Not the biggest news of the day, perhaps (though I may have something to say on that when we find out what is actually being announced), but I’m a believer that this is a significant announcement nonetheless. Surprising? Not really, since the folks from the Gillmor Gang were hinting at big news this week anyhow. Further, it’s pretty logical.
What’s Macromedia’s problem? Appealing to mainstream (i.e., non-multimedia) developers by a.) speaking their language and b.) plugging into their standard toolsets. How about Eclipse? Well, despite evidence to the contrary, the perception still exists in some quarters that Eclipse is a Java-only platform. Hence the win/win association.
While it’s obviously an important step for both organizations, however, I think the actual importance of the announcement will be for competing platforms. Basically, I think this move signifies the fact that it will be increasingly difficult for ISVs and would-be platform vendors of any shape or size to pursue a standalone tools strategy. As the industry gradually coalesces around a few aggregation points or centers of gravity – e.g. Eclipse – development vendors will have to justify not aligning with a larger framework, rather than vice versa. To be fair, I could have made this argument prior to today’s announcement, but when a platform with the ubiquity of Flash goes this route, it’s clear that the plugin model is the path forward.
Bill Higgins says:
June 6, 2005 at 9:43 am
(disclosure – I work for IBM and am biased towards Eclipse as a platform)
I was also happy to see this news – as you said big validation of Eclipse as a platform beyond Java tools.
I'll be particularly interested to watch if Macromedia provides rich integration with the nascent Eclipse Web Tools Platform Project. This is an emerging project intended to provide a standard, open-source, free toolkit for web-based projects (both J2EE and non-J2EE). I can imagine that Macromedia tools integrated with other Eclipse HTML and J2EE tools would be a powerful combination. This is mere speculation at this point.
PS – Do you have any thoughts on Eclipse vs. NetBeans as platforms? Schwartz always claims that NetBeans is winning mindshare, but all of the news I read seems to point towards Eclipse winning this battle for the hearts and minds of develoeprs. Again, as an IBMer, I'm biased towards Eclipse.
sogrady says:
June 6, 2005 at 3:01 pm
very interested to see if the possibilities from a web tools platform perspective. flash obviously has a role to play in those sorts of applications, so the synergies are obvious.
on the Netbeans v Eclipse front, do a quick search on here and you'll find a few past entries concerning the relative support i see for that platforms. but the short answer is that yes, i see NetBeans making gains, but almost every ISV i speak with is developing to Eclipse. that, to me, is why Eclipse has critical mass.