Flash
Adobe Responds: Flash isn’t Open Source, but we’re trying
A few days ago I had posted Apple, Adobe, Flash, iPhone, iPad and Open Source with reference to a debate on various blogs. The debate is whether Flash will ever go open source, should they, and what it means to the Apple / iPhone / iPad contingent.
Adobe came back with the blog post Following the open trail, by Dave McAllister. › Continue reading
Apple’s iPad / iPhone HTML5 Bet: HTML5 Drawing App Proves Capabilities
Recently I’ve been posting on HTML5 versus Flash. Many people who are not familiar with HTML5 may not know exactly the amount of power that has been provided with the new spec. HTML 4 was nice, and a big upgrade, but I believe HTML 5 will be an even larger upgrade over HTML4.
The reason we are talking about HTML5, is Apple seems to be placing their bets on it. Apple continues to refuse to have Flash running on their controlled devices (iPhone, iPad, etc) and seems to be pushing for HTML5 to take over.
We are slowly having to rethink the capabilities of the “HTML” platform that we have grown to know over the past 15 years. › Continue reading
Apple, Adobe, Flash, iPhone, iPad and Open Source
I just saw an interesting blog “Back and Forth” between a few sites:
- Robert Scoble at Scobleizer
- John Gruber at Daring Fireball
- Dave Winer at scripting.com
The conversation revolves around the future of Flash and open standards. › Continue reading
iPad, iPhone, Apple — and Flash. A Sad Story.
Anyone who regularly reads this blog (sorry) can see how optimistic I am that the iPhone will eventually support flash. Today I read news that entirely dashes those hopes.
I just hopped over to MacRumors.com (I love that site) and saw this, Steve Jobs at Apple Town Hall Meeting on Google, Adobe, Next iPhone, 2010 Macs and More.
In the article MacRumors reports:
Apple does not support Flash because it is so buggy, he says. Whenever a Mac crashes more often than not its because of Flash. No one will be using Flash, he says. The world is moving to HTML5.
That is, what I consider to be, the final nail in the coffin. Steve Jobs has shown his hand with regards to Flash.
A few weeks ago, news hit the internet of a clever developer who had implemented his own HTML/Javascript version of Flash — and it worked on the iPhone. You can see this at the demos of Gordon – An open source Flash runtime written in pure JavaScript with SVG.
What does all this mean? Flash won’t be allowed on Apple’s most cherished devices.
If Steve Jobs is experiencing headaches because of Flash and there is an alternative, why wouldn’t he pursue it? HTML flash handle Flash like effects in an open format, a format in which Apple can control and mitigate the reach of Adobe into its own products.
It has been over a year since Adobe was able to demo Flash running on the iPhone. Why hasn’t it made it on the iPhone? Well Steve Jobs and Apple both believe the future is in the canvases of HTML 5. Video can be properly (and easily) embedded, sound included, animation effects that surpass today’s AJAX packages, and many other facets that make HTML 5 a candidate to replace Flash.
This doesn’t make me happy. I’ve come to love Flash as it has evolved.
Apple will use all forces it can to stop Adobe from growing their Flash install base. While Apple has control over a large platform, the iPhone/iPad, they will force developers to adapt to the new technologies such as HTML 5.
Apple has zero intention on ever letting Flash hit the iPhone, iPad, or even any computer if they could do that. I don’t foresee them stopping Flash from their full fledged computers, that would be suicide.
Say goodbye to the romantic notion of Flash on your Apple device.
Windows 7 – First Impressions
It’s been a while — life has been quite busy. Drupal, WordPress, Blender, Windows Vista, Windows 7, Illustrator, Flex, Flash, Actionscript, Papervision. Even got some bicycling and racquetball in there on the weekends.
In the past, wow, month. I’ve been up to quite a bit, and will be posting things on here about them all. Right now my main focus is on my new install of Microsoft Windows 7 (the Release Candidate) while it is still fresh in my mind.
Background, Vista Recovery
A little bit of background, last week on Thursday I woke up to my Vista (32-bit) workstation completely hosed. After a lengthy chat session with a Dell support rep (I can’t say how happy I was with the Dell support guy, he was friendly, smart, and patient through an almost 6 hour long chat session), I managed to get access to the files on my disk to back them up. Happily, I reformatted. I really needed it.
The most amazing thing was when I put the Microsoft Vista DVD in, and it actually got my system to boot into “windows’. Of course I had no icons or anything, the system was actually fixed by the Vista repair actions (a first for me, usually the only use I have for those is to get a command prompt to see the extent of the damage).
While the machine was on, but with no desktop — I was able to map to the drives through another computer and backup information (\\{Computer IP}\C$, D$, E$ until I found drives K, L and M). That took forever, but it was successful.
Windows Vista 32-bit Install
It took FOREVER to get all the updates installed. I know updates just accumulate while software is out. I don’t remember it taking this long to update my XP machine which I had to reinstall 3 or 4 years into the lifecycle. Maybe Vista just has more updates, but it took forever to get my machine back in working order.
