The new Adobe Developer Connection: Content and community for developers

I've been extremely silent on my blog for the past few weeks and months. I've been very focused on a big project to help the Adobe developer community.

And I'm very excited to say that that new project is out the door. Its called the Adobe Developer Connection or ADC. You can visit the new site at http://developer.adobe.com/

or you can read more details below.

Over the past few months, the team here at Adobe has launched several projects that we believe will improve the web and help developers build better projects faster. First, in November 2006 we announced the Tamarin project with Mozilla, open-sourcing the virtual machine behind Flash Player. Then, in April 2007, Adobe announced that the Flex SDK would be open-sourced. And throughout the year, we've delivered beta versions of Adobe® AIR™ so that web developers can take their application ideas to the desktop.

Now Adobe is taking the next step to support the web and application development community. We're delivering a new developer site and program, the Adobe Developer Connection or ADC. I've been working on this project with a bunch of other folks for the past few months and wanted to share some of the details of this new resource with you.

What is the ADC and why should I visit?

The Adobe Developer Connection (ADC) at http://developer.adobe.com is the next generation of what you may know as the Adobe Developer Center. It's a portal to connect developers to technical articles, tutorials, code, documentation, as well as to other developers. By visiting the ADC, developers can learn how to get started with Adobe technologies and find the right resources to advance their projects. And best of all, joining the ADC is completely free.

So, why should you visit the ADC? If you are reading this on Adobe.com, then you probably already know the answer to this question, but for those of you reading on my blog or somewhere else, here's the answer: The ADC serves as the definitive developer resource for how-to information from Adobe.

By visiting the ADC, developers can:

• Find articles, tutorials, downloads and code to help start or advance a project. The ADC enhances delivery of technical content focused on core use cases, including RIAs, website and mobile development, interactive media, and video on the web.
• Take advantage of the newly enhanced, streamlined search capabilities, improved design, page layout and information architecture as well as a new resource panel to easily find helpful resources, including forums, documentation and bug bases.
• Connect with other developers and community resources.

A plethora of benefits—and we're just getting started

Most of all, I'm excited by the wide range of free benefits the ADC offers for developers who join. By joining the ADC for free—all you have to do is provide an e-mail address and password—you can:

• Connect with other professional designers and developers through the ADC introNetwork.
• Download the first release of the ADC Developer Desktop, an Adobe AIR application you can use to track Flex bugs.
• Receive a special "Buy 2 books, and get 1 free" offer from O'Reilly Media, with free shipping in the United States and Puerto Rico.
• Share code and solutions to technical issues through the Flex cookbookCSS Advisor. and
• Choose to subscribe to developer newsletters, including the biweekly Developer Connection Update.

The ADC introNetwork: Connecting with other developers

Social networking has emerged over the past few years as a way to find friends and maintain contacts. Everyone I know is in at least one social network, if not two, three, or more. And you may be asking yourself, "Why is Adobe introducing another one?"

Quite simply, the ADC introNetwork is different. It's a way to connect you with other developers and designers based on their professional background, skills and personality traits.

Unlike other social networks, the ADC introNetwork is focused on professional attributes and individual capabilities, not just personal interests or relationships. The ADC introNetwork features an innovative Pin View (see Figure 1), which allows users to visualize how close or far away their profiles are from other participants. Users can provide details of their technology certifications, as well as spell out interest in learning about job opportunities or sharing technical knowledge with others.

Figure 1. IntroNetworks Pin View

ADC members can create a personal introNetwork profile as a free benefit for joining the ADC. You can access the ADC introNetwork by joining the Adobe Developer Connection.

ADC Developer Desktop: It's not just a website, it's a desktop application

With this launch of the ADC, we are also delivering the first release of the ADC Developer Desktop, a free desktop application that makes developers more productive. This first release brings the public Flex bug base to the desktop using Adobe AIR. Flex developers can use the Developer Desktop to track bugs and receive desktop notifications to changes in Flex bug properties.

Search: Finding answers—faster

The improved ADC search presents clearer search results that contain with more information, such as a display of the URL where the information can be found. It also lets you narrow down search results by where the information is located on Adobe.com. For example, after conducting a search for an Adobe product, you can narrow down the results to only include product documentation.

In addition, search results are displayed using wider screen resolution to allow more results to appear without scrolling, and users can also determine how many results appear per page.

