Category: MAX
Certified again
I took the Dreamweaver MX 2004 certification this morning, and I'm now certified again. I only scored 88% this time, but then again I finished the 90 minute test in 20, had a client meeting I had to get to (I'm blaming poor scheduling on my part).
Sneak Peeks
It's sneak peek time, and the floor is full of DW engineers with bee antennae and wings on (Utah is the beehive state after all), and we're about to get a look at some new Macromedia produts in the works.
Dreamweaver Code Editing:
Dreamweaver will now pick up code hints for custom classes defined anywhere in your site, including all of the properites and methods. The sneak was just for .NET but if they go for it will be part of all of the server languages. It's also smart enough to pick up other objects defined on your page. What if you don't know what that function is? Right click and choose Go To Function and it will open the file and put your cursor at the function call.
More on Flex:
Flex will support the W3C industry standard SVG markup language for building images. Christof demonstrated a component in Flash that he reused in Flex to build a slide which could resize an svg file directly inside the browser, all vector based :). Pretty sexy if you do say so myself (even if I didn't understand how SVG works :).He also demo'd some Flex components developed by Beeline with some very amazing charting components.
Codename Brady:
Brady is a new version of Dreamweaver that supports the Flex markup language. You can preview your Flex applications inside Brady without having to hit the server at all. It can even show Actionscript components inside Dreamweaver's/Brady's design view. There is a new panel as well called the Network Monitor which tracks the data going back and forth between Dreamweaver and the server. No more wondering why Brady can't connect to your RDS server. You'll know for certain by checking the Network Monitor panel.
Eclipse integration with Flex from IBM:
I don't know what it is, but it works with Flex :D
Flex + ColdFusion
<cfgrid format="flash" />, how cool is that? You can now get a flash movie out of the CFGRID instead of a JAVA Applet (does require the Flex Server though...). They basically made it possible to turn any group of CF tags into a Flex flash form. I'm still not real hot on everything being flash, for instance turning CFFORMs into a flash form raises my usability alarm. Pretty slick though...
<cfdocument type="pdf" />
Just use the cfdocument tag with Flex to turn your HTML into a pdf. Just change the type attribute and (say it with me) SHAZAM!!! Instant PDF.
FlashPaper:
Saw a little bit about how to customize FlashPaper output in Flash. FlashPaper also now works on a Mac (not that I own one, but hey, Mac users might read my blog too...).
New Contribute:
Got a demo of the new Contribute (codenamed Kato). They've added a new "Shared Assets" group where you can add code snippets, images, any just about anything else that you need to share among your contribute team. And they have *fianlly* added the ability to limit which users and publish or simply edit (this used to be impossible). The Email Review piece has also been greatly improved, where you can list who should receive your review and the review shows up inisde the reviewer's contribute. You can also chain the review process, adding comments along the way so that you can keep track of who review what. It's all inside contribute now, instead of hiding in everyone's inboxes. They've also added an "Event Tracker" you can access via a web service so that you can see what was changed, when it was changed and who did it. GET OUT THE BLAMETHROWER!!!
Breeze:
Never used it and probably never will, but they've added some interesting new bits, like a whiteboard and a polling app. The only time I've ever used Breeze is as an attendee in a Macromedia presentation, but what I do see looks pretty neat. Breeze is also now extensible so that Flash developers can develop their own Pods using a Breeze Live API.
MAX Keynote
The keynote ran a little long this morning, but it was well worth it. With speakers like Kevin Lynch and Ben Forta there was a lot of good stuff. Not only was their good information about the company itself (along with some marketing... this is their conference ;), there were also quite a few new product announcements and teases.
Ben gave us a little insight into the next version of ColdFusion under development, codenamed Blackstone. I'm hoping to see it in the Sneak Peeks session tomorrow afternoon. We also saw a demo of Flex as well as the new Flex editor based on Dreamweaver, codenamed Brady. And along with that we also got a preview of something called RoboDemo, which basically records your actions in Dreamweaver similar to Camtasia, but also annotates everything for you based on the dialog boxes. Very tasty for us trainer types :).
I did however skip out on my first session. The Keynote ran a little long, I made to my Practical CSS for Navigation and Layout session and found it standing room only and a little too basic to keep me engaged. So it looks like I just get to hang out until my next session at 11:15, Advanced Database Techniques (I hope they're really advanced :)