Aral Balkan’s contributions to the Flash community are well-known and we’re grateful to have had him contribute to several Flashforward events, as well as our upcoming D×3 Conference. So it’s impossible not to get excited about the secret new project he’s been teasing for the past week!

Now all has been revealed: Aral’s “Tangent” is SWX, a new data exchange format for Flash. And as you’d expect from Aral, it’s open source.

One of the key features of SWX is that it delivers data into your SWF as… a SWF! So a simple loadMovie() is all the code you need on the client side, making this immediately useful for limited versions of the Flash client (like on phones and other low-horsepower devices). It’s also very appealing for those of us who, shortly after our first clumsy experience working with XML in ActionScript, more or less gave up on data-driven Flash altogether (ahem.)

SWX is still in alpha, and already it’s been fascinating to listen in on the conversation about its potential and its role among the other data exchange options. We think it’s reassuring that, even while Flash continues its evolution into a serious RIA platform, attention is still being spared to develop user-friendly solutions for “right brain” Flash users who want to play with mashups etc. without a big learning curve.

So thank you Aral! We’re excited to see what your little hatchling grows into.

This entry was posted on Friday, March 30th, 2007 at 11:09 am and is filed under Culture, Tools. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Responses are currently closed, but you can trackback from your own site.