I cut my teeth in programming in Flash by figuring out how to make games, widgets, and other fun, interactive stuff and witnessed the language evolve to become a world class object oriented language. But the death knell has sounded for Flash. For many reasons, it’s no longer fun, practical, or profitable to develop in Flash: Javascript libraries like jQuery are catching up with animation and other responsive user interface components; The iPhone/iPad won’t run flash content; Flash doesn’t allow one to easily work with HTML content; Video via sites like YouTube and Vimeo are turning to HTML5; Adobe’s responses to this imbroglio have had the ring of desperation . There’s a snowball effect: fewer developers are out there willing or excited to work on Flash, and so we’re now seeing the Flash ecosystem collapsing. It has saddened me, but continuing to work in AS3 has felt like digging myself into a hole.

The compiled nature of the SWF file makes Flash very fast —  The Flash plugin is like a little graphics card attached to a browser, and with this I’ve been spoiled. The challenge of reworking an application like TimeGlider in JS is how to organize events quickly on the timeline as one is zooming in and out. I’m pretty sure it’s possible. Pretty sure.

So I’m looking hard at various frameworks for Javascript like Sproutcore, Javascript MVC, and Dojo and toolsets like jQuery, YUI (Yahoo), Mootools, and others. Nothing is jumping out at me except jQuery. But jQuery isn’t a framework. Javascript, despite having been around since the web was an infant, is still young when it comes to manageable and intuitive frameworks.

So, lots of raw JS experimentation is under way here in Boise, and things are being rebuilt from the ground up starting with a new “RESTful” API that will be built using the Recess PHP framework.

I’m looking for an experienced Javascript developer or two to help out, by the way. Let me know if you know someone : )

In case this is news to you, to review:

1. Apple’s Safari browser on the iPhone/iPad excludes the Flash plug-in.  Apple makes valid arguments against having Flash run on it’s devices, as well as questionable ones. Occam’s Razor: Apple needs to gatekeep the apps/games to guarantee revenues through their app store.

2. In an end-run move, Adobe created a “packager” for the Flash IDE that would let Flash developers output an iPhone-native-bytecode version of Flash apps.  This is not to be confused with running flash (or swf files) on the iPhone in the browser, or AIR apps, either. Adobe took a huge risk and produced a pretty astonishing piece of code translation software. I’ve tested it and it works pretty well, especially for simple “apps” or games.

I’m disappointed that I won’t be able to leverage TimeGlider’s code base (written in Actionscript/Flash) to create an iPad version of TimeGlider. I was on the home stretch of re-working code so that it could be tested with Adobe’s CS5 Packager. Within days of Adobe’s launch of the CS5 line (which includes the iP packager) Apple made it clear that Flash IDE-created iP apps would likely be kept out of Apple’s app store.

I’ve been looking closely at Javascript frameworks that can really achieve what we need for building a good timeline, and I’m even looking at the MIT Simile timeline widget as something that could be adapted and used in lieu of Flash. There isn’t an equivalent to Flash yet respecting key criteria for TimeGlider. Flash is especially good (albeit less so on the Mac) at animation and other high framerate features. The Javascript platforms are catching up: When JQuery or Sproutcore or Capuccino produce frame-oriented features and good visual IDEs that make development easier, Flash could be in trouble. Meanwhile, I’m sure Adobe is working on Dreamweaver to be the IDE for these platforms.

Just this morning, there’s news of Flash running “flawlessly” on a Google-Android tablet prototype.  There’s every indication that the Android/Flash partnership will evolve nicely.  My vote is for Adobe to transform as much of AS3 into a Javascript library and marry it to JQuery DOM selectors.

Do you have a timeline you’re proud of that you think would do both? We’re going to rotate featuring six or nine timelines on the home page, and we’ll also have an extended list of all featured timelines on a separate page.  Send me a little information about yourself,  your project, the timeline — and the please provide the public timeglider URL — by emailing us at info@…    History timelines are of course fantastic, but we’re especially keen to see example from business, planning, law, marketing, medicine, and other unexpected use cases.

Thanks!

Most recently, we’ve caught the attention of Mashable, the New York Times, and the BBC:

In September ‘09 we were featured in a Mashable article on novel writing tools:
http://mashable.com/2009/09/16/write-novel/

Just before Christmas we appeared in the New York Times education section:
http://learning.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/12/21/from-00-to-10-defining-the-decade/

And we got the new year off with a bang with some fabulous coverage on the BBC’s ‘Click’ program, including a very nice video segment (about 1/2 way through)
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/programmes/click_online/8443401.stm

So thank you to those of you who’ve helped spread the word.  As I’ve said, 2010 promises to be a year of leaps and bounds.

Anyhow, I appreciate everyone’s patience and continued interest in TimeGlider, and I apologize if I’ve left some of you hanging with your thoughts and questions.

I hope everyone out there is enjoying this holiday season, and has a very Happy New Year.

— Michael

Thick fogs all day. No observation. Saw a Schooner. Read Langhorne’s Life of Plutarch, and began with Theseus.”  You can now follow Mr. Adams’s 200 year old musings (twitterable versions) by following him him on . . . Twitter thanks to the Massachusetts Historical Society.

The Massachusetts Foundation for the Humanities (www.masshumanities.org) also has a nice daily dose of history, at their “Mass Moments” site: www.massmoments.org.  Today’s moment, from 1765: “Boston Mob Protests Stamp Act”.  MassMoments publishes their “moment” on an RSS feed, too.

Many recent TimeGlider sign-ups have found their way here from Dick Eastman’s prolific daily (+)  newsletter about history and genealogy: Eastman’s Online Genealogy Newsletter. If you’re a family historian, it should certainly be in your bookmarks.

On the more mass media side, the History Channel has a daily dose of history (which comes with a dose of commercials) here.  Today’s piece mentions the East Coast blackout of 2003. I was in Brooklyn, NY. With no lights or electric stoves, and on a very hot night, I hung out with our neighbor, drank beer, and roasted hot dogs over a camping stove out on the sidewalk. Thousands of others were out likewise all across the city. The biggest blackout in recent history was also the biggest block party.

The Slashdot piece headlines with “Timeglider Software…” but it’s ostensibly about a fantastic timeline put together by Steve Usdin, at the Wilson Center in D.C., about the Rosenberg spy case.

We moved our server just in the nick of time, it seems — to a (dv) account at MediaTemple.

In other news, we’ve just struck up a relationship with David Knape, aka Bumpslide Inc., who’s a bona fide Jedi Master of Flash and Actionscript. He’s going to help us rebuild the application, not entirely from scratch, but in a new (”model-view-controller”) application framework.