Notes Panel For Flash Professional!
I know this is all so simple but it’s something I use on a daily basis and I thought why not pass it onto you guys!
[Hit the more link for the download]
Flash on the Beach 2010!
It’s that time again an array of events are on their way one of the most notable is the infamous Flash on the Beach which takes place in Brighton in September. Always promising a great line up and always delivering, this year’s event website is now live with a great selection of confirmed speakers already.
The organisers have even thrown in a couple of extra workshops this year which I am sure everyone will be racing to book when the tickets go on sale next week. The event will last three days and will have two undoubtedly awesome parties, hope to see you there!
[Hit the website for more details]
Can’t We All Just Get Along?
I love twitter but not a day passes by where I don’t see a ‘Flash Killer’ tweet or article. Flash users fight for Flash and accessibility enthusiasts fight for HTML5. Why has nobody stopped to think that all these platforms can co-exist?
HTML5 is great I’ll give it that and anything it can be used for I believe it should when the time is right. We have to face the reality that HTML5 cannot do as much as Flash can technically, both platforms have their strong points and weaknesses. People consider the Flash Platform to be taxing on computer performance, I argue that this is not true, the content that Flash designers work on are typically very rich and complicated media, this media would be taxing in any format. I have seen some awesome HTML5 demos and it’s capability has been outstanding however it is no better than Flash in its capabilities and as far as I’m concerned for many years coming more people will have the Flash player plug-in than those who have HTML5 capable browsers.
When you enter the mobile sector though the debate is even stronger, most of the new mobile platforms at the moment support Flash and HTML5, except for the iPhone. The debate on performance and accessibility these platforms is a hot topic at the moment and I believe that people need to calm down and let the platforms co-exist with one another to make a more dynamic and richer internet experience. Also don’t get me started on Unity!
[Drop Your Thoughts In The Comments]
Flash User Group UK! It’s Flash, And Then Some!
Some of you may have noticed a lack of posts recently, that’s because I’ve been busy with my latest project – Flash User Group UK.
That’s right, it’s finally set up and ready to go with the first meeting planned for mid April, I hope to see some of you guys there the ones who can’t make it we will be throwing the footage of the event onto the groups website. As any new group we need as much support as you can so can you e-mail, tweet and shout about it as much as possible.
[Hit the Flash User Group UK's Website for more details]
Get With The Times! Flash Ain’t A Player Hater!
Flash has received some well deserved criticism over the last year in regards to its performance. I have found that its image in the web design community has become damaged for many reasons that are not relevant to today’s player. Adobe and developers of the platform have made some mass yet unappreciated improvements to the player over the last few.
Search Engine Optimization today is not such of an issue if you build the site well and also deep link it. Even accessibility isn’t a huge issue with great tools available to make your content text to speech friendly. But what Flash is really getting criticized for is performance.
Fortunately Adobe was quick on the ball to resolve the problems, but in turn they expect device manufactures to play ball and work with them in the process. Google have recently brought out the Nexus One which is a Flash Player 10.1 capable phone. Google worked closely with Adobe to ensure that the player ran great on the system and from what I have seen so far it looks awesome. Flash Player 10.1 brings huge advancements in performance especially on the mobile platform and in delivering HD content, such a huge progress should warrant it its very own version number ‘Flash Player 11′. Adobe has proved time and time again since Adobe Max 2009 that Flash is ready for the mobile platform and have added Flash support to many awesome powerful phones supporting full Flash Player with accelerometer and multi-touch support. This I call progress.
So why no Flash love for the iPhone?
Apple are greedy, and they want revenue, if you could jump onto hulu to watch a video why would you buy video from iTunes. I agree this is just business sense but with the iPad people really thought that they can’t use the same old excuse again that it runs too slowly, but Jobs pulled out that card again. The people want Flash and Apple have received some serious bad press from the lack of it.
People say that Flash Player is inaccessible, but I ask you which is more inaccessible the 99.9% of internet enabled computers with Flash Player or the percent of people with HTML5 capable browsers.
