TV Guide) could be made available via the TVs in our homes.
We can now actually see this in action.
In the video below, the Adobe Systems Director of Technology, Strategy & Partner Development, Anup Murarka, shows off what progress has been made so far and how Flash applications and Web services are now being deployed to real TVs:
Recently Adobe has announced two great news:
1. They has lunched the beta version of Acrobat Tables which enables spreadsheets on acrobat.com Also this application is Flex-based which is really cool.
It enables working with and sharing information such as project management task lists, budget planning, sales lead pipelines, contact lists and much more. While developing this project Adobe has focused on really basic but important question:How do people really want to work together on a spreadsheet? That’s why they have implemented all those really cool features:
• All users can add data simultaneously – solving one of the biggest problems with shared worksheets. All data is always up-to-date for everyone.
• Presence – lets you know who else is working on the table and where they are working
• Private and common views – allows the team to work together, but see the information that is important to each person. Private views let you see information that is important to you, without disturbing others working on the sheet.
• Filtering is real time so you can play with the data and adjust your filter in real time, without having to open a dialog box for every change.
• Sorting – quick, simple and always includes all of the data
You can try it for your self here or read more on Adobe’s blog.
2. Real Time Messaging Protocol (RTMP) specification is now open! It is aveliable for everyone who wants to use it for free. You can download it here.
Adobe Systems Inc. has released a new series of tools for building rich Internet applications (RIAs) in Flash that are designed to help bridge the divide between designers and developers.
As more applications move from the desktop to the browser and more enterprise data moves from the server to the cloud, Adobe hopes that Catalyst and the new Flash Builder releases will increase development of RIAs built on its Flash and Air platforms.
In particular, Adobe says the beta availability of Flash Catalyst, a new tool that allows designers to create interactive experiences from artwork created in Photoshop or Illustrator, will simplify the workflow for creating RIAs.
Catalyst provides a WYSIWYG environment for designers, allowing them to build the user interface [UI] of RIAs without passing wireframes off to developers to code. The result, says Adobe group product marketing manager Dave Gruber, will be less-frustrated developers.
“In this new workflow, designers own the UI,” Gruber says.”They’ll spend less time doing wireframes that are then handed over to developers.”
Adobe also announced the beta release of Adobe Flash Builder 4. Formerly called Adobe Flex Builder, the new release is designed to make it easier for developers to create data-centric applications.
The newest version speeds app creation by allowing developers to create UI components and integrate data from databases and Web Services in a drag-and-drop fashion.
“We want this to be about creating building blocks, not monolithic code gen,” says Adobe senior product marketing manager Tim Buntel.
Well that was a blur…
Lots to see this past week at the 2009 edition of JavaOne. Larry Ellison made a surprise visit during the general session on day 1. He made several references to JavaFX and asked the developer community to port Open Office to JavaFX. I think that surprised a lot of people including me. It was good to see and hear Larry promoting JavaFX.
We saw the new JavaFX Designer tool preview - it looks similar to Flash in that it has a timeline etc… but I noticed that it also had some Final Cut Pro like features as well. This was a very preliminary showing of the tool with some “features” at the very conceptual stage. Nonetheless it was good to see Sun making progress. The ultimate success of the JavaFX lies in the designer tool.
JavaFX/TV made its debut as well. Very cool technology embedded in the TV itself lent for some very interactive almost web like viewing of television - in HD of course. We are excited to start working with that!
Overall the show was very well attended - 10K - in this economy and with the impending Oracle situation - it was good to see everyone really excited about the future.
Each year we make the trek to San Francisco to get immersed in all that’s Java. This year we’ll be blogging as it happens. Stay tuned as we “step into the pool”.