Macromedia's UCON 2001, April 10-12, 2001

Dec 07, 2005

by S. Malkah Cohen, Managing Editor

I just spent an exhilarating few days in the heart of midtown Manhattan, at the New York Hilton. This was the new setting for an annual event that represents a quantum step forward for web developers. Macromedia's annual users' convention, "UCON," is usually held in California. In the wake of its recent acquisition of Allaire Corp., Macromedia decided that it was time to move it all east for UCON 2001, which was held here in New York, April 10-12.

No numbers were immediately available about attendance at prior UCONs, but there was definite evidence that the new venue was the right choice for a very hot topic. Nearly 2,000 developers from all over the world converged to learn about the latest details in the Macromedia/Allaire marriage and see the newest developments from over forty vendors of all types. They came to share tips and tricks with their colleagues and Macromedia's tech teams and to get a good look at the latest new product developments. And most of all, they wanted to hear from the horses' mouths just what is in store from the industry powerhouse that is Macromedia.

Keynote Address

Day One kicked off with an inspiring keynote address. From the beginning of Macromedia CEO Rob Burgess' opening remarks, an eager audience listened avidly to each new presentation.

Mr. Burgess stressed that this conference would be all about the user experience. While he thanked the developers for their enthusiastic adoption of Macromedia products and the constant flow of valuable feedback, he also acknowledged the impact of recent economic changes on the dynamics of web development. Developers must now be more careful of how they spend their valuable time and increasingly tight budgets in order to provide the most effective user experience. "Excellent user experience must prevail!" he stressed.

The user's interest must be fully engaged, if a web site is to succeed. Mr. Burgess compared the experience to that of an advertising billboard, an offline store, onsite training courses and a book. Each of these contact points represents a unique method of communication, and web developers must keep these paradigms in mind as they design their sites.

Mr. Burgess reminded us that an effective user experience will drive growth, but costs are also an important consideration. The costs to get a site up and running, maintain it, update it, etc. must all be factored into the development considerations. This conference is about user experience and cost effectiveness, which is "what Macromedia is all about."

However, this is not just a technology problem. Developers need a powerful vision of how their tools work together, especially in light of the new merger with Allaire. This conference would focus not only on products, but also on programs and initiatives.

He noted that the Dreamweaver Exchange was a powerful tool for developers. Over one million add-ons have been downloaded since it was established. These add-ons and plug-ins represent modules developed by Macromedia itself, hot new ideas shared by developers in the field and commercial products that piggyback on Dreamweaver and other Macromedia products to increase their capabilities.

Learning programs and sites represent 15-30% of revenues generated within Macromedia and its allies. Such tools as the Macromedia University increase developers' access to Macromedia staff and lead to reduced development costs.

Another of Macromedia's concerns is the fact that much of the advertising now out on the Internet is simply not effective. On the other hand, one of the most valuable tools for increasing the effectiveness of such advertising, Macromedia Flash, is now ubiquitous. There have been over one BILLION downloads of Flash in the last eighteen months alone. So what's wrong?

Macromedia has realized that it is uniquely qualified to spearhead an investigation into website advertising effectiveness and, in January 2001, formed the Macromedia Flash Advertising Alliance. This task force quickly concluded that the standardized banner is not only boring but sadly ineffective, "a lousy user experience." The group is working now on developing new standards, establishing and sharing best practices with its members and promoting new techniques.

Companies large and small are reporting poor returns on investment (ROIs) and poor to lackluster user experience. These are now great opportunities for Macromedia developers to shape that future into a sounder economic model and a more effective user experience. Macromedia itself is doing well financially. With over $400 million in sales last year and a 20% profit margin, its financial strength gives it the opportunity to invest in the web's future, providing the innovation and support developers need to make the most of these opportunities.

Looking at the Challenges Ahead

Next up, Kevin Lynch, President of Products for Macromedia, and Jeremy Allaire, now Chief Technology Officer, took a look at the existing trends and the challenges on the immediate horizon.

Developers and designers are facing a complex puzzle in the growing multi-device landscape. We must design not only for the PC/Mac and its several browsers, each with several versions, but also for TV set-top boxes/Web TV, PDA's, cell phones and whatever new technology may be on the horizon. This presents a unique challenge to our industry. Mr. Allaire stressed the difficulties of developing in WAP and similar dedicated languages. Macromedia is working on a solution. [Read on for more details!]

