理性思考Flash与Ajax相关问题

此文写于购《交互设计之路-让高科技产品回归人性》、《Ajax in Action》两书之后。

我实在是不愿冠以这样一个标题，但危机已经来临。之前(2005-04-28-时隔一年)我曾经翻译过国外某blog上的文章和评论：

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http://www.tbray.org/ongoing/When/200x/2005/04/18/Adobe-Macromedia

Seems straightforward to me. Adobe is in at the center of print production (PhotoShop & friends, InDesign, PDF), while Macromedia’s DreamWeaver is the single most important Web-design product. Dave Shea says this might be about Flash, but let me suggest exactly the opposite: if you’re hitching your career to Flash, it might be a good time to look at alternatives. Why’s that? Because, near as I can tell, Macromedia has never made any serious money with Flash. They’ve accomplished one of the great, heroic, marketing coups of all time, getting the plug-in onto substantially every desktop on the planet; and this bought them, uh, what exactly? They sell authoring tools, but seriously, how many Flash designers does the world need?

Anyhow, most of the good things you can do with Flash, you can do about as well with DHTML (oops that’s called AJAX now) and our “back” button still works. I guess there’s no reason to actually shut Flash down, the tool revenue must about cover the engineering costs. But Adobe, historically, has been good at focusing on what works and dropping the distractions. (Can you remember PageMill?) Flash is a distraction. [Update: Smell something burning? That would be me, sizzling in a torrent of Flash-flavored flame.]

对我而言，这是一件很明确的事实：Adobe公司位于印刷产品业界的核心部地位（Photoshop和PDF），与此同时，Macromedia（下作MM）的DW也是唯一的一款经典的网页建设工具（awflasher.com注：个人认为甚至可以说是利器）。DaveShea说道，Flash也许和它们（PS,PDF from Adobe,DW from MM）一样，但是让我很郑重的告诉你一个相反的事实：如果你把你未来的职业定位于Flash相关，那么最好还是给自己留一手…………为什么这么说呢？因为，据我所知，MM从来没有在Flash方面投入什么财力，它们只是得到了意外的收获！（aw注：这里想到MM官方的一个介绍中对当那场大收购的大力渲染，如果这句话是真，那还难免有点伤情），此外，大多数人都说Adobe不会傻到把Flash枪毙的地步，可是看了Luar的blog，有这么一句话“Adobe有大量購併對手，消滅對手產品的惡劣歷史；”，难免让我有点心寒。M把播放器安装到地球上的每一个角落，然后把制作的工具卖出去，然而，世界上到底需要多少Flash设计人员？总之，大多数你能用Flash完成的任务，你都可以用DHTML（现在叫做AJAX）完成，而且你的“后退”按钮仍然有效（aw注：Flash其实也可以对后台按钮进行操作，只是大多数Flasher不会而以，不要把这个bug加到flash的头上）。我认为没有理由把Flash关闭掉，因为这个工具带来的收益可用于填补工程支出。

然而Adobe，一向是专注于某一方面而把剩下“令他们分心的事物”丢弃（aw附：这里不是很明白，MM难道把Flash用于填补它们其他web工程的自己缺口，这样一种可怜的定位？？？）。你还记得PageMill么（aw附：貌似是很糟的一款Adobe的软件）。而Flash就是一种“令他们分心的事物”。（作者注：是不是有点火了？我感受到你的愤怒了）

Reasoned Debate Some people took the time to compose and post coherent arguments as to why I might be wrong. For example, Pete Freitag writes “I think Macromedia makes most of its money from Flash, so I don't think that they will be cutting it anytime soon” and if he’s right, then I’m wrong. John Dowdell of Macromedia offers an example of something that he says is beyond DHTML’s reach and says “Funny, you'd sorta think Sun would be bullish on a cross-platform, cross-browser ‘write once play anywhere’" kind of thingy, wouldn't you...? ;-)”. ?

有一些人拿出相当的证据来告诉我，我的言论是错误的。比如，PeteFreitag就提到“我认为MM的大部分收入是来自Flash的，所以我认为他们不会把Flash停掉”，如果他是正确的，那么我当然错了。MM公司的JohnDowdell提供了他认为超越了DHTML所能达到能力的一个例子，并提道“有意思，你似乎是把Sun过高地定位为一个跨平台的，跨浏览器的‘写一次（代码），到处可以执行’，实际一点吧！”

Get Yer Flames Here! Hoo boy, those Flash faithful are, what’s the word I’m looking for, um, articulate. Here’s a sampling: ?
发火了吧？呵呵，这些Flash的信徒们，这些语言就是我正在寻找的，在这里有一些例子：

[原文后面评论：aw注：十分搞笑+可爱]
“I assume his comments are an ill-tempered and unprofessional anomaly.” -Brian Lesser.
“我敢肯定他心里有问题，变态……”-Brian Lesser.

“Sun could only dream of a day when Adobe guts Flash so that we might return to those great days of clunky Java applets that never actually fulfilled their purpose within the development community.” -Justin Everett-Church.
“Sun只能梦想着有一天Adobe把Flash毁掉，然后它们的JavaApplets就能东山再起了”-Justin Everett-Church.

“Johnny Script kiddie not knowing about stuff like that I can understand, but the director of web technologies at Sun should at least have some sort clue.” -Stephen Milligan.

“Today’s ‘Whistling Past the Graveyard’ Award goes to Tim Bray, Director of Web Technologies at Sun, whose apparent focus on Java renders him incapable of understanding the value proposition of Flash. No wonder Java continues to stagnate!” -Ray Everett-Church.
“今天的墓地哨音奖（aw注：猜测是某一种贬义的“奖项”）应该归TimBray所有了，就是这个Sun的Web技术部的主管，明显他对Flash的忽略是Java目前步入窘境的原因！”-Ray Everett-Church.

“Mr. Bray must not be spending any time with the users *I* see. Those under the age of 45.” -Kim Cavanaugh. [Ouch!]
“Bray先生肯定没有花多少时间在用户上。那些45岁以下的”-Kim Cavanaugh. [Ouch!]
（aw注：这个“Ouch”不知道是不是作者加的）

“In my opinion Timothy Bray is a Pillock of the First Water.” -Gerry Marshall.
“在我看来作者不过是‘ a Pillock of the First Water’” -GerryMarshall
（aw注：不知道这个什么意思）

“I think it's all rubbish of course.” -Daniel Freeman.
“我认为都是垃圾” -DanielFreeman
（aw注：原来老外也用“垃圾”骂人，哈哈）

“I think it deserves to be marked with the ‘Don't post after a large bottle of wine’ metatag.” -Cort Winters.
“我认为应该在这篇文章上标注‘酒后勿发文’”-CortWinters
（aw注：这个很有幽默感，呵呵）

“What is Bray smoking???” -Phill Nacelli.
“作者在抽什么烟”-PhillNacelli

“Bray is full of FUD and nothing else. He does work for SUN (no bias,ha,ha...;) who have ‘crappy’ applets on their side. He’s just jealous, since Flex, CFMX, Dreameaver, Flash, Breeze and other will make Adobe superior to M$ and Sun in the market and quality.” -Patrick Whittingham.
“作者肯定是个笨蛋，仅此而已。他肯定为SUN工作，为那些没有价值的Applets说话。他只是嫉妒而以，自从Flex、DW、Flash|Breeze等这些能够令Adobe公司在市场和品质上与Sun和微软抗衡的产品出现后的一种嫉妒。”
-Patrick Whittingham。

“Must've got his beard caught in his sandles again.” -clark.
“脑袋进水了”-clark
（aw注：大指应该是这个意思吧，原文是一句俚语）