Monday, June 06, 2005

Macromedia to make Flash into an Application Platform

Following the merger with Adobe, Macromedia is trying to enter the desktop application space, alongside a bunch of open source alternatives (eg- Open Office), but with Flash as the main data format. Today 550m PC's have Flash, and they can be updated in just weeks.

Flash runtime is going to be shared. A 'view source' option is going to be provided in web pages. Flash-based applications will be able to run on multiple platforms including desktop, phone, etc. There will be a new set of authoring tools, like document layout tools. Basically, Macromedia is challenging Microsoft on who owns the user interface.

You can learn more by listening to the first 15 minutes of this 1 hour podcast (which also analyzes Microsoft's XML announcement). Tomorrow watch for news in the public domain. For early news, check out CRN (Editor Mike Vizard is tracking this closely).

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