Name: Dan Short
Position: Runs a successful Web development company, Web Shorts Site Design, is also the Lead Developer for Cartweaver (www.cartweaver.com), and helps maintain several HTML and Dreamweaver reference sites, including the Dreamweaver FAQ (www.dwfaq.com). Coauthor of Dreamweaver MX Magic 2004, Dreamweaver MX Bible (Wiley), and Dreamweaver MX: Advanced ASP Web Development (Glasshaus).
Technologies used: ColdFusion MX

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. ColdFusion MX 7, easily. The ability to generate flash on the fly with simple CF tags is awesome.

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. More improvements in CF, improved OO development practices, improved Flex integration - and hopefully lower pricing on that server).

Name: Jared Rypka-Hauer
Position: Management/Architect/Developer
Technologies used: ColdFusionMX, DreamweaverMX, FireworksMX, and FlashMX.

"CFMX bridges between the HTTP/HTML world and the OO world that supports it."

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

A. If there was any it was OO constructs. Macromedia has always been at the forefront of innovation when it comes to my interests. Mike Nimer, from the CFMX development team at Macromedia, and I had a chance to discuss ColdFusion MX's place on the web at CFUnited and he made the point that CFMX bridges between the HTTP/HTML world and the OO world that supports it. It made so much sense, and describes where I feel most at home as a programmer. I like connecting separate things, making what once wouldn't have worked together work well into whole system. ColdFusion fits that role perfectly.

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. Definitely the OO enabling of CF and ActionScript. We now have the ultimate integration platform! I think that Adobe's involvement is a blessing for us on several levels: Adobe can insure that funding for development and marketing will be available to a larger degree in the future. Adobe's position in other markets can help insure friendly relationships with other vendors like Apple. Adobe's existing product line contains several enterprise-class products, which sell to enterprise-class clients that can be leveraged to buy into the MX technology platform. Why do these things matter to me? That's easy: Microsoft. Adobe should be a "safe harbor" that will help guarantee us a place to compete with Microsoft and .NET on their own turf.

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. Specifically I look forward to enhancements in those parts of ColdFusion MX that generate content (like the paragraphFormat() function) and will allow us to create standards-compliant HTML (and CSS) more quickly. I also look forward to deeper integration between ColdFusionMX and Adobe's complimentary products (plus Flex/FlashMX). I also hope that Adobe might be able to take a stronger look at something Macromedia just never had the resources for - applications with an embedded CFMX engine and database that work well for either small companies via intranet or even as desktop applications. As our ability to generate rich interfaces gets better, we have a killer platform for massively integrated desktop applications.

Name: Alexandru Costin
Position: President of Products Division at InterAKT Online and one of InterAKT's product architects, also involved in maintaining the InterAKT suite of Dreamweaver productivity tools.
Technologies used: "I use Dreamweaver the most, especially because the nature of my job Apart from the MX technologies, I use Captivate, a great tool for creating presentations that help you win bids and clients."

"I work at InterAKT, and we do Dreamweaver extensions for a living). Looking back in the past, we've started with Ultradev 4 (by creating the first PHP support for Ultradev), then we've continued with Dreamweaver MX and MX 2004. We're also looking forward to future Dreamweaver versions, lately we've been partnering with Macromedia to create the ColdFusion 7 support for Dreamweaver, and we hope that this will be included in the next version."

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

A. Toyota Prius (and hybrid cars) - not a web technology, but definitely something to look into in the future; I've heard from Sean (Corfield) that he's got one and I envy him. Second, the iPod - a non-Macromedia technology recently transformed almost into a religion. Regarding web development tools, Eclipse - with its CFEclipse branch - the single platform more extensible than Dreamweaver. Finally, AJAX - even if Macromedia did it long before the name was invented (Dreamweaver is a JavaScript application, CourseBuilder for e-learning was really neat on DHTML)

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. Definitely ColdFusion - one of the first application servers, still kicking today by adapting to the "Java world" realities. In terms of Rich Internet applications, Flex (or should I call it Flash platform?) is probably the next big thing, by separating the presentation layer from the application logic.

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. Redmond. Let's eXperience some epic (technology) battles!!