Cookbooks: The perfect recipe

As part of this launch, we've updated the Flex cookbook—a way for developers to share techniques and code samples with others in the Flex community. The newly redesigned Flex cookbook home page makes it easy for developers to navigate to answers they need through new features, including:

• An increased number of highest-rated and recent posts surfaced on the home page
• A convenient tool-tip that developers can use to read problem/solution summaries without leaving the page
• Navigation by top searches
• RSS feeds for recent posts, comments, and edits
• An extension for Flex Builder and Eclipse that developers can use to read cookbook posts from within their development environment

What's next? We want your opinion

First, if you haven't done so already, be sure to visit the new improved home page at http://developer.adobe.com. From there, it's easy to join and get the full benefits of the program by clicking the Join link in the upper right corner of the page.

For future releases of the ADC, we are currently looking at ways to increase visitor participation through community features such as rating, tagging, and commenting of content. We want to continue to enhance the visual presentation of content and make it easier to find technical resources quickly. The ADC team is also planning to deliver additional features for the ADC Developer Desktop.

The ADC is for the developer community, so the most important factor in determining future features is user feedback. Tell us the good and the bad, or ask questions in our feedback forum. We want to know what you think about our content, as well as what you'd like to see in the future.

Help us help you - but wait, there's more

Ok, actually there isn't more, as my title would suggest. This post only has a request for your participation in a survey. We tend to do a lot of research in the community, asking developers and designers for their opinions on lots of stuff, ranging from product features, pricing to marketing.

Here's one more survey to add to the mix. But I'd like to add a personal request for readers of this blog, and anyone else who links to this post to please complete the survey at the link below. Your responses will really help us shape the resources we provide for you as developers using Adobe technologies.

So in the end, if you take 5 minutes or less right now, and voice your opinion about developer resources and programs, it can have a big impact on the type of content and resources that we provide down the road. (Wow does, that sound like one of those cheesy ads you see on TV? I certainly hope not. Otherwise, I'll have to send out a lot of Ginsu knives. Which by the way, you can see the original Ginsu ad below.)





You can also feel free to blog it or share the link to the survey with co-workers if you want. (Feel free to share the link to the Ginsu knife video too, but I'm definitely not asking you to pass that on. I'm only asking you to pass on the survey to other developers using Adobe technologies.

And lastly, note that we are focusing this research a bit more on the developer than the designer, but lots of people in the community cover both design and coding, so feel free to take a look and see if you think its relevant to you.

You can take the survey via the following link http://snipr.com/adcsurvey

Highlighting the community and developers on adobe.com

For the past few days, I've been spending time with many of our Community Leaders (User group managers and Community Experts) who have joined us at Adobe HQ for our annual Community Leadership Summit.

One of the things that multiple people mentioned to me, from pretty much the first second I walked in the door is that Adobe needs to a better job highlighting the community on Adobe.com. I completely agree. One of the suggestions a number of attendees mentioned at the summit was to include the community on Adobe Labs. We took a small, quick first step at that here. And Elaine Montoya even stayed up late on Tuesday night to do a mockup of her ideas. Thanks Elaine.

So, for people who already read my blog, you already know this. But if you are a first time reader, I'm using this blog for feedback from the Adobe community on how we can improve our support of you. And thats today's question. What ideas do you have on how Adobe can highlight the community more on Adobe.com.

Please comment away on my blog.

Am I too late to get feedback?

So I'm late to the game. Its taken me a long time to spin up my blog, but with a bit of a new focus in my job, I realized its time. So here it is...my entry into the blogosphere.

But if you have found your way here and don't already know me, then you are probably asking yourself, in the immortal words of Admiral James Stockdale, who am I and why am I here? So I'll explain that, and I'm definitely hoping for better results than the Admiral's.

I've been working at iterations of Adobe since early 2000, starting with Allaire, then on to Macromedia, and since December of 2005, at Adobe. Before that I spent time at Powersoft, Sybase, Silverstream and IBM. So I've been thinking about and working with developers a lot over the past 15 years, and specifically working on developer relations over the past 15 months or so.

And in the last month or so, I've started to focus even more deeply on developers, specifically around the area of developer programs. So it clearly became time to blog, not only to share some insight into things we are thinking about, things we are working to better support developers, but to use this blog as a way to get your opinions, feedback and ideas.

So with that, yes I'm late to the game, but I'm here. And while I'm thrilled to have comments welcoming me to the blogosphere if anyone wants to do that, more than anything I want to kick this off by getting input from people that develop applications with Adobe technology. What do you think --what does Adobe need to do to provide better support for developers? Is it better content, more community connections, easier ability to find code, etc? All ideas and suggestions are welcome.