My past 10 years have been spent engineering applications for US government. Section 508 / accessibility is mostly mandatory for applications. I said "mostly" as in a few circumstances we were able to get exceptions. As for my experience with development for private industry, accessibility rarely comes as a requirement. My UI development is not limited to Flash, and in fact many of them are ASP.NET html applications.
If accessibility is the main reason not making AS4 port of Flex worthwhile, I feel the drawback may have been blown out of proportion. There are more enterprise GUI's not accessible than those are. If anyone takes a peek into jQuery plug-ins, GWT widgets, or even components from DevXpress, Telerik etc, they are not 100% accessible either (except what they claim in their marketing collaterals). However, from a sustainable development perspective, I love the capability of accessibility. It has little to do with the disabled, but from a user acceptance test perspective, I can create automated test scripts to drive a Flash application using what the accessibility has exposed. Such unique capability has been extremely helpful even in the situation where things are graphically intensive. Tangent -----Original Message----- From: Gordon Smith [mailto:gosm...@adobe.com] Sent: Monday, October 22, 2012 1:47 PM To: flex-dev@incubator.apache.org Subject: RE: To AS4 or not > regarding the gaming strategy i don't see why Adobe would add accessibility to the new runtime, even in the long term. IMO it will never happen. I certainly wouldn't assume that it will happen, because Adobe is giving no indication of this. - Gordon -----Original Message----- From: sébastien Paturel [mailto:sebpatu.f...@gmail.com] Sent: Monday, October 22, 2012 4:22 AM To: flex-dev@incubator.apache.org Subject: Re: To AS4 or not If you need accessibility on desktop, you can rely on current runtime if you need new runtime for next mobile targets, do we still have accessiblity features in mobile apps? "when it becomes available" regarding the gaming strategy i don't see why Adobe would add accessibility to the new runtime, even in the long term. IMO it will never happen. Le 22/10/2012 13:12, Charles Monteiro a écrit : > Accessibility as for the disabled, physically impaired ? No, I don't > see that as a hard requirement to start work on a port but something > you would try to add later when it becomes available. > > The unclear implications of whether my flex as3 mobile app has a path > forward in this new context of as4 is a huge concern. Knowing that > some AS gurus are working on a port would be great. > On Oct 20, 2012 11:48 PM, "Gordon Smith" <gosm...@adobe.com> wrote: > >> Isn't it premature to port the Flex framework if the new runtime >> doesn't support things like accessibility that RIAs need? >> >> - Gordon >> >> -----Original Message----- >> From: Tianzhen Lin [mailto:tang...@usa.net] >> Sent: Saturday, October 20, 2012 2:10 PM >> To: flex-dev@incubator.apache.org >> Subject: RE: To AS4 or not >> >> I cannot wait to see the specs of AS4, and love to help out porting >> Flex framework from AS3 to AS4. What would be interesting is to see >> how to maintain the parity between the two versions, but a good >> technology is worth the pain to keep it up to date. >> >> Tangent >> >> ------ Original Message ------ >> Received: Sat, 20 Oct 2012 05:02:44 PM EDT >> From: Gordon Smith <gosm...@adobe.com> >> To: "flex-dev@incubator.apache.org" <flex-dev@incubator.apache.org> >> Subject: RE: To AS4 or not >> >>>> Is it a stupide idea to use Falcon to transcode from AS3 to AS4 and >>>> then >> compile AS4 with adobes compiler? (if we emulate or drop the native >> features that disappeared) Is it realistic or a large amount of work to do? >>> It's not a stupid idea, but it is probably less work to just >>> manually port >> the framework to AS4. >>>> Is it realistic to use falcon to transcode flex codebase from AS3 >>>> to any >> other language, and be able to use this generated code as the new >> codebase for Apache flex? >>> again, features like Events, or Display aside. >>> >>> It is certainly possible. Whether it is realistic, given the lack of >>> people >> volunteering to work on the compiler, is questionable in my mind. >>> - Gordon >>> >>> -----Original Message----- >>> From: sébastien Paturel [mailto:sebpatu.f...