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While Robert Scoble’s headline for this post follows the tired old “technology x is a technology y killer” formula you have to hand it to him for putting a finger on the significance of last Monday’s CES announcement from Adobe and Verisign.

There are two things that I think we can take away from the press release. Scoble skipped the first one, (probably because it’s pretty ho-hum), which is that Verisign will be using Flash Media Server to stream video on it’s CDN. No big news there - Verisign is trying to put together a network to deliver high-quality, full-length movies over the web and struck a deal to do so with the hottest web video player going. Makes sense.

What the press release is pretty vague about however, (aside: is it just me or was that a CES and Macworld trend this year?), is the possibility of integrating Verisign’s peer-to-peer technology in the Flash Player. This is an interesting play on Adobe’s part and has the potential to be a pretty serious move. As Scoble mentioned there are a few P2P video networks spinning up right now and they all face a couple of similar challenges - one of which is getting software onto user’s machines.

As we all know, with the Flash Player Adobe holds an ace card when it comes to distributing software. It is widely installed and Adobe have a proven capacity to get updates distributed in fairly short periods of time. Even if the penetration stats published by Adobe are optimistic I’m willing to bet the vast majority of pcs without the latest Flash Player are within enterprises - not machines you’d need to worry much about when trying to set up a movie distribution network. The question Adobe have to be asking themselves is whether to play that ace in the brewing web video gold rush.

Adobe, and Macromedia before them, have made serious efforts to transform Flash into an application platform and right now that has alot of momentum. The plan is that Apollo will build on the momentum and become the platform for building a new breed of web connected desktop applications. A big part of what made that effort as successful as it is today has been Adobe’s concentration on building the platform upon which applications are built. As the legend goes the “tin can” project was a plan to add a small video codec to the Flash Player. It was the YouTubes and Brightcoves who drove the Flash video revolution by taking that platform functionality and building upon it. By adding a piece of peer-to-peer type technology on which content delivery networks could be built Adobe may feel they can cement the Flash Platform as the technology for delivering high quality feature length films over the web.

Of course there are risks in such a move. Peer-to-peer technology still has a bit of a nefarious reputation. I’m not sure how receptive enterprise IT managers will be to allowing a Flash Player with P2P capabilities to be installed on their networks. As it stands now IT policies in many corporations keep the Flash Player a version or more behind Adobe’s releases. The risk for Adobe would be in undoing alot of the work they’ve done to make Flash a viable platform for enterprise software applications.

The other problem for peer-to-peer in general is with ISPs and bandwidth caps for their customers. If the perception among users becomes that a Flash Player with P2P capabilities is causing them extra bandwidth bills it could lead to a backlash. As Flash developers will tell you, the ancient perception of Flash as a bandwidth hog and being slow to load is a bit of a sore spot. After years spent battling against that argument we can be a little sensitive to anything that could rekindle that debate.

Reading through the comments on Scoble’s “Netflix is dead” post alot of people are reacting by arguing against any imminent demise of movie rental stores. What’s interesting however is that most are qualifying that with “downloading movies is the future” flavoured statements. Ironically, the real story here is that Adobe and Verisign appear to be making plans to build the foundation for that future. That was Scoble’s real point; unfortunately he distracted from it with a sensational headline.

When Adobe released the long awaited Flash Player 9 for Linux as a public beta on labs.adobe.com I took it as a nudge to (again) try running a Linux desktop on my home computer. The Linux experiment is going fairly well this time, and the Flash Player seems to be coming together rather well too.

Of course, the Linux Flash Player is beta software (beta 2 was released earlier this week) and that means the odd bug will pop up that hasn’t yet been discovered or fixed. As both a Flash platform developer and user it is in my best interest to report these snags as I come across them. And you’d think that it would be in Adobe’s best interest to make that bug reporting process as efficient and useful as possible. Why then is the only public facing issue tracking a simple web form?

Maybe I’m overlooking some important fact but I really can’t imagine how having the feedback information flow in only one direction is an advantage to anyone. As someone who’s reported a bug or two in my time, (don’t worry - I’ve created more than my fair share too), I’d much rather start the time consuming, and sometimes painful, process of properly reporting an issue by searching a database to see if someone else has already done the leg work for me. From there I can simply tack on any information I feel may be useful and get back to say, fumbling around a “foreign” operating system.

I’d also be curious to know how the quality of the feedback Adobe receives through the web form compares to reports in public bug databases such as Mozilla’s Bugzilla or the Connect system Microsoft used for the IE7 pre-release.

Mark Tomlinson of AuthorwareXtras fame has filled a void by launching the Flash eLearning List, “A [mailing] list to discuss creating eLearning using Flash”.