Once I was up again, things were much faster (as they always are after a fresh format).
I want to note, I’ve never had many Vista 32-bit driver issues, or any performance issues. The few issues I had revolved around a few pieces of software that didn’t have drivers or fully compatible version for a few months after the Vista launch.
Welcome to Windows 7, how Vista should have been – the first 24 hours
Wow. I downloaded the 64-bit Release Candidate from the official Windows 7 page yesterday. I want to take advantage of the 16 slots my machine has for RAM. Who wouldn’t?
I have a lot of good, and some bad, things to say about Windows 7 so far.
I’ll start with the positive:
- The install process was a piece of cake, I’m running a raid controller for my OS drive (raid 0, living on the edge) — and didn’t have to do anything special
- Updates to the OS through windows update were painless. I want to say it was less than 10% of the downloads required by my Vista install a few days earlier, though the software isn’t even released yet.
- Hardware wise, I have had ZERO, 0, problems with Windows Live 7. not like the handful of hardware issues Vista32-bit had at launch
- Google Chrome is giving me some issues. I can get it to work occassionally but it always ends up “crashing” somehow.
- I actually am not minding IE8, but I miss Chrome
- Faster. It’s true, this runs faster out of the box than my tweaked Vista install
- Clean and easy interface.
- Lots of room for running applications
- Most of my old installers worked, a few of the installers had 64-bit versions I had to download
- Everything with regards to the network seems to respond faster
- It’s free! (for now)
- Cleaner Start Menu
- Higher Windows Experience Ratings
The Bad:
- IE8 (yes, I don’t mind it, but I dislike having to use it instead of my Chrome)
- Google Chrome won’t work well
- Things have obviously moved, and I”m not comfortable with the locations yet. This is really just me being stubborn
- It will expire in 2010, and require a purchase
Conclusion
I’m happy with the install and highly recommend it. I have not lost any productivity. I’m not sure I’ve gained any though.
I will continue to report on my experiences.
iPhone OS 3.0 – Apple to preview on March 17th, 2009
Apple will be previewing the new iPhone OS 3.0 on Monday March 17th, 2009 @ 1pm EST (10am PST) at the Cupertino Apple Town Hall.
This has been repoted by quite a few various sources including Engadget, Macrumors, etc.
As far as “What” will be presented, it is known that this will be a developer version of the operating system only. It will show off an updated SDK (for developing for the iPhone OS 3.0).
Rumors are running rampant on the net with regards to what the new OS major revision will contain.
Widely held to be true, are rumors of:
- MMS (Multimedia text messaging)
- Tethering via Bluetooth and USB (we’ve been talking about tethering on the iPhone for a while now, this isn’t a big surprise — after all it already worked almost a year ago)
More “out there” options, that have no confirmation, but seem likely are:
- New Home screen app (SpringBoard) – we all now have too many apps to efficiently manage with the 16 icons (+4 static) per screen
- Push notification to apps
- Background processes
- Copy & Paste
- Flash support
- Magnetometer support (digital compasses, as in the Android G1)
- Syncing of notes
- Better bluetooth support (headphones, car kits, etc)
- Horizontal Keyboard
- Video Conferencing (ok, we’re stretching it now)
In my opinion, we’re likely to see MMS, as well as tethering. Don’t get too excited, I’m sure tethering will come with a clause from ATT (most likely a monthly fee just like the blackberry).
Otherwise if we get just 1 or 2 of the wishlist items, I think we should be happy. We’ve been looking for Copy / Paste, Flash, Push notification, and background processes for a while. I know push notification is working for “MobileMe”, but I mean the type of push notification Apple was touting last summer (here’s a hint, its the same as the original Exchange push notification that Apple NEEDED to have in order to somewhat compete with blackberry).
Let’s hope there is good news on Monday for us all.
GE Smart Grid Augmented Reality and FLArToolkit
If you haven’t seen the many internet postings about the website, check out the video below. Even better, if you have a camera and a printer handy, check out GE Smart Grid Augmented Reality. The reason being the “cool” part about the site is the ability to put it’s 3d animation in your “hands” through your web camera. Just print out the pattern, and you can do it.
The more interesting part is: how do they do it?
We had posted an article on this technology back in December, Papervision Augmented Reality. Look familiar now? It’s pretty easy to see that this is the same core technology. I can’t say for sure whether they use the FLARToolkit and Papervision (which the original post described) but if they didn’t, there are 2 similiar tools.
The greatest thing about this, is that this is only the beginning. I have many ideas for commercial applications with this technology (which I won’t share, because I can make money off that… send me an email if you want to discuss this privately). I’m sure you can come up with a few on your own.
Watch the video, it will probably bring everything together. Great job GE in taking a publically available technology, and “finishing” the idea with some nice execution.
