Third Party Flash creation software Toon Boom released an update for Mac users earlier this month. The
software is not official Universal or Intel and PowerPC Mac compatible. We talked about Toon Boom back when they won
and Emmy last year and this just
shows the software moving forward with its user base. As animators upgrade to the new Mactels they won't need to wait
for the next version to run this package outside of Rosetta. I think this developement was achieved with the help of
the Universal Flash Player that was released as a beta with Safari on the newer Macs. It will be interesting to see
what other third party Flash offerings will beat the Adobe Flash Universal IDE to market in the coming months.
Since we've been talking about variousFlash players on the
Playstation Portable, it started me thinking of the proliferation of Flash across various devices. As a certain
do-it-yourself maven might say, this is a "good thing." A great thing really. The more Flash the
better as far as I'm concerned. But we can't really talk about just one Flash anymore. Even though the adoption rate
for the latest Flash player
for your browser has been amazingly quick, we've got all of these other players for different devices, some their own
flavor of Flash (e.g., FlashLite), some just legacy players on devices (PSP case in point). Then there's Zaphod, the
latest beta player (until
recently also called version 8.5, now 9).
I'm a little late on pointing this out, but its worth repeating it here again anyway.
Last week, Adobe released a couple of new templates for your Flash 8
IDE to address the latest changes in how Internet Explorer addresses active content (i.e. Flash). With the latest
update, IE users have to actively allow your Flash movie to play. The Flash Active Content Update
Extension will help in building new sites that avoid this problem.
If you're looking for help in
adjusting existing HTML pages, check out the Active Content Developer Center. And for information on the problem from the browser side of
things, check here.
Yahoo! Yippee! Etc! Yahoo has just released two new APIs for its mapping service. Web developers can use the new
Yahoo Maps AJAX API and the Yahoo Maps Flash API to create their own Yahoo maps in any web-based (or just web
connected) application. Now Neave will need to roll the Yahoo info into his Flash
map. The API includes hooks for other live data from Yahoo sources like their trakkic tracker and more. Plus the
Flash API comes in a Flex flavor for RIA developers looking to roll maps and live data into their applications. I would
like to see this added to a live pizza ordering application that shows a highlighted delivery route and availability map
that allows a user to click on their house and even draw out a map. Heck, while we're thinking of map drawing, let's
create an interactive app that multiple users can log into at the same time and watch a leader draw a live route on the
map (with notes) to give directions to a meeting (or something).
The latest Japanese PSP firmware
adds Flash Player to the PlayStation Portable and Flaunt It's Alexander McCabe is testing the Player with various Flash
games and posting his impressions. He says its slow, has no streaming content, and has only limited Keypad interaction.
Also there seems to be an obvious limit on the amouth of memory the content can use. Jump on over to his site to see
full impressions and learn more about possible content. We have covered Flash on PSP here before and I still think this is going to be
limited to the possible accessories for the system and a possible API release from Sony. We should look forward to a
lack of user created content though, considering Sony's lack of hack support for the firmware already. The real concern
here is weather game developers with take advantage or the player to add content that takes the user out of the box via
the camera object that first appeared in Flash Player 6. In the mean time take some of your old projects modifiy them
for PSP displays and maybe add some sound fun just to mess with your users.
Last week, we all heard of the security risk posed by the current Flash player and I'm sure
you all already updated your web players. Mike Downey points out
that there are also updates for
the Flash 8 and Flash MX 2004 Test Movie players as well. So start your morning off right by patching away!
So there was this big press conference at Sony headquarters yesterday to discuss the PS3 (which I will probably
avoid, $425 is too much) and the CEO had some announcements about upcoming PSP updates, including a new web browser.
The next PSP web browser will include official Flash support! Which means we can stop trying to hack the Flash Player
into the PlayStationPortable and just go with the flow. 1UP mentioned the inclusion at 10:42 AM PST yesterday. I only wonder if the player will be a
stripped down version or even just a modified version of the Palm OS Flash Player that was included with Sony's CLIE
product line. The release of a coming camera and GPS modules leads me to think that Flash developers may be able to
build full fledged RIAs that feature location based support and video teleconferencing. Now I just need to save up a
couple hundred bucks and grab on of these for 'work.'