Among the numerous Flash anniversary posts of the past few days I especially enjoyed reading John Dowdell’s reminiscence on the first 10 years of Flash.

One of the anecdotes he shares described Flex as the fulfillment of a quest for an authoring environment that uses XML to natively describe multimedia “experiences” and once again reminded me of what I’m starting to think of as “Authorware’s past glories”. When Authorware 7 was released in 2003 it included functionality that allows one to export (and import) an XML description of Authorware files. (Sadly, it remains just too incomplete to fulfill it’s true potential). Nevertheless, while JD does a good job of connecting the XML dots to Flex it bears noting that Authorware was also a dot on that path.

Authorware, a dot in so many ways.

This Cnet article titled “Flash to jump beyond the browser” has been getting some links today. It’s an interesting piece and the information it contains comes from Adobe’s Kevin Lynch so I think it’s fair to say it’s a solid piece factually as well. I’m a little concerned though that the Apollo hype is treading a little too close to just that - hype.

While I’m all for the advantages that come from developing projects in public (Adobe labs is a good example of that done right), I think Adobe have to be careful with over hyping Apollo before having something tangible to deliver. It can be a slippery slope to the kind of predatory preannouncements that companies like Microsoft have been accused of in the past. I guess the true litmus test lies in the spirit of the announcements - when used genuinely the goal is to solicit user feedback and create a sense of community while at the same time fostering critical developer relations (if developers don’t believe in a product it won’t fly, no matter how good it is). When the competition begins to heat up however, (I’ll bet the sun was shining in both San Jose and San Francisco when the latest delay to Vista went public), it can become an easy tactic used to stifle competion.

Don’t confuse these comments with pessimism for what Apollo will be. I really believe Macromedia, (and now Adobe), have done their homework and it is because I truly want to see this project succeed that I’m making these comments. It has enormous potential to make my life (as both a developer and a user) a heck of alot easier.

So, while I’m not the only one with observations of Apollo hubris, I would really like to see the buzz be due to the tech itself and not some ‘next big thing’ feeding frenzy.

Geoff Stearns who is the author of the popular FlashObject Javascript library has a post describing a somewhat disconcerting exchange with Adobe’s legal department. According to Geoff they have requested that he stop using the word “Flash” in his project name. Geoff, somewhat grudgingly, has agreed to rename the project SWFObject.

I really do hope this is just a matter of Adobe’s legal and public relations not consulting one another. In any event, it makes it clear that Adobe needs to provide a clear statement on it’s perspective regarding trademark infringement (and other legal issues) and then enforce it in a reasonable and consistent manner. I think this would also help clear up some of the legal ambiguity of a few open source Flash projects.

The OSFlash mailing list currently has some discussion on the matter in this thread. And Peter Elst has posted a good level headed appeal to Adobe regarding this manner.

Adobe have put together an extension (.mxp) for the Flash 8 IDE that updates the publishing templates to include a workaround to the Internet Explorer Activate ActiveX changes.

Details and a link to the extension download are here:
http://www.macromedia.com/go/7c29e252

This is pretty forward of me but I think someone needs to introduce Dave Winer and Kevin Lynch.

Why? Because they’re both saying the same thing.

Of course they’re on different paths and are both describing it in their own ways but you can’t tell me the goal isn’t the same. What finally clued me in was Dave’s comment today when he had this to say about Yahoo’s calendar:
“The interface is clunky, but I can’t see how it could be better and still run in the browser.”

Heh, Dave, check out Kevin’s presentation from Max last fall. It’s a bit of a pain to get you to the right place in the video but once you watch it I think you’ll agree with me. The video is here. Choose ‘Day One’ > ‘Platform Future’ (3rd thumbnail from the right), then jump ahead to about 1:08:00.

The Article I Think I Read
I burned a good hour of time that I didn’t really have today looking for an article that I’m pretty sure I read a few years ago. The way I recall things it was sometime in maybe 2002, the article was published on macromedia.com and it described a fictional “day in the life” in which the principal “character” was helped in their day to day routines by various “intelligent”, occasionally connected devices and software. Things like reading and writing email, buying concert tickets, tracking current events and making social plans all being done while she made her way to the coffee shop, rode a train to the office etc. A vision that’s pretty common today but back when I read this article it all seemed quite revolutionary to me and ever since I’ve been watching for it to become reality.

Did Kevin Read the Article?
In October I was lucky enough to be sitting in the audience during Kevin Lynch’s keynote at Macromedia’s Max when he first talked about “Apollo”. Something tells me Kevin read the article too. Here, go check out the video from that keynote and you’ll see how familiar it sounds. Choose ‘Day One’ > ‘Platform Future’ (3rd thumbnail from the right), then jump ahead to around 1:08:00 (yup, the ability to direct link that would be easier for me too).

