I love it when I get irate messages from architects who are now VC. In fact it seems like a trend there at Macromedia - where all the geniuses who came up with this brilliant product line - are rewarded by becoming VCs. The latest is Simeon Simeonov who has straightened me out on the advanced version of Flash.
You see it's not really Royale. The marketing people probably don't know the difference, but who's counting. This announcement reaks of "we're not really sure what this is - besides more expensive - so let's start the "timelines are too hard Meme" - and see what happens."
You see Macromedia makes their money from selling tools, not players. That's still something they're stuck with from back in the 80's. Try as they will to change that - with Macromedia Central - they still need to suck more money out of their captive developers - so they've raised the price of Flash - by calling it seomthing else and adding an additional window - which doesn't use a timeline. They somehow think that'll improve the ease of use of the product.
I can just see these Visual Basic programmers now - trying to figure out "MovieclipA calls frame 17, which then calls MovieClip42 - which has in it a MovieClip343836452 that then calls.......
Guys - I hate to tell yah this - but that's still a timeline based system.
So I'm sorry - I apologize. Flash 2004 is nothing more than a patch quilted Flash - and it's not Royale. Then please tell your analysts to make that clear, so then the writers cna make it clear. Muddying the waters doesn't do anybody any good - expect your 10-k filings.
