Thermo == speechless! However, I do have questions?

By scott

Google defines Thermo as “Two bars or wires of dissimilar metals joined at one extremity which Couple develop a current (thermoelectric current) when heated.” I define it as a major accomplishment for Adobe that is reinventing the term “Deseloper“. Aral Balkan has posted videos from the sneak peak at Max, too cool.

This is a very early sneak peak, possibly even some smoke and mirrors, but still, Adobe has hit the nail on the head and may have finally beat the Flex Project workflow issues. Watching these videos do bring up a few questions.

Are Thermo projects bound to the original assets? If the developer are working on a project together and the designer changes something in the design will Thermo automatically update the MXML. Obviously within reason, but say the designer moved the Favorites album list above the top list. Whould Thermo recognize this and make the change without the developer intervention?

All of the styles appear to be inline in the demo, can they be extracted into CSS for runtime styling? For larger applications this is mandatory for projects that are multilingual or are available under multiple brands.

What about working the other way? Open MXML in Photoshop? I don’t know how many times I have had designers take a screengrab of something I am working on, hack it apart in Photoshop just to show me what they want. Obviously they could do some of this in Thermo but I doubt Thermo will have every tool that is available in Photoshop and if it is a quick change a designer doesn’t need to learn Thermo, they can make the change, hit Save and the workflow isn’t interupted. This would also allow designers to skin existing components or even a prototype that a developer whipped together to show a concept.

With other WYSIWYG development tools the code output is usually something I wouldn’t want to hang on my fridge. MXML is pretty clean but there are optimizations that can be applied to ensure quicker compilation and easier access via Actionscript. I hope this will be considered. In the end it is all compiled so the output is usually not an issue but as a developer I have opened many files a designer has created with a WYSIWYG applications and have almost fallen out of my chair.

I am sure I will have more questions as I let this sink in. Coming from a design/creative background developer/designer workflows are something I have worked on at most companies I have worked at. I think this is a huge step in the right direction. As long as Adobe doesn’t create a visual tool for creating business logic my job will be secure when Thermo hits the market