Read the rest of this entry »

flashvideofaq.com provides a really nice way for quickly comparing the various Flash video encoding options.

Via Scott Fegette.

I can hear the Director users squealing with delight.

Adobe’s Tom Higgins has announced an update to the Shockwave Player and Director IDE that will include a Flash 8 Asset Xtra as well as fix some bugs related to QuickTime7 in the QuickTime Asset Xtra. I was fortunate enough to get a couple of sneak peeks at the Flash Xtra at Max last fall and have to admit that the “convert” functionality looked very cool.

When this update drops next month it will come nearly 6 months after the Flash Player 8 was released. (And Authorware developers will still be waiting). Such a delay really is unfortunate and I think needs to be addressed. I’m not so naive as to think that putting the Asset Xtras together is anywhere near a simple task, however I do feel that too often the various applications are on their seperate development cycles and the Xtra only gets updated based on them. When developing Authorware or Director applications we have the luxury of not having to be concerned with uptake of new Flash Players so why not take advantage of it?

Anyhow, to make that pill alot less bitter for my Director friends Tom mentions that this will be a free update. Hmm, a free Flash Xtra update for Authorware sure would make the wait for the long rumoured Authorware 8 a little less anxious…

Adobe’s Scott Fegette has a good tip for Flash 8 developers who publish swfs targeting earlier versions of the Flash Player (ie, <8).

Bottom line, the first thing you should do to a new fla is set the player version. Do that, and features of the IDE that aren’t supported in your target player will be disabled.

Seeing as how the Flash Asset Xtra that ships with Authorware 7 embeds the Flash Player 6 this is a ‘damned good to know’.

OT, posting this from Chicago’s O’Hare (wireless isn’t free but it’s fast).

Yeah, so it’s not really a New Years resolution, but with today’s release of the Flash Lite 2 update for Flash on Adobe Labs I think 2006 is the year I attempt to build a Flash Lite app.

I’ve never really considered trying to develop for devices until now. I actually sat in on one of the Flash Lite sessions at Max this year and while I found it very infomative I can’t say I was eager to jump into Flash Lite development. The old Flash 4 AS syntax of Flash Lite 1.1, the limited data transfer, device inconsistencies, and those crazy memory and filesize constraints all just make it so unattractive. Obviously Flash Lite 2 won’t solve all of these but hopefully it’ll be enough to make things alot less painful. Check out Bill Perry’s Flash Lite 2.0 Preview for a good Breeze presentation on the new features.

There, now I’ve pledged to it. Hopefully this post won’t be haunting me in December…

This technote, published last week, details options for dealing with Flash Player secuirty security errors when running local swfs that communicate with a network location or the HTML page (via Javascript for example).

Security error appears when playing Flash content on a CD

It contains a couple of good tips that may not be as well know as they should be…
Trust Files which identify the path to Flash content that requires both local and network access.
The Local Content Updater is a free command-line utility provided by Macromedia to change the sandbox that a swf operates in when run locally. (Useful for updating existing content that is affected by the Flash Player 8 udpate - plus it can be included in a script for batch updating).

Ben Goodger (the lead engineer on Firefox) has some interesting explanatations for a few experimental refinements they’ve made to Firefox’s tabbed browsing features. Reading his post kind of sold me on the changes and using ‘em for the past day or so has me hoping that they’ll make it into the 1.5 final release. He explains that the usability study which partly inspired the changes was provided by Google, which I suppose means I should be thanking them as well.

On a somewhat related note (and to explain why I tagged this with a ‘flash’ category), as Mozilla ramps up for a public release of Firefox 1.5 they’ve been sharing intentions in regards to future plans for the Mozilla platform. Specifically, Chris Beard has put together a draft roadmap and Brendan Eich has been discussing Mozilla’s future in general as well as sharing design notes for JavaScript 2. This is a really helpful way of succinctly summarizing plans and is something that I would also find useful seeing from Macromedia in regards to the Flash Platform.

(While I kind of like this post’s current title, perhaps ‘all over the map’ would’ve been just as appropriate) ;-)

Talk about keeping the party going. No wonder JD has a headache ;-)

Earlier today Macromedia announced their plans for a Flex 2 product line (Flex Builder, Flex Enterprise Services, Flex Framework and Flex Components) as well as Flash Player 8.5.

A brand new ActionScript Virtual Machine for the new ActionScript 3 scripting language, a bunch of new APIs (including the AWOL E4X and RegExp), and a whole lot more. Oh, oh, oh, a “compilation mode” too. Damn that sounds promising.

update: Sho Kuwamoto’s post here seems to confirm that the new VM will support JIT compilation of AS3.

update 2: I haven’t seen the Flex2 FAQ linked to yet. Plenty of good answers there. My question: how big will the 8.5 player be?

