Flash on your tv. Talk about opening up some exciting new doors for Flash and Flex developers. My only hope is that they use the full blown flash player and not the neutered mobile version.Adobe has secured a deal to put its Flash software into many of the chips that go inside TVs and set-top boxes.
Just stumbled across a report from Forrester Research about best practices when developing RIAs. They case studied Cynergy which is one of the better known RIA shops out there. Dave Wolf of Cynergy has a post about the report and was even nice enough to provide a free download of the report (normally 750 clams). It's a good read and contains some really good insight into what makes an RIA project successful. I've seen other reports from Forrester but they were more focused on the RIA market and technologies, this is the first I've seen that focuses on best practices.
A few points that really jumped out at me:
Could not agree more. They are two very different skill sets and most people are good at either one or the other.
Look at all the slapped together, formish, vanilla applications out there, now count the number of really great, easy to use, intuitive ones. Enough said.
That's the beauty of web development. Roll out is very simple compared to traditional software development and instantly accessible. This should always be a goal on any project.
One trick ponies are great in a corporate environment where they have a whole stable of ponies and you have long time lines and big budgets, not so great in most other instances. In RIAs especially, you need someone who brings a whole bag of tricks to the table.
Derrick Grigg is a Rich Internet Application (RIA) freelance contractor based in Toronto, Canada. He specializes in architecting and developing applications using a variety of technologies, most notably Flash, Flex and Coldfusion.
