For those using the SVN repository for the Flex SDK you’ll notice in the latest build 3.1.0.1782 there’s a new folder: take a look in branch 3.0.x /frameworks/libs/player/10/ and you’ll find a playerglobals.swc updated for the new Version 10 of the Flash Player. In the folder branch 3.0.x /in/player/ there is still only the Version 9 player installs though.

This makes me hope that the tooling for Flash Player 10 is not too far away. Hopefully we’ll be getting an updated LiveDocs link soon.

updated 16:07 15th April 2008

Looks like things are moving regarding the integration of the version 10 Flash Player and the Flex SDK. The Player 10 Beta (10 r218) install files are now in the repository.

Commits –

[svn] 1733: integrate player 10 r218 into the trunk

Revision: 1733

Date: 2008-05-15 07:43:18 -0700 (Thu, 15 May 2008)

Log Message:

———–

integrate player 10 r218 into the trunk

Modified Paths:

————–

flex/sdk/trunk/in/player/lnx/flashplayer.tar.gz

flex/sdk/trunk/in/player/lnx/libflashplayer.so.tar.gz

flex/sdk/trunk/in/player/mac/Flash Player.app.zip

flex/sdk/trunk/in/player/win/FlashPlayer.exe

Added Paths:

———–

flex/sdk/trunk/frameworks/libs/player/10/

flex/sdk/trunk/frameworks/libs/player/10/playerglobal.swc

updated 18:20 16th April 2008

Here’s a little info on how to configure Flex Builder 3 to target Adobe Flash Player 10 Beta

Create a new application project. Edit the project properties:

• Open the “Flex Build Path” tab.
  • Expand “Flex 3″, select “playerglobal.swc” and click “Remove”.
  • Note the directory path in “Flex 3 - ” (on my system it’s /Applications/Adobe Flex Builder 3 Plug-in/sdks/3.0.0).
  • Click “Add SWC” and navigate to the that path, and then deeper into frameworks/libs/player/10, select playerglobal.swc.
  • Expand “playerglobal.swc”, double-click “Link Type” and change it to “External”.
• Open the “Flex Compiler” tab
  • In “HTML wrapper”, change the “Require Flash Player version” to 10.0.0.

The only API information I’ve managed to find so far is a little article on senocular.com it takes you through some of the new features in the Drawing API. I’m not sure who this was written by, whether it’s a Flash Player dev team member or maybe just someone involved with the pre-release program, so I can’t vouch for the source of the information in the article. Either way it’s worth a read while we wait for the updated liveDocs and the official tooling to be made available.

updated 12:57 17th April 2008

There’s a little more info on the new Flash Player 10 API over at Kaourantin.net. There are a couple of posts by Tinic Uro who’s an engineer on the Player team.

Flash Player 10 - Beta Download

Flash Player 10 - Demos & Videos

"Adobe® Flash® Player 10 software is now available in beta on Adobe Labs with new expressive features for interactive designers and developers to build richer and more immersive Web experiences. Adobe Flash Player 10 beta, code named “Astro,” builds on the capabilities of the world’s most pervasive application runtime with new support for custom filters and effects, native 3D transformation and animation, extensible rich text layout and GPU hardware acceleration — helping to enable a new level of cinematic experiences across multiple browsers and operating systems."

Adobe - Flash Player 10 - Press Release

I’d write more about this beta release - but I’m too busy trying it out. Really is top stuff!

go take a read about the new features over on labs.

- added 13:30 15th April 2008

Having played with the demos and tried out all my old sites everything is looking really good. As is the norm with Flash Player Beta releases this version is really for legacy testing and to give us an early view of some of the new feature set. This is all well and good, but until a developer version is made available, with a de-bug player, API documentation and a compiler with SWF10 support there’s not much we can do other than look. Hopefully the SWF10 tooling will be made available soon and then we can really see what’s possible. Until then, seeing as I can’t verify the new features in any way other than watching demos, I’ll post a list of changes directly as quoted from Adobe Labs. Just click the links for details.

Features and Enhancements

• Creative Expression
  • Custom Filters and Effects
  • 3D Effects
  • New Text Engine
  • Text Layout Components
  • Drawing API Enhancements
  • Colour Management
• Visual Performance Improvements
  • GPU Compositing
  • GPU Blitting
  • Anti-Aliasing Engine (Saffron 3.1)
  • Vector Data Type
• Rich Media
  • Dynamic Streaming
  • RTMFP (Real Time Media Flow Protocol)
  • Speex Audio Codec
• Other Community Requested Enhancements
  • File Reference
  • Dynamic Sound Generation
  • Large Bitmap Support
  • Context Menu
  • GB18030 Compliance
  • Ubuntu OS Support

There are also a few videos for you to have a look at. They feature Justin Everett-Church, a Sr. Product Manager for the Flash Player team talking briefly about some of Flash Player 10’s main enhancements.