Wow, what a week. Way back on Tuesday Macromedia released Studio 8 and the Flash Player 8. Then on Wednesday Microsoft announced Sparkle. Topping things off is a looming deadline at work which makes me even more grateful for the distillation folks have been providing. So here’s a collection of Sparkle reactions that I’ve found interesting.

Robert Scoble started the week off by saying that Sparkle is no Flash killer.

The Expression Suite press release is here.

Of course the Channel9 video. A 1+ hour, nearly 1 gig, .wmv of Scoble lobbing softballs at members of the Sparkle team. Freakin’ inspiring and worth the entire hour. Something cool about what they’re doing over on Channel9 - the content is genuine. No editing when software or people slip from the “script”.

Macromedia’s John Dowdell trudged through comments on Slashdot’s “Flash, meet Sparkle” article and linked to those he considered noteworthy. (Thanks JD!).

Jon Meyer, who at one time was a PM on Sparkle, has an interesting point of view. He seems to be suggesting it is the ubiquity of Ajax that is the main threat to Sparkle. He also mentions Flash a half dozen or so times and there’s some good discussion in the comments section.

Sparkle vs Flash on publish.com. Interestingly Matthew David feels that the term Flash-killer should be hyphenated. Seriously, it’s a decent read. (Tom Adams pointed this one out).

Eweek has another blurb by Matthew David on Windows Presentation Foundation Everywhere (WPF/E).

Dax Pandhi thinks about programming power and predicts that “WPF/E will most probably revamp the Internet itself“.

I think Scott Barnes feels the same way. Regardless, the enthusiasm makes it worth the read.

Peter Elst looks at Sparkle from a Flash user’s perspective.

Víctor Bayón thinks about how Window’s Vista is part of the Nike-ization of the software industry. The focus shift being from the functionality of the OS to the user experience. He points out that Sparkle is how MS see that shift being made:
http://www.virart.nott.ac.uk/idue/eng/weblog/2005/09/experience-iii.html

Tinic Uro, who is an engineer on the Flash Player, was at PDC and got a look at Sparkle:
http://www.kaourantin.net/2005/09/microsoft-sparkle.html

Okay this one isn’t on topic Sparkle wise but Molly Holzschlag takes Steve Ballmer to task for declaring that Microsoft will “win the web”:
http://webstandards.org/buzz/archive/2005_09.html#a000573

Flash Player Version 8,0,22,0 is available from the Flash Player Download Center. And a bunch of new tech notes came through the Flash Player product feed in the past 12 hours.

Nice job on keeping the installer beneath 1MB (WIN FireFox is 926K). Surely thats as much a “psychological barrier” as the $100 barrel of oil. ;-)

It’ll be interesting to see the Flash Player penetration numbers next update.

These should help clear things up.

A couple of weeks ago I was a little unclear on how the security restrictions have changed in Flash Player 8. Earlier today Mike Chambers pointed to a couple of new whitepapers detailing security in the Flash Player.

Flash Player 8 Security
Flash Player 8 Security-Related APIs

At one point this afternoon nearly the entire front page of MXNA was discussing Macromedia’s upcoming Eclipse based development tool for the Flex framework, codenamed Zorn.

All due to a post from Mike Chambers in which he explains that Zorn will allow users to build swfs with MXML, ActionScript and the next generation of the Flex framework (all without requiring a server).

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.

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.

Mike and Christian have posted the second Macromedia Developer Relations podcast. In it they mention that they’re going to try and make it a weekly event. That would be fantastic though I imagine it takes some time to prepare a piece as “juicy” as these first two. Then again with all the stuff going on at Macromedia these days I imagine they’ll have alot of material for some time to come.

In this episode Mike Downey, (Product Manager for Flash), chats with the guys about the upcoming updates to the Flash Player and IDE. He gives an interesting overview of some of the steps along the road to getting Flash out the door. (For those marking calendars, Mike Chambers seems to imply the updates will ship prior to the Max event in October).

A vibe I got from this podcast is how these guys aren’t just colleagues doing a job - they’re pals who have a genuine passion for what they’re doing. Sounds clichéd I know but give it a listen and see if you catch it too.

See the Developer Relations podcast blog for a full list of topics covered and a link to the mp3.

I’ve put together a package containing the files used in the authorware to swf experiment mentioned last week:
awxml2swf.zip (79KB)
Of course, you’ll also need swfmill and MTASC.

The zip contains 3 directories:
as contains the ActionScript class files
aw_sample contains the Authorware sample.a7p, sample.xml (awxml), and media exported from sample.a7p
xslt contains the XSL Transform files
I’ve also included aw2swf.bat which combines the process of calling the compilers (swfmill and mtasc).

