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With the Flash Player 8 in public beta some good discussions of the new security restrictions have been simmering on FlashCoders. For the most part the themes are familiar – ease of use, protection of sensitive or proprietary data / media, effectiveness of the implementation…

Security has changed in this upcoming version of the Flash Player and I’ll point to this post from Erica Norton of the Player QA team as a summary of how the restrictions are applied. It would seem I’m having a low comprehesion day – Erica’s explanation left me with more questions than answers. I think she’s the third Macromedian to step into the discussion and things still seem blurred.

I agree that a public beta can be an awkward state for a piece of software. With little to no documentation testers are forced to make some guesses / assumptions as to how things are intended to work. My prediction is that the discussion will continue and the fog will begin to lift.

Nearly finished installing the seats, benches and bunks.

Assuming that I would be more likely to make mistakes at the beginning of this stage I started in the v-berth and worked my way aft to the cockpit. I found cutting the ply for these pieces to get a nice fit against the curved hull and between the various members to be a bit fussy. My limited carpentry skills tend to become evident when I stray beyond right angles. I was however pleased to note that by flipping a piece from one side of the boat I was able to use it as a template for the opposite side (with some adjustments). It would seem she’s relatively uniform.

Folks on the bateau2.com builder’s forum gave me some good ideas for designs of latching hatches below decks.

I also ordered a couple of watertight locking hatches to be installed in the cockpit seats. With the cockpit sole installed I have been able to get a good idea how enormous the storage area is beneath the seats in the cockpit. Nearly sufficient space to relocate the quarters of any crewmember who finds my badside. ;-)

IFBIN is a new “code distribution service that provides example software for learning and reuse” (focused on Flash and Flex sourcecode). Ted Patrick announced this app / service earlier today. I found the discussion of the merits and drawbacks of the IFBIN subscription based code licensing / sharing model over here to be informative. Gave me a better understanding of what IFBIN is trying to be too.

So why isn’t it a Central application? ;-)

It seems there is a conflict between the beta of the Flash Player 8 (Maelstrom) plugin for FF and the adblock extension. A quick google turned up this entry in Sean Corfield’s blog which contains a short discussion of the issue in the comments section. Current solution: disable Obj-tabs (under adblock options).

Speaking of the player beta I’ve been checking out some of the various Maelstrom examples (in between testing existing content of course) but haven’t come across any news of the ECMAScript for XML (E4X) functionality that was suspected to be included. I wonder if thats beacuse it’s not ’sexy’ enough for the current Maelstrom ‘discovery’ commotion or perhaps it didn’t make it in?

update: Ahh, no E4X yet – Darron Schall pointed to a comment from David Mendels in Brooks Andrus’ blog. David is an executive VP at Macromedia. (I sure hope someone over at Adobe’s taking notes).

Macromedia have made a public beta of Flash Player 8 available.

Would be wise to run any existing content through it and report any issues.