Time to update your Flash Player. According to Cnet, Adobe has released
a new update to Flash Player to bring all you non-beta users up to 8.0.24.0. Adobe recommends all users of Flash player
up to version 8.0.22.0 update their player via download. Apparently a vulnerability has been found that
allows 'evil' SWF files to take control of a user's system when loaded into current version of the player. So head over
to the link below and update your systems. The problem affects Breeze 5, Shockwave 10.1.0.11 and Flash debug player
7.0.14 (and earlier of course).
Jan Kabili of our blog sibling, The Unofficial Photoshop Weblog, pointed out another good John Nack post
earlier this week. Adobe is looking for commentary from bloggers and web designers on ways to improve Fireworks for its
future integration into Photoshop and the Adobe Creative Suite of applications. I would like Fireworks to continue on
its current 8 path of integration with Flash and possibly replace ImageReady as Adobe's web image creator. I could even
see them integrating Fireworks into the consumer level Adboe products (like the gallery applications) as a way to easily
add home made graphics to original images and create easy web pages for the budding amature web designer.
An answer to the Mac Intel problem has started to
emerge. Recently I said I would need to delay a possible MacBookPro purchase due to the non-universal Flash problem.
Wel Tinic Uro, Flash Player developer, has
written up a reason to lower my worries. Apparently the Intel Macs will: "ship with a native Intel version of the
Flash Player 8 plugin."
Yay! I could deal with running Flash 8 in Rosetta till upgrade time if I can still
view my Flash in a natively run Safari. Plus this means Flash users (read site visitors) who are early adopters aren't
cut out of viewership.
On a side note, one of the comments on Uro's article states this is a preview release
player which may have been pushed in an effort to ease the Mac Intel transition from Adobe.
Since the release of the new Mac Book Pro and iMac with Intel I have been considering when to make the
upgrade and move on to a new laptop. A few things are keeping me in check though. First off, this is a first gen or
Alpha product that is going to have bugs (this is jus the nature of technology). Second off there are no 'Universal'
binaries for Studio or any other Adobe products for that matter. But what about Rosetta? Well It doesn't look like
Rosetta is very nice to Flash's new step brother. Photoshop CS2 runs much slower on the new Intel iMacs in speed tests,
according to Ars Technica. Plus, according to
the latest Photoshop TV video podcast, Adobe has a previous history of not release incremental updates, hence they
think Photoshop will not be 'Universal' til CS3 (grab the vodcast yourself and watch
between 16:40 and 18:10 for more info). But Photoshop isn't Studio. Actually, now that Flash and Macromedia are tied to
Adobe, I think Flash and therefore Studio will be tied (at least loosely) to Photoshop. So if you feel the need for
speed, it is probably a good idea to hold off on purchasing the new Mac Intels. At least wait till someone jumps on the
bandwagon with official speed tests for Flash and FLV encoding.
Currently I'm going to consider a semi-update to a
'new' PowerBook instead and pray Flash Player 8.5 includes the first Universal Binary from Adobe, because as of right
now Flash Player 8 does npt appeast to work in Safari on Intel without forcing Safari to run under Rosetta.
Looks like the merger completion brings with it another big (and not unexpected) merge:
What are Adobe's plans for Flash Player and Adobe Reader? Our long-term plan is to develop a "universal client" by combining PDF, Flash and HTML in a single, integrated runtime. Of course, we will continue delivering the Flash Player as a small, efficient runtime for content and applications on the web, and Adobe Reader for viewing and interacting with PDF documents and forms. The integration of these technologies into a unified framework creates a ubiquitous platform that runs on virtually every device, and dramatically expands the opportunities to create compelling solutions.