A note of warning - this is all quite primitive.

As mentioned previously the .a7p being “converted” in this process must be of a fairly specific structure. A single framework icon, an entry pane containing an interaction with next & previous navigate icons and individual display icons as children of the framework. Displays can contain pngs, jpegs or Authorware drawn shapes. (Curves in circles and roundrects are still pretty rudimentary so they may not be accurately reproduced in the swf). After running the “export as XML…” command from Authorware here’s the steps I’ve been following to make the “conversion”:
- to “prepare” the awxml and media for swfmill wrap any exported text objects in HTML within the CDATA[] of an xml file (see the Aperture.rtf and Aperture.xml file in the awsample directory for reference). Any HTML tags supported by a Flash dynamic textfield should work. Also edit the Authorware XML file to reference the .xml files as opposed to the .rtf.
- update the xslt/config.xml to point to the location for swfmill to locate the media files referenced by the awxml.
- using the swfmill xslt argument apply the awxml2swf.xsl to the awxml file specifying a swf for the “<out>” parameter. This will also generate a swfml xml file for each display icon in the output directory. e.g.:
swfmill xslt xslt\awxml2swf.xsl aw_sample\sample.xml aw_sample\sample.swf
- use swfmill to generate a swf for each of the xml files in the output directory (use a batch file to make this easier). e.g. :
swfmill xml2swf aw_sample\output\65545.xml aw_sample\output\65545.swf
- compile the ActionScript classes using MTASC with the -swf flag. e.g. :
mtasc -swf aw_sample\sample.swf -cp as\ -main Authorware.as

Mark Anders who is leading the Zorn project for Macromedia has started blogging.

It seems Mark was one of the creators of ASP.Net.

Lately I’ve been experimenting with generating swf files from Authorware XML in order to display Authorware content in the Flash Player. Using a couple of the recently released open source Flash tools I’ve managed to cobble together a basic implementation.

The first step in this process was to create a set of XSL files to transform the input xml to swfml, the XML dialect used by swfmill. Employing the XSL processor that Daniel Fischer has included in swfmill I’ve been able to convert display icons described in Authorware XML (awxml) to swfml which is in turn used to generate a corresponding swf. Currently all the native Authorware drawing tool shapes are being generated as well as png and jpeg images. Text requires a bit of a hack as the text objects are exported by Authorware as rtf which needs to be converted to html before the awxml to swfml transformation. That is done manually - atleast for now.

As well I’ve assembled a set of ActionScript classes to parse the awxml and simulate the logic of the Authorware icons and flowline. As it stands I have the basics of a framework icon, simple navigate icons (next & previous), interactions with hot object responses and display icons. These classes are then compiled into the swf using the Motion-Twin ActionScript 2 Compiler (MTASC).

To demonstrate I’ve assembled a page that embeds a sample Authorware piece that comforms to the icon structure this awxml2swf process currently requires (essentially display icons hanging from a framework) as well as embedding the resulting swf (you may recognize the media from the learning Authorware tutorial). You’ll need the Authorware Web Player 2004 (link) to view the Authorware content. I’ll let you use your detective skills to determine which is Authorware and which is Flash ;-) That sample is here.

When I get a bit more free time I’ll try to get the various pieces together in a package and maybe describe the steps involved in some more detail. As I mentioned, I consider all of this experimental - I was curious to investigate the possibilities.

update: the files and some notes on the steps to the use them are here.

I pointed to the beta Flash / JavaScript Integration Kit from Macromedia last week. Earlier today Mike Chambers who co-authored the kit announced that it has been released under a license based on the Apache 1.1 Software license. Its text is available here.

There is some real momentum building in the open source Flash community and it’s nice to see Macromedia encouraging (and particpating in) it.

I’ve been looking for a good SWF2EXE application for creating desktop apps so this afternoon I grabbed an eval version of Zinc V2 from Multidmedia. I also figured that with all the talk of Eclipse lately I’d try setting it up with the ASDT plugin and mtasc ActionScript2 compiler as well.

In order to use Zinc’s {mdm}script you must place a mdminit() call on the first frame of every swf in the project. I learned from the mtasc list that this isn’t possible with mtasc - it places the static main entry point function on the first frame but only after all other classes have been initialized. Apparently Zinc isn’t able to find it down there. So the way around it was to create an initial swf in the Flash IDE (should be a snap in swfmill too) that contains the mdminit() call on the first frame. I then used this swf as my input swf for mtasc.

