June 24, 2003 at 10:15 pm | blabbing.

Just got back from a Flash/Macromedia users group meeting where we talked about the new FireFly components for Flash. Once again the concensus was that Macromedia had picked up the right arrow but shot it at the wrong target.

FireFly components are drag and drop components for Flash that let you talk with a backend database without writing a single piece of code. While on the surface this would seem a good idea, it would also be a good idea that in order to do this you were not tied to the Macromedia Cold Fusion platform.

The great idea that is Flash is slowly running down deadends as Macromedia over and over looks for revenue streams where it should be fostering good will and a commmunity.

How about giving away these little magic beans instead of charging for them? Maybe people would be more inclined to build applications? How about opening up the connector protocol so that people can write connectors in Perl, PHP, JSP, ASP, and yes better ones in Cold Fusion. If you want adoption you have to give something to the professional developers, not make it so house wives in Delaware can build dynamic rich applications without knowing anything about Flash as long as they have a cold fusion server.

Macromedia is once again building products and then trying to figure out who the user base is.