Flash Player 10 released
Adobe Systems announced the release of a major update to its Flash technology to enable web sites to have better video and audio with the new version 10 Flash Player (code-named Astro) and it arrived just days after MS released Silverlight (reported here as an afterthought for many, which prompted a few comments of defense for the product).
Flash Player 10, a free download available at the link, includes a lot of new features, which include easier to use and access 3D graphic effects, better font handling for more intricate layouts when putting words and graphics together, and improved support for multilingual applications.
Also with increased capability is the sound subsystem, with better audio mixing of music and sound effects too, with more support for hardware based acceleration.
This should raise the bar for multimedia on websites and other related applications, and may effectively (more or less) bury MS Silverlight, if it works out to be fairly bug free.
SWF Maestro: Flash to Desktop App Made Easy
Have you ever wanted to create an application but you just don’t know how to code c++, VB or one of those difficult programming languages?
If you have used Adobe Flash or Adobe’s new easy to use Flex system - then you can easily pump out your very own Desktop applications.
Using SWFmaestro you can convert any SWF or flash based source file to a standalone application.
Imagine creating a screensaver or presentation easily straight from flash source files!
Both portable and easy to use.
The SWFMaestro website strikes me first as very clear and direct. No grand claims or unecessary flash.
The site gives you the information you need and let’s you get right to work.
Fully functional trial versions are all available at the dowloads page:
Installation is very quick - the downloadable is painlessly small (2 megs or so).
You can see a screenshot of the main SCR creator application configuration screen here:
The appliaction itself is a snap to use.
With relative ease you just point the application to the media files or flash source files.
The configuration has several options for screensaver (or application) settings as well. These are all quite easy to use.
If a support question does arise a full user manual is available online as well a basic customer contact form.
The good folks over at SWFmaestro tell me that a user forum is planned in the near future and should be a great addition.
The SWF Maestro system even allows for time limited keys and hardware based keys to be created for licensing protection.
With Single user licenses starting at $49.95 it is easy to see the value in using SWFmaestro.
This has been a paid review.
Creative Suite 4 by Adobe released for pre-order
Abobe has released its Creative Suite 4 for pre-order, and several things are clear: It emphasizes a Web 2.0 agenda for certain, and integration and collaboration functionality are big parts of its plans for the future.
For starters, it now integrates Flash into most of the suite, to make collaborating easier among developers and designers. This was one of the primary goals, according to many of the public previews and company announcements; to integrate many of the components together. Finally, the company is realizing most developers don’t work in a vacuum; frequently, parts need to be shared across platforms and users, and this one is shaping up to address most of those needs.
The new suite - Adobe’s largest software rollout in their history - includes Adobe Creative Suite 4 Design editions, Creative Suite 4 Web editions, Creative Suite 4 Production Premium and Creative Suite 4 Master Collection, as well as 13 point products, 14 integrated technologies and seven services. Products include new versions of Photoshop, Dreamweaver, Flash, Illustrator and more.
Other changes include the ability to work real-time with other people using certain software features, bug fixes, and compatibility improvements. It even includes some features meant for mobile use.
Prices are to be $1,799 for the Premium Package (includes the main stuff, including Photoshop and Dreamweaver), and $2,499 for the Master package, which includes everything (Soundbooth, Encore, Bridge etc) to do with collaboration and connection to other users.
To Pownce or crawl?
Everything Kevin Rose touches turns to gold right?
Well – I’m still waiting for Pownce to get the midas affect.
Launched nearly a year ago – Pownce has yet to see an upsurge in user acceptance.
Built on the adobe AIR framework and touting features such as message shares (ooh.. unique eh..), file sharing, event sharing and of course social community.
Set up as a competitor and superior product to AIM and all IM clients it ends up that the main competition comes from Twitter (and all those twitter-holics).
Of course Pownce is free to use for a basic account. You can send up to 10Mb file in the basic account. There are also specially made pages that are dedicated for each event so people would know about them and they will be given the privilege to sign up and take part of it.
You will in fact be given the opportunity to split your friends into sets so you can send messages to specific niches of people.
The site also features integration with other profiles in other websites so you will have the ability to import friend lists from other services. Pownce is a neat way to get connected!
What’s Lacking? No sms, No rss feeds. (come on.. what are you thinking Kev)
The client will only be as good as the community around it.
And in order to build the community they’ve got some work to do.
Pedigree can’t be beat with Kevin backing it – but I think he’s going to need to spend some of his hard earned digg-cash if he is going to get it to critical mass.
Adobe Flex
Adobe Flex is gaining more traction as a development platform. The framework produces a flash based output which can be consumed universally by clients agnostically to browser, OS or type. Flex is much easier to edit and create then native flash formats, using an easy to learn scriptable language.
As a web developer, you may always find yourself looking for possible web development applications that would suit your needs, providing a balance of rapid development, easy maintenance and wide cross-compatibility.
Most make use of JavaScript, Active-X and/or AJAX in order to make your sites dynamic and interactive. These traditional frameworks allow for rapid deployment - but necessitate heavy graphical work to make the app user friendly.
To answer the need for better application, the Adobe flex was released which is an open framework for creating significant web applications that that can be installed on major browsers, desktops, and operating systems.
Adobe Flex paves the way to make advanced application that can be used by traditional programmers. Before its release, traditional flash programmers spent hours with actionscript creating customer friendly but difficult to maintain flash-based apps and sites. The Flash platform was innovative and gained critical traction as a default standard over years.
Taking the next step Adobe’s Flex seeks to reduce the problem through the means of providing a workflow and programming model that is familiar to developers. It is programmed with MXML which is an XML-based markup language offers a way to rapidly build and lay out graphic user interfaces. Furthermore, one can also take benefit of interactivity by using ActionScript which is essentially the core language of Flash Player which was made using ECMA Script standard.
Like any other applications, the Adobe Flex has also its limitations. It is still a Flash application and therefore it is limited to what a Flash player can do. True interaction with the desktop is difficult - the Flex platform is not a browser, but is usually a web-based delivery (ie. drag and drop from Desktop to a Player is not feasible). This should be made possible through the release of Apollo.
The Flex popup window is limited to being shown within the dimensions of the player that created it. Incomparable to the popup window in a browser in where you can relocates them to your desktop, the Adobe Flex popup windows can’t go outside the area occupied by the player. Also, the Flash SWF format is a published specification meaning, it is doable for other vendors to create tools that produce Flash files.
Because the introduction of Adobe Flex was favored by the public, the Flex 2 which is an improved version of the first was made which is programmed with command-line compilers and a comprehensive class library of user interface components and utilities.
This program can be downloaded for free and it has no limitations or restrictions compared to the first. There is also the Flex 3 which was launched on April 26, 2007 and is equipped with Flex Builder IDE and the LiveCycle Data Services.
Adobe proclaims that in the near future they will launch the Flex 4 with Gumbo as a code name. The product plan has yet to be completed and although no one really knows what feature this one has, it is surely better than the other 3.
Flex is worth a look as a development and delivery platform if you are willing to work with a Flash based system. Take a look if you were turned off by Flash years ago and haven’t kept up with it.
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