Since the very start of Degrafa our goal was to make it easier and more intuitive to create graphics in Flex than working directly with the native Flash drawing API. By enabling people to work with graphics through an easy to understand compact markup syntax we believed it would open up new areas of innovation and would improve and streamline the designer/developer workflow. Since we started we’ve had over 8,000 downloads of Degrafa, which is really a testament to how important tackling a strong graphics markup really is.

Of course, we weren’t the only ones to recognize the need that Degrafa addresses. At MAX 2007 Adobe officially announced Thermo (their RIA design tool), and FXG (MXMLG) the graphics markup that would support it. We were excited to see this - not only from a markup standpoint, but from a tooling perspective that would help streamline user adoption. Some people said FXG was the answer and Degrafa wasn’t needed anymore; others asked about a potential collaboration and some were Degrafa die-hards. Well, we’ve always felt strongly about the solutions Degrafa enables and have always been receptive to potential collaborations with Adobe. We really just wanted to create an awesome graphics markup.

Over the past several months we have had many conversations with Adobe where both the Degrafa team and the Flex team shared insights into each others respective endeavors and looked at potential ways for both teams to collaborate. Today, we are very happy to announce that after further conversations and discussions, Adobe has asked if the Degrafa team would consider helping directly contribute to the Flex Graphics open source effort. Our response was a unanimous “Yes!”

Initially, Degrafa will be adapting its core graphic rendering engine directly into Flex Graphics, as the command stack pipeline approach envisioned by Jason over a year ago is very similar to the path Adobe was contemplating and lends itself perfectly to take advantage of the Flash Player 10 optimizations. Everyone on both the Degrafa and Adobe team is very excited by this opportunity to work together. In addition to adding the respective expertise of the Degrafa team to the Flex Graphics effort, we will also be testing the waters as the first direct external contributors to Flex. This is a big step for Adobe and a real indication of their commitment to open source and the community.

What does this mean for Degrafa? The most likely scenario we envision will have Degrafa becoming a superset of FXG, with Degrafa extending what will be possible in FXG. Part of of work with Adobe is helping to ensure that both FXG and Degrafa leverage the same graphics pipepline and command stack approach as mentioned above. This collaboration with Adobe will not only make Flex Graphics more powerful through the enhancements made by Degrafa, but it will also allow Degrafa to become more powerful and easily tooled and extended through Flex Graphics’ closer association and architectural design to Degrafa.

While the FXG syntax and the Flex Graphics classes primarily serve as the needed markup to support Thermo tooling and bridge the gap between the Designer and Developer workflow, we see Degrafa taking a different approach to the same problem. Instead of making a tooling constrained markup, we wanted Degrafa to be an extremely flexible and powerful design that could be directly used by both designers and developers alike, allowing them to push the boundaries of graphics innovation.

We are all looking forward to this opportunity to work together and help build upon each others respective success and strengths.