Flash Player Internals 10.1 Recap

My good friend James Polanco from DevelopmentArc, has just posted a four part recap covering the internal workings of the Flash Player. If you use the Flash Player (and I assume you do since you probably are since you are reading this), you need to carefully read this recap. e

RIA Radio, Live at Adobe MAX – Day 1 Keynote

I was honored to be a guest on RIA Radio during the recent Adobe MAX show. I joined the hosts, Garth Braithwaite, Leif Wells and  Zach Stepek, along with fellow guest Kevin Schmidt. We discussed the announcements from the Day 1 keynote (Flash for the iPhone, Flash 10.1 on mobile, TVs, and netbooks.)  Throughout the entire show, they sat down with a lot of cool folks, so take a listen.

Listen to this podcast ( mp3). You can also subscribe to the RIA Radio Podcast in iTunes.

Kevin Schmidt to discuss the big MAX announcements and give our take on what they mean. Topics covered include: Flash for the iPhone, Flash 10.1 on mobile, TVs, and netbooks.

Experts: Leif Wells and  Zach Stepek

Listen to this week’s podcast ( mp3). You can also subscribe to the RIA Radio Podcast in iTunes.

Read more from Garth Braithwaite.

Creating a comboBox in Flash Catalyst Beta 2 posted

My latest article on Flash Catalyst has been posted over on O’Reilly’s InsideRIA. This article explores how you can recreate a comboBox component (since one is currently not included in the default component set). I hope you find it helpful.

mobileMAX: Your MAX, Your Schedule, Your Mobile

After many late nights of coding, I am pleased to release my mobileMAX application. This mobile app will allow you to quickly view the conference schedule for not only the official Adobe sessions but all four of the unConferences. Additionally, you will be able to view the schedule of your chosen sessions (assuming you got the MAX scheduler to behave).

Home Screen for the Flash Lite version

iPhone Session Listing

There are four versions available; a Flash Lite 3.1 version (using the Adobe Mobile Packager), a Windows Mobile version (also using AMP), a Flash Lite 2.1 version, and yes an iPhone web version.

To get started, go to http://nuclearpathways.org/clients/max/ (I work on several sites related to the history of the Atomic Age and decided to just use one of those servers for the project). Once you have made an account, log back in to the Adobe MAX scheduler and copy the webcal URL for your schedule. Paste that into the web application and let it process your schedule. Once that is done you can download the mobileMAX app for your device. You don’t need do this, but the app becomes more useful if you do.

For the iPhone version, I created a custom web app. After opening the URL in Safari, click the “Add to Homescreen” button to create a shortcut.

It has been a blast building this and I hope the community finds it helpful. See you at MAX!

Adobe and Zend Announce Collaboration

Today Adobe and Zend entered into a collaboration to bring together the flexibility, productivity and enterprise reliability of PHP and Zend Platform with the user experience benefits of the open source Flex framework. This collaboration will deliver technologies, content and services to make it easy for enterprise developers to build web applications using Flex on the client and PHP on the server.

This is great news for many in the PHP community. I know some probably wanted another PHP framework as Adobe’s first choice, but they have to start somewhere. Hopefully Adobe will be able to work more formally with the other PHP frameworks, to offer a broader choice in solutions.

(Full disclosure: My brother-in-law is the Vice President, Finance & Operations for Zend)

Flash Mobile News

Mark Doherty introduced Flash Lite 4 at FTIC Mobile 2009. Flash Lite 4.0 will support ActionScript 3 and will be a browser plugin – not a standalone player – dedicated for slower, less powerful and memory-constraint devices.

Flash Player 10 will be as well a browser plugin but dedicated for more powerful devices, possibly with hardware graphics acceleration.

Mark also shown Device Central 3 which will support some hardware emulations such as accelerometer and geolocation.

Forum Nokia posted a set of Flash Lite Compontents 2.0.

“This updated resource file includes ten Flash Lite components; Button component, Calendar component, Checkbox component, Contacts component, List component, Media data component, Messaging component, Pop-up component, Radiobutton component, and Scrollbar component. Calendar, Checkbox, Messaging, and Radiobutton components are new in Flash Lite Components v2.0. The components can be used to develop applications to devices supporting Flash Lite 2.0 (and above). The developing environment requirements are Adobe Flash CS3 or CS4. The resource is closely related to Guide to Flash Lite Components. Please give feedback on the components through the Flash Lite Discussion Board.”

Adobe Device Central CS4 – Update 5

Adobe has just released an update contains the Nokia N97, Nokia 5530 XpressMusic, Nokia N86 and Samsung I8910HD profiles.

Also included is a first cut of the HTC Hero profile for testing your Flash content in the browser.

If you have any requests for features, fixes and profiles then join in the chatter @devicecentral.

To get your updated profiles simply press the refresh button, or restart Device Central CS4. [via Mark Doherty]

MAXwidget

I won a Chumby!!

Recently the authors held a contest to win a Chumby. As luck would have it, I won. As part of the conditions, you had to submit a photo of you and their new book.

I am about halfway through it (that darn work keeps getting in the way), and it is an excellent resource for anyone interested in the development of mobile Flash. You can learn more about the book, as well as get updates from the book’s website (http://advanced.flashmobilebook.com/) or you can also follow them on Twitter (@flashondevices)

AdvancED Flash on Devices: Mobile Development with Flash Lite and Flash 10

By Elad Elrom, Scott Janousek, Thomas Joos

Flash Catalyst Quick Links

Designer-developer workflow enhancements with Flash Catalyst by Elad Elrom 

This is a great summary of the challenges the Flash Catalyst (FC) faces as it attempts to solve the Designer-Developer workflow problem. Given how complex this problem is, Elad provides some clear thoughts on how FC can ease this transition. For me the key point was to think of your application in smaller custom components. As a Developer/Designer, I find the best way to solve development problems is to break the entire task down into smaller chunks. The same process can be applied to using FC. By doing so, the output should be more usable by a development, which will in all likelyhood, refactor the code to fit their development model. But by providing smaller elements, this integration should happen smoother and facilitate revisions.

Adobe Flash Catalyst best practices by Andrew Shorten

In this article, Andrew give some advice on configuring your Adobe Illustrator files so that Flash Catalyst interpret them easier. I mentioned the need for visual designers to take care in creating their assets. Remember “Layer 3 copy” doesn’t help the workflow.