FlashLabWeb Experiments by Brian Wiltshire

The new Flash&Flex magazine was released yesterday packed with interesting news and lots of useful information.

Flash&Flex Mag is a Bi-monthly and FREE magazine – the leading source of Flash/Flex practical knowledge. Each issue contains articles, tutorials, listings, codes, promotional offers that may give you many benefits!

Check the issues.
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Adobe stated during a recent earnings announcement that a beta of Flash Mobile 10 will be released in October, optimized for Android, Symbian, Palm Web OS, and Windows Mobile phones. Despite one conspicuous absence, that’s somewhat good news for many.

That notable absence is, of course, Apple’s iPhone. Adobe has previously let it be known they’re developing an iPhone version, and were ready to work with Apple, but those talks apparently haven’t borne even the most vague launch plans to date.

In the meantime, it’ll be interesting to see how the various mobile operating systems optimize and present Flash on their browsers—and what that does to the small but burgeoning realm of mobile-optimized apps. Will web developers forgo mobile-friendly sites entirely once the last serious barrier to full-page viewing is set aside? Or could mobile Flash access open up an entirely new development platform for the mobile web? Stay tuned for more announcements down the line, and check out Adobe’s earnings presentation at slide 13 to read more on what happens this fall.

The Text Layout Framework team is now releasing new builds on a regular basis. Visitors to the download page will now find new builds made available (almost) every Friday. So far, two non-milestone builds have been posted with more to come in the weeks that follow.

The Text Layout Framework is an extensible library, built on the new text engine in Adobe® Flash® Player 10, which delivers advanced, easy-to-integrate typographic and text layout features for rich, sophisticated and innovative typography on the web. The framework is designed to be used with Adobe Flash CS4 Professional or Adobe Flex®, and is already included in the next version of Flex, code named Gumbo. Developers can use or extend existing components, or use the framework to create their own text components.

Source: Adobe Labs

I will be attending FlashCamp London 09 this year and very excited about it.

Flash Camp London ‘09 is a FREE, community-run event for everyone interested in the Adobe Flash Platform! Whether you’re just getting started with Flash or you’re an expert, Flash Camp aims to provide something for you.

* Mike Chambers, Adobe

* Lee Brimelow, Adobe

* Serge Jespers, Adobe

* Seb Lee Delisle, Plug-in Media

* James Whittaker, RefreshingApps

* Richard Dean, Lightmaker

* Michael Chase, AKQA

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This update of TweenLite and TweenMax is probably the most significant ever. Full documentation still resides on the regular TweenLite and TweenMax pages. Version 10 delivers a whole new level of flexibility, performance, and tweenable goodness.

Head over to the dudes at GreenSock and find out why this is such a cool release.

To support my prediction for Flash in 2009, I’d like to make the argument that while Flash Platform has become a proven Application platform, Flash Player is being used mostly for other purposes. I’d like to review my assumptions on Flash Player usage, and show why, along with the recent key improvements in Flash, this year is poised to be the year of Flash Advertising.

Current Use of Flash

60% as a Video Player (youtube, vimeo)

20% as an Ad vehicle (banners, point of sale, point of contact)

10% as a gaming engine (web and mobile)

5% as widgets (blog sidebar, myspace)

5% as an application engine (external and internal apps)

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Codename “Cocomo” is a Platform as a Service that allows Flex developers to easily add real-time social capabilities into their RIA (rich Internet applications). Comprised of both Flex-based client components and a hosted services infrastructure, Cocomo allows you to build real-time, multi-user applications with Flex in less time than ever before. And because Acrobat.com hosts the service, issues like deployment, maintenance, and scalability are taken care of for you.

Add social features to your existing Flex apps or build totally new ones, such as real-time productivity/collaboration apps, multiplayer games, and audio/video chat.
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The Text Layout Framework is an extensible library, built on the new text engine in Adobe® Flash® Player 10, which delivers advanced, easy-to-integrate typographic and text layout features for rich, sophisticated and innovative typography on the web.

The framework is designed to be used with Adobe Flash CS4 Professional or Adobe Flex®, and is already included in the next version of Flex, code named Gumbo. Developers can use or extend existing components, or use the framework to create their own text components.

Adobe® Flash® Catalyst is a new professional interaction design tool for rapidly creating application interfaces and interactive content without coding. These can range from interactive Ads, product guides and design portfolios to user interfaces for applications. Flash Catalyst enables designers to start from static compositions created in Adobe Photoshop® CS4, Illustrator® CS4, or Adobe Fireworks® CS4 and convert the artwork into applications and interactive content. The designer does this by visually defining events, transitions and motion. Flash Catalyst can output a finished Flash SWF or AIR application that’s ready to publish on the web. In addition designers can provide the project file to developers who can use Adobe Flex® Builder™ to add additional functionality such as connection to back-end systems.

View screenshots of the Flash Catalyst interface

Turn a piece of static artwork into a dynamic component such as a button, scroll bar, text input field and more by selecting a menu command from the HUD (Heads-Up Display). All layers are displayed in the layers panel on the right while motion and transitions are displayed below.

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Update: Furthering Adobe’s commitment to the Linux community and as part of ongoing efforts to ensure the cross-platform compatibility of Flash Player, an alpha version of 64-bit Adobe Flash Player 10 for Linux operating systems was released on 11/17/2008 and is available for download. This offers easier, native installation on 64-bit Linux distributions and removes the need for 32-bit emulation. Learn more by reading the 64-bit Flash Player 10 FAQ.

Release versions of Flash Player 10 for Windows, Macintosh, and Linux are now available from the Flash Player Download Center.
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