vrooooommm

Papervision3D is soooo cool !!!

weekend wrapup: new Microsoft slogan, the future of Flash, ASTRA galore, Seek or Show, fullasagoog back to '02 and a TWiT plug

First check out the NYT for some good points on why M$ buying Yahoo is already so yesterday's gig. Far from the Valley culture of chasing the next big thing it might be that the only good outcome of this will be a much needed change of branding on Microsoft's side:

Microsoft. Your potential. Our pa$$ion^TM.

To all my YM buddies, make sure you send me that "Join Microsoft Live 360⁰ today and install the Windows Live Messenger (runs better on Vista)!" invite as soon as they force you to :D

When Corban Baxter ( coolest flasher name ever, as someone on FlashCoders noted many moons ago) asks Adobe about the future of Flash, Lee Brimelow answers with an "?" and rather vaguely but comforting as Ben puts it in the first comment. Flash is fine, the authoring tool will get better for designers but real Flash Platform Programmers use Flex. Well, [...] nuff said on this one (quote).

On the same note but a bit more subtle, the Yahoo Flash Blog gives us "ASTRA Galore: New Flash and Flex Components". To paraphrase Mr. Allen Rabinovich who paraphrases Mr. Rogers, “It’s a wonderful day in the Flash neighborhood but an even better one uptown in the Flex neighborhood!” because:

Our ASTRA library of components has just been updated with three new Flash components and seven (yeah, we are serious about this) new Flex components

Ah well, [...] nuff said on this one (quote) too.

Ajaxian point to a post from Therese Neil. She talk about "Seek or Show: Two Design Paradigms for Lots of Data". Very nicely laid out and documented with pics and all. If you need to build a custom search feature this is a good starting point for the usability design.

On the "back to '02" note, fullasagoog.com points at two articles, Blogging with Radio and eVectors and Code Editing with Dreamweaver MX. Both require "Dreamweaver MX installed on your computer" so go and wipe the dust off that Macromedia MX package because

This is the way all applications should be built in the future.

2002, Jim Whitney, chief technical officer, Webvertising

Well Jim, I sure hope you're using Flex nowadays!

On closing note I recommend that you check out the TWiT. Leo and friends are just what you need to kick-start yet another week in tech.