I guess Flash Paper is just a vectorized Adobe Reader now. Plus SVG will soon be fully consumed by Flash. The only question I might have is... where is my PDF manipulation ActionScript?
Macromedia has released the first update for the mobile templates you find in Flash 8. This is important to note, even if you aren't currently developing for mobile. The update means more devices are becoming available on the market that support Flash. More devices means more screens on which to show your content. The more screens, the more viable the market for your content is. Macromedia has been touting the mobile market for the last two years. This may be the year that it becomes a reality for American developers.
Today, Macromedia announced the release of the next wave of the Flash Platform: Flex 2, Flash Player 8.5 and ActionScript 3. I'm sure you'll hear more about all of it in the coming weeks since the alpha version should be released in concert with MAX in a little over a week. Since Flash 8 was just released though, let's concentrate on the half-point upgrade to the Flash Player for the moment. The press release reads:
Flash Player 8.5 adds industrial-strength programming power on top of
the expressiveness introduced in Flash Player 8, creating a
state-of-the-art, cross-platform runtime. It includes a new virtual
machine that offers faster runtime performance, full runtime error
reporting, improved debugging, and ActionScript 3. ActionScript 3
complies with the latest ECMAScript specifications, and increases
developer productivity by making it easier to find and fix errors
earlier.
OK, so I let AS3 slip in there, but the basic thrust here is that Player 8.5 will deliver more power in the virtual machine as well as script debugging tools...which anyone who has ever tried to decipher Flash's Output Panel error messages will welcome with open arms. I'll assume the AS3's ECMAScript compliance will come with some stricter coding practices (perhaps case sensitivity will now be required), but the benefits should certainly be worth it.
So I downloaded the Flash 8 trial yesterday, just like all of the rest of you. Before double-clicking to open the fresh disk image (on Mac) I notice something strange. The last modified date and create date are old. Both are September 1. Plus opening the image reveals the compressed installer file that has an even older create date, August 31. On the right you can see a double screenshot of what I saw.
I'm wondering if Katrina may have delayed our Flash 8 fun. If so, I wonder what was the original release date. Will we ever know? Though, if Macromedia did delay this major release for over a week due to this storm and its horrible impact, I commend them. I can only wonder what the marketing department meeting was like on the night of August 30th. OK, we are going to have to delay, because FlashInsider is going to be all out of sorts for at least a week maybe more. We need to pick a new release date, hey September 13th is open. Let's allow those early downloaders to go crazy and give them just enough time before MAX to get used to the product. Then we'll really show them.
Also, why is the version on the installer 1.5? Did they need to edit the installer a whole bunch before release or just change the release date info?
Third Party Flash creation software Toon Boom released an update for Mac users earlier this month. The
software is not official Universal or Intel and PowerPC Mac compatible. We talked about Toon Boom back when they won
and Emmy last year and this just
shows the software moving forward with its user base. As animators upgrade to the new Mactels they won't need to wait
for the next version to run this package outside of Rosetta. I think this developement was achieved with the help of
the Universal Flash Player that was released as a beta with Safari on the newer Macs. It will be interesting to see
what other third party Flash offerings will beat the Adobe Flash Universal IDE to market in the coming months.
Yahoo! Yippee! Etc! Yahoo has just released two new APIs for its mapping service. Web developers can use the new
Yahoo Maps AJAX API and the Yahoo Maps Flash API to create their own Yahoo maps in any web-based (or just web
connected) application. Now Neave will need to roll the Yahoo info into his 
The latest 
Time to update your Flash Player. According to 
Jan Kabili of our blog sibling, 
An answer to the Mac Intel problem has started to
emerge. Recently I said I would need to delay a possible MacBookPro purchase due to the non-universal Flash problem.
Wel 
So I downloaded the Flash 8 trial yesterday, just like all of the rest of you. Before double-clicking to open the fresh disk image (on Mac) I notice something strange. The last modified date and create date are old. Both are September 1. Plus opening the image reveals the compressed installer file that has an even older create date, August 31. On the right you can see a double screenshot of what I saw.
