Q. When it comes to enterprise-class development, what do you consider Macromedia's main contribution to be in terms of technology and inspiration?

A. When Macromedia embraced the fact that Flash was much more than an animation tool and started positioning it as a platform to build truly engaging RIAs. In my mind, products like Flash Remoting and the ActionScript components for Flash (both V1 and V2) were essential to the adoption of Flash for enterprise development.

Q. Having put the X into eXperience, what new areas are you looking forward to Macromedia's team heading off into (including as part of a merged Adobe-Macromedia)?

A. I'm extremely excited about the potential of the Flash Lite player and what it offers for mobile devices. I'm a huge fan of the Symbian OS and the announcement by Nokia to support Flash Lite on all their Series 60 devices is huge. I think we'll start to see more enterprise-level applications on devices.

The other much hyped area is Flash/PDF integration. I can envision opening a PDF file and watch an animated tutorial within the document.....no skip intro buttons please!

Name: Kim Cavanaugh
Position: Teacher and writer about web design software from Macromedia for over 5 years and has written two books about Dreamweaver and Fireworks, collaborated on books about Dreamweaver, Fireworks, Flash and Contribute, and continues to write extensively about Studio MX tools for CommunityMX.com.
Technologies used: "Depending on where I am in a particular project I might be prototyping and designing in Fireworks, working up banners or adding video in Flash, or creating a site and maintaining it in Dreamweaver. Suffice it to say that no matter what I'm doing - from site design to eLearning development to delivery of content - Macromedia tools are my tools of choice. That includes all of the Studio tools as well as Breeze and Captivate."

"The Flash Player has changed the face of the Web. Regardless of how the content is developed - Flex, Flash, Breeze, Captivate - it all comes down to the Flash Player and its ubiquitous spread across the Web. I think you'd be hard-pressed to find any single application that does so much for so many, works consistently, and provides so many avenues for delivering (trite as it may be to say it) a rich user experience."

Q. In the last ten years what non-Macromedia technologies (if any!!) have you envied?
A. I suppose I wish there were a richer toolset for bitmap editing like you get with Photoshop, but without the steep learning curve. While I love Fireworks dearly and couldn't work without it, the depth of colors and the rich images you can create in Photoshop are something that Fireworks has trouble approaching.

Q. Having put the X into eXperience, what new areas are you looking forward to Macromedia's team heading off into (including as part of a merged Adobe-Macromedia)?

A. Devices of course will be huge as the infrastructure for delivering networked content to PDAs and cells and handhelds and TVs and the myriad other products out there that can take advantage of streaming content are introduced. In terms of the merger, well, to be honest I'm afraid I think that's all about shareholder value and has little to do with improving tools for web content delivery. I'm sure there will be some new tools developed as a result of the merger, just to remain competitive, but I honestly don't see a large corporation such as Adobe breaking new ground and being as nimble as Macromedia. Mark me highly skeptical on the value of the merger to me and to the Web at large.

Name: Darron J. Schall
Position: An application developer interested in all things programming, from ActionScript to XML and everything in between - maintains a Flash-related weblog (www.darronschall.com).
Technologies used: "Flash and ColdFusion have been my technologies of choice for a long time, but lately I've jumped on the Flex bandwagon. Flex has been dominating my time, especially in the past month, and I see myself moving exclusivly to Flex for my RIA development."

"Flash isn't just 'those annoying banner ads' anymore, but rather a viable platform to deliver a client side solution for."

Q. In the last ten years what non-Macromedia technologies (if any!!) have you envied?

A. Being a developer, I've always envied the .NET and Java development environments and the tools associated with them. There's a certain level of maturity there that ActionScript hasn't quite found yet. Visual Studio and Eclipse are a hundred times better than any IDE for ActionScript at the moment. Not to mention the supporting cast of tools for things like code generation from class diagrams, round-trip engineering, Model Driven Archtecture, etc. Pile on the extensive library support and Java and .NET look really tempting, but .swf still dominates the internet landscape... I believe the sophistication of ActionScript will continue to improve over time, so I'm not that jealous.

Q. When it comes to enterprise-class development, what do you consider Macromedia's main contribution to be in terms of technology and inspiration?

A. Flex. Flex opened the door to the Flash Player to enterprise level Java developers. Finally the Flash Player is being recognized in the enterprise market, and we're all benefiting because of it.

Q. Having put the X into eXperience, what new areas are you looking forward to Macromedia's team heading off into (including as part of a merged Adobe-Macromedia)?

A. I'm looking forward better tools and the maturation of the Platform overall. The announcement of Zorn being built on Eclipse has me extremely excited. The current Flash Player is already solid, and it's clear that Macromedia is committed to its customers based on the features present in Maelstrom. I'd like to see more work done for Flash-on-the-desktop though - imagine a cross platform desktop solution authored in Flash? I think that would be amazing. It's exciting to think about where the Flash Platform will be 5 years down the road.

Name: Sam Coles
Position: Flash designer
Technologies used: Flash and ActionScript 2 on a daily basis, and Dreamweaver in conjunction with Flash for page layout.

The Flash Platform has allowed businesses to quickly build dynamic and engaging websites and RIAs without sacrificing aesthetics or functionality. Macromedia's Technologies fill a niche in the market that, in my opinion, nothing else comes anywhere close to achieving."

Q. In the last ten years what non-Macromedia technologies (if any!!) have you envied?

A. There are a few emerging technologies out there, especially proce55ing, that have really caught my eye lately.