Another major challenge is the growing trend toward dynamic content. Content management and its delivery are gradually merging. We are moving from static authoring of whole pages at a time to dynamic design, where the basic structure is set, but the various content modules are constantly changing.

Macromedia ColdFusion and JRun are two ways to do this. ColdFusion's tag-based language is easy for HTML developers to pick up, since they are both tag-based. JRun is J2EE compliant and is controlled by JSP, also widely used. Kevin noted that adding server-side functionality by setting up a site dynamically through backend solutions, such as ColdFusion or JRun, means that a small style change that must take effect throughout the site can be handled by a single update through the server. "The two worlds (of design and development) are colliding," said Kevin. "It's much more efficient and saves time this way."

Macromedia's Neo initiative will build on this basic platform even further.

Justin Knecht demonstrated just how the merging of design and development can effect a real site: Crayola.com. Here, developers were looking for a solution to take them away from the static HTML page first developed, since "Crayola is about solutions." Once the decision to move on this was made, the creative team took just three days to come up with an initial design model using Dreamweaver. Three weeks later, ColdFusion was up and running, and the whole site was operational within four months.

Justin's team uses CF_Cookie to maintain personalized interfaces for each unique user. Content is updated daily by content providers uploading templated files to the server, without adding a single link, adding a constant stream of seasonal and new projects. Viral marketing, whereby a user can show what he or she has found on the site to others who might be interested, is proving an extremely effective tool.

A particularly interesting aspect of this project is its use of CF variables passed into Flash. The site uses these to customize the interface with each user, reflecting the features they have indicated as their "favorites," the region the site will be representing (i.e., USA, Canada, France) and even the language in which it is presented.

Another trend addressed by Kevin and Jeremy is the need to simplify communications among project participants. Every developer and designer knows the frustration of needing content components from clients and failing to get them on time. Macromedia is addressing this with a new site within Macromedia.com called the Production Management Techniques Site. Here, project managers will find downloads, content and a forum to help make the process smoother within workgroups. Further down the road, we can look forward to a new project, code named "Vermillion", designed to address this very issue. [Read more about this in Malkah's interview with Jeremy Allaire and Kevin Lynch, elsewhere in this issue.]

Excite@Home's Erin Rosenthal came up to help Jeremy and Kevin illustrate the third trend: Rich media content across multiple device platforms. She showed us how Excite is able to run web content through a set-top box. While a TV program continues to run in the background or an inset box, one can check news, stock quotes, weather, etc., all in a personalized format.

On the other hand, Kevin warns, we have to be careful about pushing boundaries. There are sites out there that are just too "busy", using Flash and all sorts of bells, whistles and bouncing text that only detracts from the content and turns users off. He points to General Motors' site as an excellent and elegant use of many tricks of the trade, without being tricky for trickiness' sake.

New Releases

What would a user conference be without new releases? UCON is no exception, and this year, Macromedia is offering some real winners for designers.

Macromedia FreeHand 10, released just before the conference, is not only an elegant, multi-talented and worthy addition to this well established line of software. It is also the first design program to support Macintosh's OS X operating system. Now graphics design can be generated in a single program then exported to a wide variety of media, from print to web and back again. FreeHand team member Eric Wittman demonstrated the new contour gradient tool, Flash-imbedded actions and the ability to preview your work as a Flash movie, and the new Macromedia universal user interface.

But the biggest news is Macromedia Director 8.5 Shockwave Studio. Kevin demonstrated a wonderful, panoramic view of New York City, complete with zooming, panning and interactivity of several sorts. Miriam Geller of Macromedia and Dan Russell of Intel then showed us how Director can even take on the fast action of a live soccer game and let the viewer zoom around, viewing the action from any angle at all! And yet the rendered file sizes are amazingly tiny.

It is extremely important to note that these new developments were only possible through the enthusiastic and committed support of Intel's engineers. The ubiquity of Shockwave, with literally hundreds of millions of downloads out there, means that products produced with Director can be freely used by any web designer with reasonable assumption of acceptance.