Flash isn’t the processer hungry application it used to be, both Adobe and developers of the Flash platform are learning that keeping their code optimized will go a long way into keeping the platform alive.
Fun With BitmapData & Webcams!
I’ve been playing around with BitmapData and Webcams for the last few days for an Interactive Pool Table that I am working on. Today I got side tracked, after visiting Decode at London’s V&A museum I felt as though my programing is becoming more art orientated by the day. It’s not much and it’s very simple but here’s what I’ve been playing with today. Simple but fun!
[Hit The More Link For The Flash File - Requires Webcam]
iPad – The Apple Tablet News Roundup! No Flash!!!
Another key note another Apple device! Today’s keynote featured the iPad, Jobs latest and greatest creation… well at least latest! Disappointingly the iPad will not run Flash Player all we can do is hope Adobe do some tweaking here and there to get Native apps running on this baby! But what have they done?
The Device
The device has an awesome 9.7 inch IPS screen at 1024×768. It comes in 16, 32 and 64 GB flavours and has the option of 3G. It sports an accelerometer, 1GHZ Apple A4 processor and 802.11n wi-fi allong with all the other stuff like compass and bluetooth. Ohh yeah and it has a 10 hour (real use) battery life.
The Software
As expected it runs a variation of iPhone OS. What this means is it supports all iPhone apps out the box. The SDK will allow people to develop for the iPad specifically so we can see some really awesome apps come onto the app store when this gets released. It also has iWork which takes the full iWork sweet and has re-interfaced it to the iPad and to be honest looks pretty sweet!
What else?
Something I was happy to see was the new dock keyboard which holds the iPad in place as well as charges it. It also has video out for presenting iWork on projectors and will come unlocked to any network anywhere.
When?
iPad ships with Wi-fi only in 60 days and with Wi-fi+3G in 90 days internationally. 3G plans will take longer to arrange outside of the US.
I guess I’ll get this… when it gets jailbroke!
Apple Tablet! What does this mean for Flash Developers?
The Apple Tablet, rumoured to be called the iSlate, is rumoured to be announced January 27th. Yes I know I said rumoured twice in that last sentence but let’s face it we all know its coming! But what we don’t know is whether it will run a variation of iPhone OS or full on OSX. Odds our in my opinion it will run iPhone OS as it’s the best money maker thanks to the app store and this device will not be designed as a replacement for your computer. Fortunately for us however, it doesn’t matter whether is iPhone OS or OSX.
Flash Cs5 will publish to the iPhone platform and with a few tweaks here and there I’m sure that adobe will fix it up to do the tablet. If they leave this until the release of CS6 I may just go on an adobe hunting killing spree! On the other hand though, if it’s running full on OSX then we have AIR 2.0 or Flash. Regardless of the OS it will undoubtedly feature multi-touch and accelerometer which we will be able to access through the new AS3 extensions that Flash CS5 will bring us.
How will this be different from both the iPhone and Mac’s then?
This will come from how the user adopts the system, with the intermittent release of Flash CS5 a range of developers and designers will surely be publishing for these platforms, and the great thing is you can publish to all of them at the same time by making your stage object positions and scale dynamic to the resolution of the screen and platform that you are using.
But what about Safari?
I think that Apple will be heavily scrutinised if they don’t feature Flash Player into Safari on the tablet as it will be a powerful device with a reasonably large screen and will no doubt be capable of it. Apple have kind of got away with it with the iPhone due to it being a phone, but with many phone OS’s featuring Flash Player in the browser they can’t hide for long. If apple to feature Flash Player into the tablet and it runs a variation of iPhone OS then I believe it will be inevitable that they will be forced to feature it in iPhone OS 4.0, which may have a announcement and release on the same day!
Also Flash CS5 developing will be great for iPhone developing, but for more complex designs you’re better off going with Objective-C, the reason for this is that although Native Flash Apps for the iPhone will be great, they will lack in performance as proved by the existing apps on the App Store. Undoubtedly the tablet will feature a much higher performance graphics chip and processer than the iPhone therefore quality Flash published games could be a possibility for the tablet.
