Advanced Flash Tactics or AFTs are techniques that come from deep within the Flash Art Of War, the oldest Flash military treatise in the world. In this AFT I will go over - A Flash Developer's take on Mix 2010. This was the first year I attended Microsoft MIX and I have to say I had a great time. And why wouldn’t I? As it turned out some of my favorite Flash developers were there: Elad Elrom, Adam Flater, Jeff Tapper, and of course Jesse Warden. In fact, there really isn’t much more I can say that hasn’t already been covered by them here, here, and here. That being said, I thought I would still share my thoughts on some of the things I saw and meetings I attended.

I have also been in contact with David Isbitski and Adam Kinney (two amazing Microsoft platform evangelist) for some time now so I was excited to finally meet them in person. I am working closely with Microsoft on two fronts, as sponsors for my newly rebranded Developer Happy Hour and a secret project which I can’t really get into just yet. That being said, I felt very welcomed into the Microsoft camp and was able to be candid with them about my thoughts about the conference.

To start off, I am very impressed with what they were showing at the conference. It is the first time Microsoft had their ducks in a row and the thought of developing for Xbox, Windows, Web, and soon to be Mobile is huge. They are the only company who has a story like this and this is something I feared would happen one day. In the end, I was very disappointed with the lack of Mac support. When questioning them directly on this I kept hearing the same stats thrown around such as Mac is only used by 4% of the population worldwide and they need to focus on the customers that currently use their products. This is all well and good, but when it comes to the conference’s theme of “make web not war” and supporting the full web, I can’t overlook the fact that 96% of computers does not equal 100%. Also, if you read between the lines, IE 9 only runs on Win 7 which has a smaller penetration number then Vista or XP (which is still in use for some reason). All in all IE 9 supporting HTML 5 is a huge move for Microsoft, the web world, and one more nail in the coffin for plugins. I’ll leave that open for interpretation.

Perhaps the most surprising thing of all is that Silverlight is now the de facto platform for almost everything. WPF has morphed into Silverlight and it runs on everything from the desktop to the phone. Not only does it run well on the Phone but the tools are impressive too. You can download the phone development tools and now their web IDE is now free. This is a huge departure for Microsoft and aligns themselves nicely with Apple. Now the only barrier of entry is the developer license fee and learning Silverlight plus C#.

I also got some real hands-on time with the phone and its tools. The phone is very slick and impressive. It is unlike any phone out on the market today. You can tell they have finally seen the light and the UI oozes with Apple’s sense of attention to detail. Buttons pivot based on how you press them. The button you pressed lingers last when they transition out by rotating towards the user in full 3d. Flowing between screens is smooth and seamless. But, I can’t help to notice that everything feels almost like it was made in Flash. The best part of the new UI is how seamlessly it integrates into everything. When you use the built in components you get all the slick animation and interactivity for free.

So it was really strange to have so many Flash developers at the conference. Stranger still was the Adobe presence there. The general mood was that Microsoft was onto something on many levels. I also had in depth conversations with Jesse Warden about what this means for us. I am ready to jump in feet first but with no clients and no one paying me to do it I have trouble finding the motivation. As Warden put it, Flash is here yet Silverlight 4 and Win Phone 7 are not. This became a recurring theme and one we can’t avoid talking about.

The big question is what comes next for Flash developers interested in Silverlight? Do we wait for clients before investing the time learning the language or do we ramp up then go find work? It’s hard to choose the first option when I make a living with Flash and have yet to find the client who would choose Silverlight over Flash. As it stands Microsoft is still backing most of the major Silverlight projects going on now and that is a very bad precedent. My fear is that when the penetration numbers go up to over 80% (right now they are at an impressive 60%) then money will slow down and companies will be less interested in doing more Silverlight projects. While this is good for Flash developers, it is also bad for us too. The competition is something that has been lacking over the past few years and with pressure from Apple and Microsoft, Adobe has little alternative than to innovate the Flash platform to make it a viable solution for the next few years. My only fear is that there will not be much of a following by then. Flash Player 11 is years away and Silverlight 4 and Windows Phone 7 will be here in full force by the end of the year. Looks like I picked a good time to start working towards being a Renaissance Developer.

Read more from Jesse Freeman.