Next small annoyance was the compiler’s nagging about “Unknown variable mdm” for any call to {mdm}script. That’s due to a scoping issue and can be hushed by qualifying the call:
_global.mdm.prompt(”hello world”);

Macromedia have announced that they’ll start referring to Flash as a platform. Seems to be getting linked alot for a move that at the end of the day is pretty much just a marketing initiative. (Not to say it isn’t a wise move - bound to help in the flash as a web application technology initiative).

Probably the tidbits on the upcoming Flash Player that are part of the platform overview pdf are helping to generate some of that excitement.

As well as the announcement that Macromedia have joined the Eclipse foundation and are planning a RIA development tool in the form of an Eclipse plugin. It seems that it will be a replacment for FlexBuilder. Atleast to begin with - some comments in Sho Kuwamoto’s blog could lead one to believe that they are considering something similar for (non-Flex) Flash application development.

The folks at Macromedia are putting together an integration kit to help make Flash to Javascript communication (and vice versa) a little less ambiguous. They’ve provided a beta version here. Looks to be a pretty comprehensive project - supporting the passing of all the main datatypes on most common browser/os configurations. I think Christian and Mike deserve credit for identifying this as an area that could benefit from a standard (and encompassing) implementation.

Great timing too. I’ll probably try this out a bit in implementing the SCORM requirements for an upcoming project.

It seems that the new Flash Player will add ECMAScript for XML (E4X) to ActionScript. And it’s supposed to be faster than current XML support in the Flash Player.

It would seem that this tidbit was accidentally leaked on the flexcoders mailing list in a post here. I do feel for the fella who posted the message to the forum by mistake but I have to give him ponts for thoroughness. Not only does he mention that the Flash Player will support the feature but he also gives a great little E4X primer and even links to the ECMA spec documents.

Via pixelfliker.com

Some upcoming Flash related macrochats:
Six Advanced Flash Video Techniques
Event Listeners in Flash

“Macrochats are free, online live technical discussions” hosted by Macromedia.

Some (not all?) past macrochats are archived here.

Who didn’t see this Firefox extension coming? Objection adds the ability to delete Flash local shared objects to the Firefox privacy panel.

As mentioned earlier this (and other shared object managment management functionality) is also available from the Flash Player settings manager.

Via Pete Freitag.

There were a couple of interesting beta projects announced to the Flash world this week.

NeoSwiff from GlobFX provides the ability to compile to swf from C# code. It’s .NET compatible and even includes a (Windows only) IDE. No word on pricing yet. Check out a couple of samples here:
http://www.globfx.com/products/neoswiff/samples.php

Darron Schall mentioned this.

swfmill is an xml to swf (and swf to xml) conversion tool. It uses a swfml markup which is “closely modeled after the swf file format”. It’s been released under a GPL (General Public License).

I wonder how many Authorware users think “hmm, Authorware outputs to xml…” each time we hear about the various describe swf in xml applications.

No doubt still a little raw following the “not bundling, just offering” Yahoo! toolbar fiasco Macromedia seem to be taking the initiative by providing information in response to some recent Flash local object privacy rumblings. Local objects, often called “Flash cookies”, are used to store data locally - very much like the browser cookie functionality. There is a new Flash Player technote, How to disable Local Shared Objects, and John Dowdell has been thinking about some of the concerns recently.

According to this techweb.com piece, some of the internet marketing outfits are beginning to use Flash local objects as an alternative to cookies following a recent study which claims that a large percentage of users are deleting cookies on a regular basis. I think the bottom line is that local objects seem to be no more, nor no less, nefarious than cookies and users should be informed about how to manage both (as well as why they would want to). Apparently Macromedia is also talking with the major browser developers with a goal of integrating cookie and shared object managment.That would be useful. In the meantime manage your local object and other Flash Player settings here:
http://www.macromedia.com/support/documentation/en/flashplayer/help/settings_manager02.html
Also, here is a link to information on managing cookies in FireFox:
http://www.mozilla.org/support/firefox/options#privacy
And for Internet Explorer too:
http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;EN-US;q283185

All that said, I do have a couple of questions / observations about Flash local objects and browser cookies:
Are the Flash Player settings machine (as opposed to browser) specific? Meaning if I change my settings using Firefox do the same settings apply under IE?
Flash local objects default to a maximum size of 100KB and can be configured from 0KB to “unlimited”. It would appear that cookies are limited to 4KB. Is this correct?
Are the browser cookie file format(s) published? How about Flash Player local objects?

I’ll do my best to find some answers to these when I have a little bit more time If anyone happens to find this and has some answers I’d be interested in hearing them…

on the Flash team blog Mike Chambers is soliciting input on improving the trace() functionality in Flash. He seems to have gotten a few insightful comments in response. Personally, I’m on side with the keep it simple type feedback however Authorware has a couple of handy Trace() options that I tend to use a fair bit:
Trace(#off) causes any subsequent traces to be ignored until Trace(#on) is called.
Trace(#clear) clears the contents of the trace window.

