The blogosphere and Twitterverse is all abuzz with news that Adobe has changed the name of Flex Builder 4 to Flash Builder 4 – at least the important parts of the blogosphere/Twitterverse. :) What do you think about the change?
I’m all in favor with the name change because it clears up the confusion between the SDK and the authoring tool. I think they were correct in naming it Flex Builder when it initially came out so as to avoid a little of the vitriol that many existing developers – namely the Java crowd – had for all things Flash. Now that Flex is firmly established as the leading platform for developing RIAs and is differentiated from the typical Flash skip intro brand it’s time to give it a name that is more suitable to what it is.
While were at it
Lee Brimelow suggested the idea that the Flash Authoring Tool, aka Flash IDE, aka Flash CS2/3/4… could use a name change itself and suggested Flash Designer. Personally I love the idea but what do you think?
Personal title change
All of this name changing has gotten me to thinking that I should no longer call myself a Flash Platform Developer. Because it’s really not true. That name connotes a person who is serious and professional of which I’m neither. I’m more of a Flash Platform Slacker. I just like to play around with pretty things. Learn more about the platform and maybe every now and then accidentally make something useful.
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Is anyone really surprised about this? I think the writing was on the wall by last MAX if not before (Thermo = Flash Catalyst). But my bet was on "Flash Developer" or something similar, to appeal to the code monkeys. :-)
Calling the Flash IDE, "Flash Designer" would clear things up for new users and now with "Flash Developer" but at the same time Flex Builder has a capable designer and I would encourage it to continue to add designer features. In the end it doesn't matter. :P It's just a name and it will grow the way it is guided to grow.
I love the name change. I have been struggling with people treating Flex Builder like a totally alien experience, a big risky change, just because management tends to equate the tool with the framework. Better that they equate the tool with the other tools and the platform.
Maybe renaming the content authoring tool "Flash Designer" would help convince some stubborn folk to make the jump over to Builder. By making it sound more familiar.
I 'grew up' codewise with Flash authoring and then started to use FlashDevelop (open source editor for flash, flex, php, haxe etc) for productvity…but I still think of Flash authoring as a 'development' tool more than a design tool – simply because of the way I work with it. I suspect people in that category are outnumbered by 'flash designers' but I know others who consider themselves Flash developers more than designers who use Flash authoring as their primary tool.
Either way change happens, I guess they couldn't call it Flash Devigner, lol.
@Judah, I know that FB has a Design View but I go for months at a time without using it.
@Andrew, I agree that separating the Framework from the tool can help smooth things out with some people. Managers/clients don't need to know what tool you're using. They just need to know what materials you're using.
@Greg, I'm right there with you. The last few years that I used the Flash IDE the majority of my apps were one layer/frame FLAs that loaded a class.
Flex Builder is a lot easier to sell to the Suit Monkeys than flash builder, they here the word flash and they think cartoons and animation. I will have to do some serious explaining when I put in a P.O for a new copy of Flash Builder 4 when I already have Flash 7,8,9…
@Rassmass, not that I'm promoting dishonesty or anything – well I guess I am – but if it's going to cause you grief I'd just list it as Flex Builder in the P.O. If anyone asks afterward you can just say, "They changed the name. I didn't know."
Plausible denyability. That's the ticket. :)
I love the name change. I have been struggling with people treating Flex Builder like a totally alien experience, a big risky change, just because management tends to equate the tool with the framework. Better that they equate the tool with the other tools and the platform.
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Alex B
<a href=â€http://www.iwaayconsultant.com/†rel=â€>www.iwaayconsultant.com</a>.
thi name change is good. as far as iam am fine with it i think there is no reason to worry on
http://www.iwaayconsultants.com
In my opinion, the name change is simply going to add to the already confused marketing coming out of Adobe. Which Flash is Flash? FlexFlash or FlashFlash? Sure, as developers we are all clear on the distinction, but I'm not looking forward to explaining it to managers and clients.
But whats worse than the name change is that the standalone FlashBuilder seems to be an even worse resource hog than the Eclipse based FlexBuilder or even the Dreamweaver based FlexBuilder.
This change name is geat.
I recently had the opportunity to write my first Eclipse plug-in as part of Tour de Flex for Adobe. We had a pretty short deadline for the project and I was a bit hesitant about entering the world of SWT and JFace without previous experience. I did have a good amount of experience coding in Java Swing/AWT previously, but it had been awhile and I had been coding UI’s in Flex/AIR with Java on the server side most recently. Moving back to this “widget-world†was certainly different! I discovered very quickly how spoiled I had been in the Flex/AIR world ;) I ran into a few kinks along the way in my development that I believe could have easily been avoided and saved me oodles of time had I been able to find some quick information on the web. So now that I have been through the painful task of figuring out how to code, build, package and test an Eclipse plug-in, I decided to write a series of posts to explain the steps I took in creating my plug-in as a sort of quick reference and cut to the chase, as I found myself sifting through a lot of information to find the nuggets I needed.
I love the change