FITC Thermo Sneaks = Yawn

The Adobe Thermo presentation given by Ethan Eeismann at FITC was largely a disappointment. Rather than delivering actual examples of a designer working in the latest build of Thermo, the slide driven talk labored through the historical workflow friction between designers and developers and then presented only a few screen grabs of the app where the audience was asked to imagine how a certain scenario might play out.

Just for clarity Ethan is articulate as hell, but the presentation would of been better suited for a CHI audience than a Flash conference. We’re all pretty familiar with the workflow friction (we’ve been living it) and I, for one, just wanted to see how Thermo has progressed since it was demoed at MAX07. I talked with a number of others who attended the session and we all pretty much felt the same. I really hope Adobe tightens up the messaging and provides a bit more ‘pop’ in the future — it’s important to build the buzz rather than dampen it.

The best line from the entire presentation:

From the web to the desktop.

As web experiences grow better, greater pressure is applied to improve the desktop experience.

Now, with Adobe AIR, the benefits of RIAs are brought to the desktop.

I couldn’t agree more. The web has long been data rich, affords greater interoperability and, thanks largely to Flash Player, delivers superior user experiences. With AIR, Adobe has a chance to complete the circle and finally bring ‘write once‘ rich experiences to the desktop. This is why it kills me to hear Microsoft Silverlight compared to Adobe AIR by the tech press. They are missing the entire point — been there; done that; now taking it to the desktop.

Screen grabs where you’re asking a large audience to imagine complex interactions almost never work — here are the ’sneaks’ of Thermo the audience was given.