Could it be that Flash has a few things left to learn from good old Authorware?

With tongue in cheek I put together a toolbar button for Internet Explorer that unselects the Yahoo toolbar checkbox on the Flash Player download page. That’s right, it’s a toolbar that helps you to opt-out of the Yahoo! toolbar offer from Macromedia. Call it statement-ware. Basically, it runs a bit of javascript on the page to set the checked state of the “also install” checkbox to false when the IE toolbar button is clicked. Really this provides no added functionality to the page (nor removes any).

What’s the point you ask? There is no point except to make a statement. I’ve followed (and participated in) the Yahoo! toolbar debate that has recently been waged and while I feel encouraged by the way Macromedia have reacted to the developer community feedback I continue to disagree with the offer’s opt-in status. Of course, the absurdity of a toolbar item to deselect an option to install a toolbar is also part of the point. As another explanation I’d suggest that perhaps I have too much time on my hands but that really is far from the truth.

I’ve assembled the files in a zip here. It contains the following:
y_opt_out.ico - the toolbar button’s icon (a rather lame effort…).
y_opt_out.js - the script file that is executed when the toolbar button is clicked.
y_opt_out.reg - a reg file to assist in the toolbar button installation (direct linking a reg file just seemed wrong). Basically it adds a registry key in
HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Internet Explorer\Extensions\
Before merging it you’ll need to edit the directory location for the values it contains to point to the location on your pc where the above files will be located (currently pointing to D:\y_opt_out\).

Here’s a screengrab of the toolbar in IE6:

And this is a link to the MSDN docs for Internet Explorer browser extensions:
http://msdn.microsoft.com/workshop/browser/ext/extensions.asp

This entry on actionscript.com by Carlos Rovira is getting some attention in the Flash community. Carlos discusses the state of open source Flash development and walks through setting up the Motion Twin Actionscript2 Compiler (MTASC) with the Eclipse IDE. He also notes some of the current shortcoming such as an open source component framework as well as the inability to embed images and the various other media that Macromedia’s Flash IDE provides for.

Coincidentally, there was some interest expressed on flashcoders recently in regards to tackling the component framework. They were actually discussing such a project as a response to performance and bug issues with the V2 components from Macromedia so it should be interesting if the two motivations can bring it together. Simply based on the number of flashcoder folks who claim to be rolling their own in house I’m a little surprised such an initiative hadn’t taken off earlier.

Eric Dolecki points out that there are a few Macromedia related blogs running in stealth mode as of late. I too have noticed a reduction of atleast Flash related content from some of the blogs I try to follow. Personally I put it down to the fact that most of the folk are busy donating their ‘community’ time to beta testing. That and it’s probably difficult to blog while under an NDA.

I have no metrics to back this up so it could just be wishful thinking. Being under no such restrictions I can ponder this openly.

Last month I mentioned that I’d subscribed to the syndication feeds of a couple Macromedia Livedocs books. Since then I’ve been occasionally browsing through some of the comments / feedback left on the docs by users. I see it as just another way to keep up on some of the tools I use, much like reading the user forums or mailing lists I’m subscribed to. It’s also somewhat interesting to see how people are using the livedocs and I’ve noted a few trends.

Alot of folks seem to use Livedocs much like they do the support forums - to ask for help. Probably not terribly effective but not that surprising either. However, on a couple of occasions I also followed an issue on a mailing list as it developed and came to a resolution and then later noticed a comment describing that solution dropped on the LD. That seems more in keeping with the spirit of the tool - users providing genuine documentation input.

I don’t have any metrics to back this up but I would guess that skinning components in Flash generates the most traffic of the two feeds I’ve been following (Flash and Authorware). It’s also a topic that seems to make folks cranky. Which leads me to another trend - the ranting. It would seem that the occasional person sees LDs as a bit of an anonymous medium for communicating directly with Macromedia. In some small way I take pity on the poor misguided soul - he (or she) is obviously in the docs as a last resort and completely exasperated. That “add comment” button must just be too damned tempting. There are probably a couple of maintainers of the Livedocs who deserve to have a beer or two bought for them (like Francis Cheng for this effort - scroll to the Feb 10, 2005 comments).

Finally, there are the just plain bizarre entries like this comment in the Authorware book:

Is there a dedicated speed light for the new Nikon F6?

It was dropped on this page but has been edited out so won’t appear in the link. I think its the context that cracks me up so much.