Regardless of what happens next week it will be important to us all.
[Don't forget to follow Engadget and Gizmodo for the release on January 27th 10AM Pacific!]
Flash and 2010!
With the upcoming release of CS5 what can we expect to see in the following year? Here are some of my insights and predictions for the following year -
The Multi-Touch Era
I’ve featured Multi-Touch on a few occasions and I think that CS5’s jump to natively build Multi-Touch applications will help push the Multi-Touch community to create some awesome applications. Though on the desktop platform it’s a niece market it will hopefully Flash will be the tool everyone had waited for to really push technology to support it. Regardless of this transition I’m going to be using it for interactive installation projects and will be much more effective, accurate and easier to use. When you look at Multi-Touch from the mobile platform you can put your bottom dollar on its success. The mobile platform is so perfect for Multi-Touch development and with an array of powerful devices now sporting capacitive touch screens Flash will be the best platform to build native and Flash applications designed to work across an array of devices.
Mobile Development
Why is Flash going to be successful on the mobile platform? Well this is an easy one… Say I’m developing a game in which I have an accelerometer controlled ball, it’s a 2D platform game and uses nothing more than multi-touch and the accelerometer sound familiar? Well I don’t want to spend my time learning and building these games in several different languages and with several different tools. Instead I can jump into Flash CS5, create an application which determines the screen resolution and places movie clips on the stage via AS3. By doing this I am accommodating for multiple devices following these basic rules I can publish to all the smart phone platforms as a swf and publish to the iPhone as a native app. This way I’m saving time, money and making it easier to debug by having a single version across all platforms. It just gets better though, this allows me to develop for a larger audience and sell or distribute your application faster and more successfully.
Web Development
Flash websites are nothing new to my readers so how can Flash websites reinvent themselves in 2010. I’ll tell you how, through 3D and acceptance in the business industry. 3D is getting better within Flash constantly and with Flash Player 10.1 improved hardware acceleration we might just get some decent 3D content. But what good is this unless people are willing to pay us for our work. I’ve found more business are willing to take a leap of faith into Flash websites now that they are a little more search engine friendly and that they can get better noticed from having some innovative website.
HD
It’s time for the UK’s Internet Network to crumble, long overdue for an upgrade. HD is on it’s way and there is no stopping it with YouTube already sporting a collection of 1080p videos and they just about stream thanks to Google super servers that far surpass anybody’s expectations. Again this is courtesy of the new Flash Player 10.1 with its improved video handling and better hardware acceleration.
Flash+
Well it’s not Flash but here at Flash+ I’m going to be dedicating more time to the blog and hopefully find someone to co-auther with me on it, but expect not just more news but up to date, relevent, interesting and fast to press news from here on out! Remember Flash+ is an ad-free blog I do this because I love it! So if anyone can spare some hosting that would be great, I’m looking at you Media Temple!
Let me know what you guys think of these ideas and share your own in the comments!
CS5 Smart Paste – Animation & Vectors In HTML5 Canvas
Adobes CS5 continues to impress me with a new feature called Smart Paste. Smart Paste effectively takes raw data that has yet to be encoded and puts it onto a HTML5 canvas. So what does this mean for us developers? Well it means if we create vector artwork we are going to be looking at smaller file sizes in which the images will be scalable and adaptive. But the best thing about the technology is it’s ability to adapt to live and static data such as SQL or XML. This means that Smart Paste is not just for developers but also designers allowing them to easily create dynamic graphical elements into web pages.
Now I didn’t just say that it’s vectors, Flash CS5 animations can be ported over to HTML5 Canvas’s as well allowing users without Flash Player to view animations this could be very impractical because more people have Flash Player than people who have HTML5 compatible browsers but with use of browser detection this could be awesome and could even bring Flash like animation to the iPhone. More of this technology soon.
[Video After The Break]