• Watch Justin Everett-Church, Sr. Product Manager for Flash Player, demonstrate 3D effects
• Watch Justin Everett-Church demonstrate custom filters and effects
• Watch Justin Everett-Church demonstrate advanced text layout
• Watch Justin Everett-Church talk about the enhanced Drawing API
• Watch Justin Everett-Church talk about the visual performance improvements

Lastly, here’s a sight I’ve been waiting to see for a while.

In today’s development environments we all pretty much all use the same software to accomplish the same tasks. The large software companies do a fantastic job of giving us all the tools we need. You can be fairly certain that you could walk into any design or development studio and find the same set of applications running that you use yourself. The major software applications we use are tried and tested standards and I don’t expect to be changing my application set ever (apart from the constant upgrades of course). There is however one type of application where everyone has their own favourites, the un-sung hero’s of the software world - utilities. Those small, inexpensive, often free, programs that you turn to again and again. These tiny applications can end up saving you hours of work and function in ways that are totally unique. I thought I’d give you a list of the five small applications I just couldn’t live without.

I’ve just copied the blurb from the utilities download site, because in all honesty I’m just too busy to be writing here at all today, So you’ll have to forgive the number of exclamation marks, and the number of times it says ‘and much much more’ but you get the idea.

(all running on Vista 64)

1. Bulk rename utility

• “Bulk Rename Utility is a utility which allows you to easily rename files and directories, based upon extremely flexible criteria. Add date-stamps, replace numbers, insert strings, convert case, add auto-numbers, process folders and subfolders plus loads more! ” I’ve started to use this a little less these days as the Bulk Rename Function inside of Bridge is getting better all the time.

2. Tree Copy

• “Have you ever needed to copy a directory structure without copying the files? TreeCopy now makes this possible. Our small program will allow you to select the “from directory” and “into directory”, and it will proceed to copy ONLY the directory structure. TreeCopy is a free download, so try it out. Click here to download TreeCopy v1.11 . “

3. Directory Lister Pro

• A folder and file structure print out and list utility. Output to printer, text file, or HTML.

4. Service Capture

• “ServiceCapture captures all HTTP traffic sent from your browser or IDE. It is designed to help Rich Internet Application(RIA) developers in the debugging, analysis, and testing of their applications.”

5. Directory Opus

• “Directory Opus goes beyond the simple file manager metaphor, and offers you a complete replacement for Windows Explorer and many other utility programs for handling FTP, ZIP, viewing files and images, running sideshows and more. It provides you with all this within a user-friendly and fully-configurable environment within which you can access and manage your important data with a minimum of effort. Harness the power of your computer like never before!”

Well, that’s my top Five. Take a look at them, I couldn’t begin to tell you how useful they’ve been to me over the years. I’d really love to hear what your favourite utilities are, so leave a comment and let me know.

In another major move towards opening up the Flash format specifications Adobe today announced ‘The Open Screen Project’.

This is massive news in my opinion and shows a real intent on behalf of Adobe toward the goal of write it once development. They’ve removed the licensing restrictions on  both the SWF and FLV\F4V file formats and already have full file specifications PDF’s ready to download.

• SWF Information & specification document.
• FLV/F4V Information & specification document.

With many content providers now starting to understand that a reversal of the traditional “PC -> device -> Mobile” workflow, although seemingly counter intuitive (to me initially at least), can have real benefits to applications across the whole platform specification map. Design your application first to function well and intact on the lowest common denominator then ’spec it up’ towards the most powerful (in most cases this being the desktop). I think it’s with this kind of thinking in mind that Adobe has taken this step, which can only help ensure the widest possible adoption of the Flash VM. Good news all round. Although Adobe are the driving force behind this move they have already pulled in some rather impressive project partners/supporters.

Here’s the news straight from the horses mouth:

The Open Screen Project is dedicated to driving consistent rich internet experiences across televisions, personal computers, mobile devices, and consumer electronics. The Open Screen Project is supported by technology leaders, including Adobe, ARM, Chunghwa Telecom, Cisco, Intel, LG Electronics Inc., Marvell, Motorola, Nokia, NTT DoCoMo, Qualcomm, Samsung Electronics Co., Sony Ericsson, Toshiba and Verizon Wireless, and leading content providers, including BBC, MTV Networks, and NBC Universal, who want to deliver rich web and video experiences, live and on-demand across a variety of devices.

The Open Screen Project is working to enable a consistent runtime environment – taking advantage of Adobe® Flash® Player and, in the future, Adobe AIR™ - that will remove barriers for developers and designers as they publish content and applications across desktops and consumer devices, including phones, mobile internet devices (MIDs), and set top boxes. The Open Screen Project will address potential technology fragmentation by allowing the runtime technology to be updated seamlessly over the air on mobile devices. The consistent runtime environment will provide optimal performance across a variety of operating systems and devices, and ultimately provide the best experience to consumers.

Specifically, this work will include:

• Removing restrictions on use of the SWF and FLV/F4V specifications
• Publishing the device porting layer APIs for Adobe Flash Player
• Publishing the Adobe Flash® Cast™ protocol and the AMF protocol for robust data services
• Removing licensing fees – making next major releases of Adobe Flash Player and Adobe AIR for devices free

 Adobe Open Screen Project Press Statment (pdf)

The cairngorm flex micro-architecture extensions from Universal Minds have beeen updated. For anyone using cairngorm I highly recommend taking a look at them.