One of the bigger issues with adding flash to your authorware piece (through the asset xtra) is the performance hit caused by anything more complex than the most basic of swfs. In most cases setting the #directToStage property of the flash icon is a necessity. Sometimes however, sections of the piece contain media that need to overlay the swf, for example, in the case of a glossary. Here’s a simple, flicker free way to toggle the property (picked up from some of the wise folks on the aware list):

my_swf.DirectToScreen = false;
my_swf.SetIconProperty("#directToStage", false);

And of course to toggle it back again (while working in the ide it’s wise to do so or the next time you test your piece the swf will no longer be directToStage):

my_swf.DirectToScreen = true;
my_swf.SetIconProperty("#directToStage", true);

Macromedia recently added rss feeds and email notifications to livedocs. It seems that currently the rss links are only available on pages containing an existing comment. However, by taking a cue from Christian Cantrell’s suggestion (linked above) of fiddling with the feed urls it seems to be possible to subscribe to an entire “book” as well. So I’ve added the Authorware 7 and Flash MX 2004 feeds to my reader to try it out. I actually dropped a small (legit) comment on an Authorware page as a simple test and it came up in the rss reader. I’ll probably unsubscribe if information overload sets in (or worse, some cretin realizes they can feed spam us by dumping their garbage in the docs).

Christian and the rest of the IMD(?) team have been providing us with some nice alternative ways of getting up to date information off the Macromedia servers.

There are interesting parallel discussions happening on a couple of mailing lists I subscribe to. On both Aware and Flashcoders folks are pointing out the shortcomings of the text rendering engines in the respective products. There is no question that Flash is miles ahead of Authorware in this respect and the main complaint with Flash is the lack of right-to-left (RTL) support. While 8-ball (the version of flash currently in development) will include a new Saffron based text rendering engine (source: one, two, three, four, five, six) it would appear that RTL will still not be supported. David Mendels, who manages the Flash product groups, mentioned that the main obstacles are getting it right (apparently it’s a big challenge and therefore risky) as well as the filesize it would add to the player.

Authorware complaints are a bit less “focused” in that there isn’t one single feature everyone wants to see supported. Honestly speaking the text handling in Authorware is quite antiquated and probably in need of a complete overhaul. Even some of the (considered) basic stuff such as dynamic formatting isn’t possible. In the light of all this, the Authorware solution sounds simple - how’s about “dropping” Saffron into Authorware 8. Hell, I’d settle for the Flash MX’04 engine using the better the devil you know argument. I make it sound trivial which it most definitely is not, but if something’s going to be done then what I suggest may have advantages.

Anyhow, all this to make the suggestion that perhaps Macromedia has some cross product shortcomings?

I can across Brajeshwar’s nice External JPEG file preloader and thought I’d make a few modifications to use it as a photoviewer to display a collection of images I wanted to share. Ideally I was hoping to be able to simply point it at a directory of jpegs and have it enumerate and then load them one by one. The auto-enumeration requirement however became a bit of a sticking point so I wound up just reading the jpeg count from a text file using loadVariables(). Of course it would also have been just as easy to cobble together a bit of php to do it dynamically on the swfs behalf. Thanks to a pointer from the wise folks on the flashnewbie list it appeared that it might be possible to use a loadVars() hack to achieve the file count as well. It was rumoured that loadVars() would allow me to check if a file existed without initiating a full download of the file so I could then just name my jpegs consecutively and loop until a mising file error on loadVars(). Unfortunately my tests seem to show that loadVars() loads the entire file even while only a portion winds up in the object.

Anyhow, see it in action here. The source is here.

Thanks Brajeshwar!

Some time ago I updated the using FlashPaper in Authorware sample that Chris Phillips I and had originally written for the Macromedia Exchange. I just noticed that while the description of the item on the Exchange describes v2, the file being downloaded is still the original version. So until the update is properly linked from the Exchange I’ll share a copy here. (Please note that I will edit this post to remove that non Exchange link once everything is back in sync).

The sample demonstrates one technique for enabling communication to and from a swf inserted in authorware. Basically allowing you to call all of the available flashpaper 2.0 api methods from within authorware as well as to trap flashpaper events.

FlashPaper can be a handy way to display and print static documents from within your Authorware pieces. If you’re not familiar with FlashPaper you can find out about it here.

This post from Vinnie at the recently rolled blog FLAmous came through the MM aggregrator this morning. He provided an actionscript version of a function to determine if a number is odd or even and described the Modulo (%) operator. I’ve pulled out the AS2 data-typing so we can use it in authorware - a week old and I’m already pilfering the man’s code.

function evenNumber(number) {
    var isPositive = ( number>=0);
    var isInteger = (number%1 == 0);
    var even = (number%2 == 0);
    return isPositive && isInteger && even;
}
aw.Trace(evenNumber(9));