Access Stage from anywhere in Actionscript 3
Learned about a promising library for Actionscript 3 today, Casalib. There will be more information about the library, as I’m just starting to get to playing with it.
Something that has been pissing off recently, has been the lack of ability to easily reference the stage from any object in AS3. I find myself building controllers to manage objects in the stage, and I have to play tricks with passing objects around. Why I haven’t written a class to access the stage is beyond me.
In looking at the blog for Casalib, I saw a post Get Access to the Stage Wherever You Need It.
I’ll quote the article below:
In ActionScript 2, it was possible to access the stage from anywhere, through the static Stage class. With ActionScript 3, we lost that ability, and only display objects were permitted access—and only once they had been added to the stage.
To help you get access wherever you need it, CASA Lib for AS3 has a utility class called
StageReferencein theorg.casalib.utilpackage. It’s a static class that lets you keep track of the stage (or multiple stages if you’re developing an AIR app with multiple windows). Here’s how we recommend using it.In the constructor of your main document class, just call this line of code:
StageReference.setStage(this.stage);Now, throughout your entire site or application, you can get access to the stage reference from anywhere by using this line of code:
StageReference.getStage();Take a look at the class’s documentation to see what else the StageReference class can do. Some classes (like CASA Lib’s Keyclass) require the use of the StageReference class to function properly.
Adobe and Apple working together for Flash on the iPhone
I know, can you believe it? All this drama, and we find out they’re both amicably working towards a solution.
Saw it on Apple Insider, Adobe, Apple working together on Flash for iPhone.
Seems like it was announced recently.
Apple Insider mentions that Apple has been trying to tout HTML 5 as a replacement to flash on the iPhone. I know HTML 5 has some cool toys in it, but not nearly enough to meet why people demand Flash on the iPhone — because everyone is already USING flash on the web. Saying you provide a desktop like browsing environment and not including Flash is a big deal to me.
This made me happy to read (except the HTML 5 part). Hope you enjoy the news too!
Flash or Flex?
Both Adobe Flash and Adobe Flex build SWFs. They are the same right?
I’ve asked myself the Flash or Flex question recently and wanted to post my thoughts.
It’s a good idea to think about platforms when building web applications ahead of time. Factors I traditionally use, but will not reference here, are the current employee skillsets, ability of the team to learn, and cost to update software. I know — it’s good to get updated software in a company, but sometimes it just doesn’t make sense for a company to spend $1,000 for 5 users, to maintain a project that only costs $5,000 to build. If the company is already equipped with Flash but not Flex — it may make sense to choose Flash even though the project doesn’t lend itself.
That being said, here’s the breakdown of Flash and Flex
Flash CS4
Flash has always been the tool used by develops wanting to create vector animations on the web. Recently Microsoft has introduced Silverlight, we will be ignoring that option for this scenario as I don’t believe I have the expertise to judge Silverlight.
Strengths:
- Comes with standard Adobe Creative Suite Bundles
- Timeline based animations
- Hand animated assets
- Standard Animation
- Self Created Vector Assets
- Highly customized interfaces
- Animation / Design leaning IDE
- Visual
- Familiar environment, as it is the standard way to deploy SWFs
Weaknesses:
- Not meant for AS3 development
- Becomes a basic text editor in most Object Oriented development exercises
- Timeline approach means maintenance is more expensive long term
Summary:
Basically Flash is the ideal environment for development if you are doing things such as banners, animations, logos, or any other visual type of project. It leans itself towards graphic design and animation.
Flash is found in the Adobe Creative Suite 4 Web Premium
Adobe Flex 3
Flex is the newcomer to the vector animation IDE’s from Adobe. Flex is primarily targeted at developers working in the Flash environment. Flex 3 Builder is a modified Eclipse IDE. The Flex platform was built to enable developers to adapt better to Flash, and be able to create Flash O-O applications.
Strengths:
- Developer friendly IDE
- Built in components for standard GUI elements
- Meant for highly interactive applications
- Performance tools
- Debugging
- Maintaining code
- Can leverage SWFs
- Can leverage AS3 code
Weaknesses:
- No Timeline
- Not for designers
- May seem “cryptic” to traditional Flash developers
- Not visual
- Requires learning new MXML code
- Complex working environment
Summary:
Flex is meant for application development. The IDE lets developers work in a familiar environment, separate from the graphical tools designers are traditionally used to. Flex will give developers the tools they need to rapidly prototype application interfaces, with standardized tools and interface elements.
Flex is available as either Adobe Flex Builder 3.0
So which one should I choose?
Ultimately both Flash and Flex compile into the Flash SWF format. That means they are both capable of the same functionality and same graphical quality. The major difference is in the individual building the SWF, as well as the goal of the SWF. If your goal is for a design oriented SWF, then go with Flash. If you want an application, or a complex interactive interface then Flex will most likely be your tool of choise.
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