Another important factor here is that Macromedia has once again set a standard that will undoubtedly become industry-wide. Director can take the product of any 3D-rendering program and generate it into the *.W3D file format. A small army of Macromedia allies is already hard at work generating a body of artwork that is growing exponentially, providing content and modules that any designer can buy and add to his/her project. Turbosquid already lists thousands of such images and is adding more daily. Some 80% of 3D-rendering studios have already accepted this as the new, de facto standard.

And this isn't only something for gamers. 3D-imaging is also of tremendous use in education and is proving wonderfully effective in e-commerce. The ability to see all sides of, say, a chair and place it next to a specific table, then even measure them both (to see if they'll fit where you want them) and try out different color combinations, makes this a powerful tool.

The Keynote Panel

Soon after the end of the Keynote Address, Kevin Lynch brought together a panel of authors, developers and designers to discuss finding the balance point between design and functionality and to look at some of the issues facing developers and designers when dealing with clients.

The panel members were: Jeffrey Veen, author of The Art & Science of Web Design and founding partner of Adaptive Path; Steve Krug, author of Don't Make Me Think! A Common Sense Approach to Web Usability; Berndt Ewert, Director of the AOL User Interface Group; and Hillman Curtis, Principal and Chief Creative Officer of hillmancurtis, inc., a pioneer in cross-medium digital design.

The panel also fielded questions from the audience, including those dealing with the delicate task of balancing what's cool with what's effective and appropriate for a given site. The quicksand of inappropriate animation, used just for the sake of using it, was also probed.

Sneak Peek

At the close of the first day of the show, after some fascinating seminars and a brief visit to the busy exhibit hall, we were all invited to join Kevin and Jeremy for a look at what's in store down the road. Our intrepid emcees were all got up in super hero capes and masks, as were the presenters, as they good-naturedly set out to find out what Macromedia's designers and developers want from them in the coming months and years. Several potential new products and initiatives were brought to the table for our approval. Most of these new ideas were wonderful and immediately recommended for further development.

Expanded wizards seem popular, especially for designing things on the fly, such as photo albums. Harpoon is working to develop simple ColdFusion tags to create Macromedia Flash charts that looked great, especially when the presenter showed how the data the charts represented could be designed to change dynamically on the fly with just a few lines of code. Later, ColdFusion tags were used to incorporate other Flash programs and modules, without having to know anything about Flash, an interesting boon for ColdFusion developers. Macromedia's "Greylock" initiative will enable ColdFusion to work with databases without needing to know the precise data structure. New object-oriented tag galleries will be available soon.

Simple animation built into FreeHand was a hit, as was the ability to add server-side language directly into Ultradev. Authorware's new "one-button publishing tool", XML support and configurable tool bar looked interesting. So did its ad banner generator. Director will be able to generate 3D images in real time based on content that can change at a moment's notice.

But far and away, the audience was most pleased by the ability to bookmark a Macromedia Flash program that was being run on a browser. Evidently, a Flash animation that you can return back to, reload and bookmark is just what the designer ordered!

On the Exhibit Floor

In between Tuesday's events and again for several hours on Wednesday, I took a look around at the booths of the many Macromedia-allied firms who chose to be at this event. Animation and 3D rendering shops predominated, but there were also firms that had developed programs that support knowledge communities, a site that acts as a broker between artists and the designers who need their output (Turbosquid), dedicated hosting sites, one that can support your entire data-capture capability off site, and training program/site developers. Several publishers displayed the many books now available in support of Macromedia products ? there are now approximately 19 regarding Flash alone! Hardware manufacturers from IBM to Intel to Apple were well represented.

I spent a considerable amount of time discussing the Macromedia/Allaire merger. Such familiar ColdFusion faces as G Triad's Jack Montealegre feel that "The merger is great for all." The synergies between Flash and ColdFusion, Flash and JRun will continue the trend toward the merging of the application and presentation layers, giving developers ever more powerful tools.

Turbosquid's Andrew Wisdom expressed similar sentiments. Since Turbosquid has always run on ColdFusion, closer integration with the content builder end of things "can only be good for all." And even such non-ColdFusion houses as Shells Interactive feel that the synergy between designers and developers that will inevitable result now will provide the impetus to keep Macromedia on the leading edge.

More information about the conference, including webcasts of the keynote, panel and sneak peek are available on the Macromedia site: UCON 2001.