[update: this post has been in the limbo for way too long, I wanted a way to embed the flash videos from Adobe.tv here, but it looks like there is none. I am publishing this post today, in hopes that the reader may find it interesting enough to actually try the links... BTW this here might relate to the silverlight 4 thingy as well! ]
I find it really generous of Adobe to put all of these up. Even if most of it is marketing, they still share a few gems of information. Really worthwhile for guys like me, who end up being so busy there's little hope of attending an actual MAX event unless planned at least six months ahead of time.
I chanced upon the Adobe AIR 2.0 preview video: http://tv.adobe.com/watch/max-2009-develop/whats-coming-in-adobe-air-2-/
(I wish there was a way to embed flash videos from Adobe.tv into Wordpress...)
To me the most important ones are the support for USB (mass storage devices) and native apps (so you can now open a word document from within AIR). I am still a bit skep about the performance, but, I am sure this is going to improve over the new version too...
Check these videos out. Kinda nice. Kinda exciting.
Cheers.
S.
[update:
1. there's a lot more videos on AIR2 in the complete video list, but I did like this one by Kevin Lynch as well: http://tv.adobe.com/watch/max-2009-develop/kevin-lynch-demos-adobe-air-2-features/
2. I prefer the adobe media player for working out all of it. nicer neater faster AIR based video playing...]
One of the coolest aspects for me is the printing support. Today's RIA space dearly needs good printing support for its applications. As usual, microsoft has packed enough goodies in the bag, to make a non-programming drag'n'drop coder look like a champion developer! Comprehensive set of form controls and the works...
Another very important point with this version might be the networking support. Again, this might prove to be a game changer. I am thinking cloud, stock markets and social networks right now and I am hoping this could prove to be a cool RIA platform for getting stuff done!
For now this needs Visual Studio 2010 beta 2 (or the web dev express 2010 beta 2).
Check out the announcement: http://silverlight.net/getstarted/silverlight-4-beta/ which I am sure will be a lot more instructive than the two second analysis I have for now.
It's good news that VS2008 and 2010 can live together. I am off to trying the new stuff now!
About a year or so ago, I remember pestering one of the project managers with the nuances of experience design. I had shared 2 links with this guy, the first to a beautiful presentation (on SlideShare) that I promised would change how he looks at web based applications and the second to an equally cool presentation by Adaptive Path (http://www.adaptivepath.com/).
The poor chap had a tough time working it all out with me, but, in the end "something" did get done! There was output, never mind the absence of parameters to say if it was good or bad. At that time I was glad it got over. In the mean time, I kept wanting to go back to the app design situation and try to come up with a framework that could put a map to the chaos. When I checked my bookmarks, I realized, I had lost one of the two links.
What prompted this post was a presentation that Shreyasi shared around a few days ago (a biggie thankyou to her :) ):
Performance optimization has been a challenge I have been facing A LOT in my projects lately. The more I try to research it, the more confusing the answers get. There were a few ground rules that I had found on the actionscriptWiki (http://wiki.joa-ebert.com/index.php/Main_Page) but beyond that...nothing.
It turns out that Grant Skinner was talking about these same issues at the Flash On The Beach 2009 conference. He has the slides from his talk up on the website now, check these out here: http://gskinner.com/talks/quick/#1 Mike Chambers also wrote a nice post, where he dissects the performance issue with a case study: http://www.mikechambers.com/blog/2009/10/13/case-study-actionscript-3-performance-optimization/
Both the articles make for really interesting reading... check them out!
For more of GSkinner talks go to: http://gskinner.com/blog/archives/2004/06/conference_sess.html
First there was the announcements regarding Flash CS5. The big thing here was the new support for native iPhone Apps. Apparently one can, with the Flash Professional CS5, write AS3 code that compiles as native iPhone application. They announced it at MAX a few hours ago thru this entertaining video:
Nice!
To me there's other cool stuff in Adobe Flash Professional CS5 that is really interesting, like the xml based FLAs and the Text Layout Framework.
Mike Chambers here has a post that gets into more details of the iPhone support part.
Adobe has also released a few applications that you can try on your iPhone right away! I feel that it's a good idea to read thru the Developer FAQs and Aditya Bansod's article here. I did find the LLVM pretty interesting. There's a paper and a presentation to check out on llvm.org. For an iPhone a developer can actually use RTMP, remote shared objects and AMF APIs of the flash player. Developers will also have access to the file system and SQLite APIs of AIR 2.0. I am sure we will find out eventually that some stuff is not available, but, what the heck! There will be workarounds...hehe
The idea of a native iPhone Flash Player is still not around...I see places where they say "its on the cards...", but, there is no mention of a date. The Flash Player 10.1 is going to be available soon though! Again it was announced at Adobe MAX today. Check out Kevin Lynch introducing 10.1 in this video:
This kinda excites me more than the iPhone support. Flash Player 10.1 on Android, Net Books and even on set-top boxes for television providing seamless experience is an awesome awesome wow! More reach, more support for my products and services now. :)
Adobe's even working on Slider - a mobile optimized port of the Flex 4 codebase.
