Adobe/Macromedia Flash

With the kind of zero day vulnerabilities affecting this piece of software that is installed on gazillions of devices expect the apple ios, i think its time now to pull the carpet from under this piece of software.

Well there may be many reasons not to?. But considering these days when everyone has moved on to other technologies neither has adobe done anything significant to do away with Flash for some ulterior motive that gives malintent for other to breach security using this software.

Well all you need is to remove it from you device and that’s it. The choice is in you hands.

What happen to XAMLON?

Once upon a time there was something called XMALON…..

Software maker Xamlon is looking to let Microsoft developers write Flash applications in their native language.

With the release of Xamlon Pro, Flash Edition, the company is offering software that lets developers write Flash application user interfaces using any .NET-based programming platform, including C# (define) and Visual Basic (define), instead of using Macromedia’s Flash MX tool.

 

Pre-existing Flash applications and artwork can be imported and integrated into the developed application. Deployed applications only require the Flash runtime on the client.

“Because Flash, unlike .NET applications, can run on any device, this opens up the development of applications for different platforms and form factors, without developers having to actually learn Flash,” said Paul Colton, Xamlon CEO.[1]

 

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BK: What are Xamlon’s product offerings, and how are they used?

PC: Xamlon is a set of technologies to allow developers to develop and deploy Avalon compatible applications today. The Xamlon 1.0 technology includes:

Runtime Engine-offers a large subset of the Avalon feature set (including XAML and vector graphics) in a small runtime. The engine is .NET 1.1 compatible and runs on any .NET 1.1 platform (Windows 98 – Longhorn)

Visual Designer for VS.NET 2003 – Plug-in for Visual Studio.NET 2003 that allows for visual building of Windows Forms applications and generating XAML which is compatible with both our Runtime Engine and Microsoft’s forthcoming Avalon technology.

XamlPad – simple ‘Notepad for XAML’ application which allows for quick prototyping of XAML-based applications. Also includes ability to import and convert (to XAML) Adobe Illustrator SVG files and Windows Forms C# code.

BK: Why would a developer want to use your XAML tools, versus using Microsoft’s development suite?

PC: Microsoft’s doesn’t yet have any development suite for XAML/Avalon, and Avalon/Longhorn isn’t scheduled to be released until late 2006, at the earliest. Xamlon offers a set of XAML solutions today so developers can get started developing and deploying Avalon-compatible applications. That is, they can start using this new paradigm (XAML) for application development and deploy their apps, all the while assuring that when Microsoft eventually releases Avalon, their application will continue to work. In essence, Xamlon gives developers a 2+ year head-start, at a minimum.

BK: What’s your own background, and why did you decide to start Xamlon?

PC: I’m a ‘serial entrepreneur’, as they say. I am concurrently the founder of Photopeer, Inc., a peer-to-peer consumer photo sharing application. Prior to Xamlon and Photopeer, I was the founder of Live Software and the author of JRun, the first commercial Java servlet and JSP engine. Our implementation of JSP (Java Server Pages) was the industry leading implementation, and we learned a lot about declarative programming. When I found out about XAML at the October 2003 PDC conference, I realized that just like JSP, XAML was a technology that needed to be in developers hands today, not when Microsoft was ready to release a new operating system. I secured the domain (Xamlon.com) right at the PDC and began development. One year later we’re about to release our 1.0 version, which we’re very excited about. [2]

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Using Xamlon for Flash applications, developers can chose to write the user interface in XAML rather than using Flash MX, Macromedia’s propriety development environment for Flash. Alternatively, pre-existing Flash applications and artwork can be imported and integrated into the developed application. The .NET runtime is not required for deployment; deployed applications only require the Flash runtime on the client. [3]

 

Ref: [1] (March 31, 2005) | [2] (Tuesday, October 5, 2004) [3] (2005)

We were able to track Paul Colton to http://aptana.com/company

 

 

The direction of both then Macromedia Flash and Microsoft XAML had changed  by 2005 , Flash was the trend from 1999 onwards until the dot com bust which stopped many thing , most retail websites later moved to standards based css and xhtml etc , retails site once adorned the flash mantle.But as industry voices and standards began to shift CSS and HTML  began to hit mainstream.Flash sorta slept through 2005 to 2007 and woke up in 2008 and in 2010 a lot of soul searching going on at the new Macromedia adobe.XAMLON shows how your cards may fall with you.