More on Flex 3

Here is some more information from some of the Adobe Team members reguarding Flex 3.

• Is Flex 3 being rushed out?
  • We are not rushing out Flex 3. The Flex 3 beta has not started and
    is some time away. Once we have a first public alpha or beta, it will
    still be a logn while until we ship. What you are seeing is not about
    us rushing the product, it is about us becoming much more open about
    what is coming down the road in the future. We started this with Adobe
    Labs (initially Macromedia Labs) but in this cycle in the next few
    months you will see up open up more so folks can see the roadmap and
    give us feedback. Keep in mind, we released the first public alpha of Flash at Max in
    October 2005. We had a small private alpha underway for a few months
    before that. But we didn’t ship Flex 2 until June 27 2006. Just
    because we are looking for testers and able to demo so features doesn’t
    mean we are about to ship. It just means we want to give you a view of
    the product before it is baked so you can give us feedback (and also for
    your planning). From when we had our first external testers to when we
    shipped Flex 2 ws almost 12 months. It may not be as long this time
    because it is not such an major architectural change, but we are going
    to let the product bake and stay focused on quality.
    • David Mendals – Adobe
• How will we transition from Flex 2 to 3?
  • Flex 2 was a major architectural release. We changed the VM, the
    language, the framework, and the tool in fundamental and non-compatible
    ways. Flex 3 will not be such a release. We are now able to leverage
    those years of work and build on it incrementally. I think we can add a
    ton of value in areas like productivity, designer developer workflow,
    approachability, etc; but this release will not be a rewrite and will
    not be something each of you needs to relearn and invest heavily to
    migrate to.
    • David Mendals – Adobe
• Why start talking about Flex 3 so early?
  • This release cycle is going to be very different and break the norm
    for how release cycles work at Adobe. We are changing and in the next
    few months this will become crystal clear as to our plans. We need to
    get more community involved in the release to shape the features and
    quality of Flex 3. Overall we are committed to delivering a first
    class framework and development toolset for our customers.
    Flex 3.0 is not right around the corner but will happen in 2007. My
    announcement on Flex 3 earlier this week was to state that we are
    committed to targeting Flash Player 9 for the release.
    • Ted Patrick – Adobe
• Will Flex 3 SDK remain free?
  • Flex SDK will remain FREE.
    • Ted Patrick – Adobe

Flex 3 at 360!

Ted has a new post at http://www.onflex.org/ted/2007/01/flex-3-most-important-feature.php where he talks about the future of Flex and also notes that he will be doing a demo of some of the new features of Flex 3 at the 360 conference in March.