MAX 2004 Report

1
MAX 2004 Report

• Michael Smith MDCFUG
• michael_at_teratech.com

2
Introduction

• Five conferences
• CF_Underground VI
• MiniMAX
• Community College
• MAX 2004
• Community Suite

3
CF_Underground V

• Kai König CF and Flex
• Hal Helms XP exposed
• Shlomy Gantz Project Management Michael Smith
  Personas for better apps.
• Bogdan Ripa Securing shopping carts
• Simon Horwith In-depth Architecture
• CF_Panel

4
MiniMAX

• New Orleans User Group event
• Held at LSU medical center
• 6 speakers in 2 hours
• Simon Horwith - SVG graphics in CF
• Michael Smith - Project Management
• Tom Green video in Flash

5
Community College

• Help MMUG managers and Team Macromedia to work
  better
• Speaker coach
• New product info

6
Community Suite

• Run by Michael and Judith Dinowitz of House Of
  Fusion
• Speakers included Ray Camden and Hal Helms
• 100s of books to browse (and buy at auction)
• Xbox games, food and rest from MAX

7
MAX 2004 Keynote

• Blackstone is cool
• Breeze for both live and recorded presentations
• Captivate (RoboDemo) for training and quiz's.
• Contribute 3 as a CMS - web services based
  notification
• Mobile is going to be bigger than web billing
  ok too!
• FlashCast CDK

8
More general info

• 2100 attendees, 70 CF
• More than 80 of sessions on non CF subjects
• Special event at Mardi Gras World

9
CF 7 Blackstone

• CF 7 Blackstone beta given out to all attendees
• Reporting and printed output to FlashPaper and
  PDF
• Better graphing
• CFREPORT tag and banded report writer

10
CF 7 Blackstone

• Verity search in search, spelling suggestions
• Source code protection
• Flash components grids and forms can bind
  Flash variables
• Easy Gateway messaging IM, SMS, a-sync CF calls

11
Flash 8 "Maelstrom"

• Alpha channel
• Much faster graphics (bitmap caching)
• New text rendering engine (Saffron). Precise
  control over anti-aliasing.
• New Flash Video codec higher quality
• Add drop shadow to movie clips
• Blend the clips with background bitmaps
• Stroke drawing improved (corner properties and
  gradients)

12
Sneaks! Dreamweaver

• Get the updater! (Fixes bugs)
• Vertical toolbar from HomeSite is back.
• XSL creation is much easier than before.
• Bind an XML data source - drag/drop data fields
  into the page and have Dreamweaver automatically
  handle the XSL transformation
• Code collapse...long time coming (back).
• A zoom tool...allowing you to visually zoom in on
  a particularly problematic table layout in design
  view

13
Sneaks! Captivate

• Smart records screen changes
• Auto add balloon comments based on commands you
  click on.
• Records your audio at the same time as you record
  your screen captures
• After the recording is done, you can still adjust
  the audio/slide timing as well as insert silence
  if necessary.

14
Sneaks! Support Center

• www.macromedia.com/go/knowledge
• Focus has been on solving problems finding
  content in the Macromedia website.
• RSS feeds have been added
• Improved search, allowing you to target
  particular products or types of content you're
  looking for.
• Also has a side pod containing "Best Bets" that
  are usually the answer you're looking for.
  "Search within" is also supported.

15
Central

• AOL AIM support
• Better UI

16
Flex 1.5

• Free development and non-profit version
• Tag language for dynamic Flash generation
• MXML and action script
• The charting is cool. Spin your pie charts just
  for fun! Automatically reformatting lables.
• Drag-select data in a datagrid and have it
  automatically plot on a chart right next to the
  data.

17
More Flex

• ThresholdRenderer - would be great for a
  real-time data feed where you're looking for data
  exceeding some limit value.
• Gantt charting

18
Sneaks! Mobile Flash

• Runs on mobile phones in Japan, Europe and now US
  (T-Mobile)
• 1.4 Billion potential users (compare to 800
  million for web)
• Basically Flash 4
• Good testing tools simulate phone on PC.

19
More Sneak peeks

• Dreamweaver They showed new code hinting for
  ASPX and C
• Flex. Eclipse plugins, and the Brady visual
  environment.
• ColdFusion rewritten cfgrid/form tags using
  Flash. You could even use Flex things like tabs
  and accordion navigation - all from within CF.
• Breeze Live Conference call calls you as opposed
  to you calling into the conference call

20
Community Resources

• User Group Community Pit T1s and Speakers, book
  authors
• Wireless access
• Macromedia press book store
• CFDJ radio

21
MAX Blogs

• http//maxbloggers.com/
• http//www.corfield.org/blog/
• http//www.macromedia.com/desdev/
• http//www.markme.com/mxna
• http//markme.com/vision/

22
Next Year

• CFUN-05 in Washington DC area
• 29 June 1 July 2005
• www.cfconf.org/cfun-05/
• MAX next year somewhere on West Coast
• October 2005