@gmail.com] >>> Sent: Saturday, October 20, 2012 6:35 AM >>> To: flex-dev@incubator.apache.org >>> Subject: Re: To AS4 or not >>> >>> Thanks Gordon for you answers, >>> >>> "but you'd have to rewrite it even if the new VM ran AS3 because the >>> new VM >> doesn't have DisplayObject or Event" >>> Such features can be emulated in short term before rewriting the >>> framework >> without them. >>> But rewrite the whole codebase because of synax changes is much more >>> work to >> get done. >>> Is it a stupide idea to use Falcon to transcode from AS3 to AS4 and >>> then >> compile AS4 with adobes compiler? (if we emulate or drop the native >> features that disappeared) Is it realistic or a large amount of work to do? >>> I know its not good practice to try to code in AS3 for an AS4 vm >>> with >> different patterns, but it can be a short term solution if we need to >> target the new runtime rapidly. >>> If flex is multi target though, we won't be able to get a generic >>> language >> that can fit to every target patterns we want. >>> And with pragmatism in mind, flex is AS3 today, so we have to deal >>> with >>> AS3 for quite a time. >>> >>> Gordon, another question that may be stupid. >>> Is it realistic to use falcon to transcode flex codebase from AS3 to >>> any >> other language, and be able to use this generated code as the new >> codebase for Apache flex? >>> again, features like Events, or Display aside. >>> >>> Thanks >>> Regards, >>> >>> >>> Le 20/10/2012 00:11, Gordon Smith a écrit : >>>>> So the only way to make flex run on the new VM is to rewrite the >>>>> SDK >> code, and with no easy way to do so? >>>> Yes, I think so, but you'd have to rewrite it even if the new VM >>>> ran >>>> AS3 >> because the new VM doesn't have DisplayObject or Event! >>>>> Do you know if the next AIR runtime will only work for AS4? >>>> Sorry, I don't know the plans for AIR. >>>> >>>> - Gordon >>>> >>>> -----Original Message----- >>>> From: sébastien Paturel [mailto:sebpatu.f...@gmail.com] >>>> Sent: Friday, October 19, 2012 3:02 PM >>>> To: flex-dev@incubator.apache.org >>>> Subject: Re: To AS4 or not >>>> >>>> So the only way to make flex run on the new VM is to rewrite the >>>> SDK code, >> and with no easy way to do so? >>>> Do you know if the next AIR runtime will only work for AS4? >>>> >>>> Le 19/10/2012 23:53, Gordon Smith a écrit : >>>>> I think this would be difficult as the new VM is not designed to >>>>> run >> AS3. >>>>> - Gordon >>>>> >>>>> -----Original Message----- >>>>> From: sébastien Paturel [mailto:sebpatu.f...@gmail.com] >>>>> Sent: Friday, October 19, 2012 2:50 PM >>>>> To: flex-dev@incubator.apache.org >>>>> Subject: Re: To AS4 or not >>>>> >>>>> and using Falcon to compile AS3 to generate new VM bytecode? >>>>> is it more realistic to achieve? >>>>> >>>>> Le 19/10/2012 20:54, Gordon Smith a écrit : >>>>>>> Gordon, Adobe AS4 compiler won't be open sourced but would it be >> possible to adapt Falcon to target the new VM? >>>>>> Yes, it would be possible. Falcon/ASC 2.0 was the starting point >>>>>> for >> Adobe's development of an AS4 compiler. But it's been many >> developer-years of work for us and it isn't trivial. ActionScript is more complex than MXML. >>>>>> - Gordon >>>>>> >>>>>> >>>>>> -----Original Message----- >>>>>> From: João Fernandes [mailto:joaopedromartinsfernan...@gmail.com] >>>>>> Sent: Friday, October 19, 2012 10:53 AM >>>>>> To: flex-dev@incubator.apache.org >>>>>> Subject: Re: To AS4 or not (was: Re: ASC 2.0 and Falcon) >>>>>> >>>>>> Alex, couldn't we simply use AS4 and have multiple target platforms ? >>>>>> >>>>>> Gordon, Adobe AS4 compiler won't be open sourced but would it be >> possible to adapt Falcon to target the new VM? >> >>
