I was testing the new Flash CS4 prerelease. The IDE looks very tidy and you have several new Tools and export options. See the screenshots below:
Flash Player 10 beta (Astro) is finally available on Adobe Labs. It comes with amazing new filters and effects and GPU rendering that relieves the CPU and hopefully gives a massive performance boost for 3D engines, apps and videos.
3D Effects - Easily transform and animate any display object through 3D space while retaining full interactivity. Fast, lightweight, and native 3D effects make motion that was previously reserved for expert users available to everyone. Complex effects are simple with APIs that extend what you already know.
Custom Filters and Effects - Create and share your own portable filters, blend modes, and fills using Adobe Pixel Bender™, the same technology used for many After Effects CS3 filters. Shaders in Flash Player are about 1KB and can be scripted and animated at runtime.
Advanced Text Layout - A new, highly flexible text layout engine, co-existing with TextField, enables innovation in creating new text controls by providing low-level access to text offering right-to-left and vertical text layout, plus support for typographic elements like ligatures.
Enhanced Drawing API - Runtime drawing is easier and more powerful with re-styleable properties, 3D APIs, and a new way of drawing sophisticated shapes without having to code them line by line.
Visual Performance Improvements – Applications and videos will run smoother and faster with expanded use of hardware acceleration. By moving several visual processing tasks to the video card, the CPU is free to do more.
Read this excellent article about GPU acceleration in Flash Player 10:
http://www.kaourantin.net/2008/05/what-does-gpu-acceleration-mean.html
How to compile for Flash Player 10 Astro:
http://etc.joshspoon.com/2008/05/16/how-to-compile-and-examples-for-flash-player-10-or-astro-beta/
http://www.gotoandlearn.com/player.php?id=73
Since the release of ActionScript 3.0 and Flash Player 9, memory management (garbage collection) is a very serious topic for Flash developers.
Here is a simple helper class i use in my projects to be always aware of the memory usage of the Flash Player.
Just create a file MemoryControl.as, save it in the root folder of your project and add the following code:
The developers of Papervision3d have released a final version of Paperworld3d. It combines extended features of Papervision3d and a backend created in cooperation with the developers of the Red5 Server, an open source server software that fulfil functionality of the Flash Media Server, like video/audio streaming and multiuser applications and games. With Paperworld3d you can create all these applications and games with the power of the 3d functionality of Papervision3d.
It is out of question that we can expect a new dimension in Flash games and flash driven websites the next time, full of multiuser features to increase the the user experience and to bind customers to commercial product websites. Amazing!
Visit the official website of Paperworld3d or download the source at http://code.google.com/p/paperworld3d/
Today, Adobe has released the first Flex 3 and Adobe AIR desktop version for Linux. This release is in alpha 3 state and has been delayed, because of a missing major update for Flash Player 9 under Linux. The Alpha is ready to download at Adobe Labs
Corban Baxter writes on his blog how easy it is to enable Google Analytics page tracking in Flash websites with just a few lines. Just write a small method submitting your current section (trackPage(/home/page1). In this method just referencing the JS function pageTracker._trackPageview(), referencing the current path of your website. Very easy done. Have a look at Corban´s blog
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 | /// GOOGLE ANALYTICS SIMPLE TRACKING /// Script by: corban baxter import flash.external.ExternalInterface; function gaTracking(page) { ExternalInterface.call("pageTracker._trackPageview", page); } //end |
call:
1 | gaTracking("/flash/home"); //sends event to google's analytics system |
Microsoft licensed Flash Lite 3 and Adobe Reader LE for the operating system Windows Mobile. That is a great news for all Flash Lite developers and users with a mobile which runs on Windows Mobile. Processors on mobile machines are getting faster, so hopefully in the future we can expect a lot of cool applications including Flash video on this platform. Currently Flash Lite has a growth of 150 percent per year. I think this news should encourage Apple to bring Flash Late to the iPhone.
Yesterday the guys at deconcept released SWFObject 2.0 and moved the entire project to google code.
SWFObject 2.0 now offers embedding Flash content and alternative content using standards compliant markup (static publishing). The old method from version 1.5, to embed your Flash content using JavaScript is still part of the package of course. In my eyes, it is still the same way to do that except that you dont have to create an instance of the class first and a change in calling the method that writes the Flash content (swfobject.embedSWF()), as shown in the example below.
The documentation can be found here. The project now comes with a handy code generator consisting of a web form that let you enter all relevant data for your flash website.
Obviously, YouTube is going to change the video codec to the new H.264 codec, which allows users to watch videos in high definition, a huge quality improvement. Watch a sample video below.
To test the video in fullscreen mode and to see the modified player interface, click the link:
