After the discussion on the ML about the Design View, I thought it would be
a good idea to ask Deepa at the Flex Paris meeting if Adobe could consider
to open-source it after the removal from next version of Flash Builder.
Frédéric Thomas, also on the ML, was quicker than me and ask Deepa about
that.
She said that Adobe hasn't thought about it because they didn't believe we
were interested, but she was thinking it could be a good idea.
In fact, the Design View is a Flex app, so the community can easily
contribute to it, and legal scrubbing should not be such a drag.
She concluded that the best thing to make it happen would be to show
interrest for the open-sourcing of DV on this list.
I know that lots of people don't care about the Design View (I rarely use it
myself), but here are 4 reasons I think it could be a good move for Apache
Flex:
- DV is a great tool to understand the MXML paradigm, particularly for
people coming for a Flash Pro background (timeline+stage), and its removal
would increase the barrier of entry to Flex.
- I heard several times about devs for which the DV is central to their Flex
workflow. It's often the case for heavy form-based application, where
standard Flex components are use exclusively and the Design View help
avoiding "design re-compilation".
In fact, I was told by an Adobe enterprise evangelist that he sold Flex to
some big companies mainly because of the Design View and the ease they see
in it to train their employees.
- DV can be really helpful when designing Mobile apps, because you can test
quickly your design with different resolutions and orientations
- If we have access to the Design View code, maybe we could improve it in a
way that even current Design View haters would use it ;)
Dimitri K.