Along with all of this Adobe also announced a host of other betas available! Check out the list below:
I also found two very interesting project on Adobe labs.
The first is called workflowlab. A tool (AIR) that allows one to create and share workflows and best practices. Project Managers, Designers and developers can collaborate and contribute to a project in a nicer way with this. The big part is that they used the Flash Builder and Flash Catalyst to create this utility!
Finally, the second one is about something that is really close to my heart too. Adobe Story is an application for collaborative script development. I tried a few scenes of a sample movie script with it. Works really well! The code hints like auto-correct/completion features are really neat! What even nicer is that it supports export to a lot of formats including MS Word, Final Draft (Word and FD are my preferred screen-writing applications) and also to PDF, CSV, XML and plain text! (There's probably an AIR application available too, but, I have not tried that as yet). The Story beta was out on Sept 10, so I am a little late (and a little out of place) in talking about it here, but, with all the great up coming stuff, I wanted to blog all of it together.
Really cool stuff happening around. Lots to look out for.
I have been curious about this for a long time now. I see a lot of potential of such a service.
Adobe wave (beta) is out.
See: http://labs.adobe.com/technologies/wave/
It looks kinda like RSS, only better. You get alerts on your desktop when ever updates happen. (uh! I always feel weak when I have to explain the difference between email and SMS) RSS is email, this is SMS.
Basically sites would carry a "Get updates with Adobe Wave" badge. You, their audience would click on the badge and each time the site updates, you get a desktop notification.
Kinda neat huh! I see a lot of applications. Esp. for the on-line education applications and services sector. Another feature to add to the potential Web 2.0/Education 2.0 candy store.
Check out the demo videos: http://labs.adobe.com/technologies/wave/videos/ ...and those who, like me, like to code may try: http://labs.adobe.com/technologies/wave/developers/
Nice stuff as usual! Let's see where this goes.
---
PS:
1. I think I might be totally wrong about this one. So do check out those links above and correct me here.
2. When I received the announcement mail this morning, I realized, I had not wet my hands with code in some time! I loathe being that word running, excel pushing, empty headed ager-man. I kinda lost sight of what I liked in the business in the first place. Being an ager-man is okay, but, it's not rewarding unless you have a purpose. What you really like doing gives you the purpose. To lead you need a head.
And I got mine back in place now. So, with luck, I'll make time, get back in my play pen and rumble code a bit more now. . . . :) :) :)
Loads and loads of new features. Infact, I am sure this is going to heat up the RIA wars with the Flash Platform.
Silverlight now combines the features of Flash 10, Flex, AIR and Pixel Bender all in one!
Also, Expression Studio already does what Flash Catalyst is supposed to do next year (or by the end of this year, when ever).
Hell I am impressed!!! Looks like with Bing, Azure and a host of new products, Microsoft's getting it right all over again! And Silverlight 3 appears to be another one of those aces.
edit: Did I mention Sliverlight 3 also supports desktop applications for both Windows and Mac now? (I haven't tested this yet, but what the hell! Its exciting to hear those words...!)
Flash Player 10 had been giving me a lot of grief when it came to working with Firefox. I finally figured out a solution, am still unclear what the trouble was! Wonder is my solution is correct - it seems to work for now tho.
Issue: I was using Flash CS3 with player 9 installed. The ActiveX and .dll files worked well on IE and Firefox. Then I upgraded to Flash CS4 and Flash Player 10. Things worked well for IE, but did not work well for Firefox 3. I used the flash player uninstaller and still - nogo...
Solution: It seems the following files:
NPSWF32.dll
NPSWF32_FlashUtil.exe
were present in two locations:
C:\WINDOWS\system32\Macromed\Flash
C:\WINDOWS\system32
and although the installer did update folder #1, it did not bother with the files in folder #2. Thus in my case folder #1 had flash player 10 files (which worked for IE) but folder #2 still had flash player 9 files (which did not work for firefox)...
So I manually copied the files from C:\WINDOWS\system32\Macromed\Flash to C:\WINDOWS\system32 (replacing those old flash player 9 files)
I restarted Firefox and things seem to be working fine now!
Still I wonder if I'll have to do this each time there is a new flash player release...
@gskinner says here that the next round should be in around next month: am eargely waiting!!!
S.
P.S. #twex analysis is still pending (my apologies!!! - sum dum projkts @ wrk I need to fin firs.) but results should be out next month! stay tuned :)
for those interested, the entry asked for 140 chars of code that, if embedded in some already given "me code" (from @gskinner) should do something "cool". Here is the source code of my entry (turn strict mode off in Publish setting>action script 3 setting):
// @gskinner's me code 1 g=graphics; mt=g.moveTo; lt=g.lineTo; ls=g.lineStyle; m=Math; r=m.random; s=m.sin; i=0; o={}; function f(e) { // 140 chars of my code if (i<1)> j=o.x; k=o.y; z=j=k=200; mt(j,k); g.beginFill(0,.5); } i+=.05; p=m.PI/2-i; c=m.pow; j+=i*c(s(2*p),3); k+=i*c(s(3*p),3); ls(k*.01,10,1); lt(j,k); } // @gskinner's me code 2 addEventListener("enterFrame",f);