The read-only SVN repository URL:

http://flexcairngorm.googlecode.com/svn/trunk/

Since the original release of version 1 of the Universal Mind Cairngorm Extensions, several developers have provided feedback regarding issues with some functionality.
Below is a summary list of latest changes to the UM CairngormExtensions library:

UMEvent

• now uses IResponder interfaces instead of the Callbacks class.

EventGenerator

• Now extends from EventDispatcher

• Support for use of alternate broadcast mechnanism; with default of built-in CairngormEventDispatcher

• Dependencies on IResponder instead of Callbacks

• Now correctly overrides EventGenerator responders during dispatch();

• Added more intuitive start() method which is a wrapper to dispatch();

• Fixed support for Synchronous events and responder notifications

• Support for caching and notification of individual event responders; now event instances may also have optional responders for that event instance

• The EventGenerator now supports generator-level responders and event-instance responders

• Support for generator/broadcasting of non-UMEvents or non-Cairngorm events; now events only need to have a ‘responder’ or ‘callbacks’ property to be used/broadcast within the generator.

• Preserves summary conditions when event generator finishes

• If the “default” dispatcher CairngormEventDispatcher is used, event class types must be CairngormEvent subclasses now an runtime exception is thrown to notify usage of invalid event classes with the default dispatcher       

• Better support for use as MXML object via implements IMXMLObject

• announceFail and announceDone now annouce ID of the event generator (for tracking)

• announceDone() fixed to dispatchEvent only when an announcer has not been specified this allows EventGenerators to be nested.

Command class

• Now uses EventUtils.as to retrieve event responder; support for “callbacks” or “responder” IResponder properties

• Commands will now support non-UMEvents (as long as they are CairngormEvent subclasses)

AnnounceFaultEvent class

• Now extends CairngormEvent

EventUtils.as

• Improved null checking

Renamed swc

• To “CairngormExtensions.swc”

• This library still has the Cairngorm [non-enterprise version] 2.2.1 source code included

• Rebuilt CairngormExtensions library.

SVN repository

• now has “unitTesting” folder for FlexUnit testing of the CairngormExtensions code.

EventGeneratorTest

• now extensively tests asynchronous and synchronous events broadcasting with the EventGenerator

I encourage anyone who is using the UM CaingormExtensions (which includes non-enterprise Cairngorm v2.2.1 code) to upgrade to this latest version from the open source site at Google. I also encourage all users to join the Flex Cairngorm Extensions Google Group. This discussion group will be used by the Cairngorm Extension SVN to notify users of library changes, fixes, and enhancments. It can also serve as a forum for discussing aberrant behaviour and missing functionality.

Kevin Lynch , a chief technology officer at Adobe takes a wonder through the AIR dev team offices for a chat about the road to version 1.0 

Adobe AIR dev team.

Abobe.tv

Ryan Stewart, Platform Evangelist for Adobe & connected to the Thermo development team has been dripping out some interesting titbits of information about Adobes new Designer/Developer workflow solution.

Take a look over a Adobe Labs to find out more.

 NJ on Thermo

OK, enough’s enough, I’m taking some time out from working to write something here. I suppose I shouldn’t complain. Not having any time to give to my own sites is only a sign of how well things are going. As a small development company our biggest worry was always, “Are we going to get enough work?’. Now the only thing I tend to worry about is, “Am I getting enough sleep, have I remembered to eat, when was the last time I looked out of the window and away from the screen?”. Anyway, here I am, and hello.

Firstly some introductions.

I’m Glenn, I’ve been programming since I first discovered that ‘Poke 710,0′ made that Atari’s screen go black; oh boy, I just realised that’s 26 years ago! I followed a path that I assume is familiar to many of you. Starting programming for pleasure, then getting some bits ‘n pieces published in magazines, then onto games development (in the days when it didn’t cost a few million quid and take a staff of 100 to produce something), a short dabble writing business applications, then onto the web with HTMhelL, and now back programming for real again writing web enabled or web hosted applications.

Along the way I’ve passed through more languages than you can shake a stick at; Basic, C, C++, Assembler (always a favourite), PHP,  Java, JavaScript, and so on and so on. As someone used to having fine control over his work and code, and the kind of obsession for elegance that comes from years as an Assembly programmer, I HATED, and don’t underestimate just how much I hated HTML. Don’t get me wrong, It’s changed the world, I just don’t like scripting.

Now though I’m a happy chappie; I write Flex app’s for a living.

Bloggity blog blog blog.

My intention with this site was as a chronicle of the development of the largest Flex application we’ve been contracted for to date. The reality however is that time is not on my side. I will however try to get back here as often as possible. I’ve lots of neat custom components, ActionScript libraries, Cairngorm extensions, tip, tricks, and do-dads that I want to share. So keep an eye open and pop back to visit me from time to time and we’ll see how we all get on.

The moral.

Plumbers always have dripping taps!

Next…

I’ll be posting a run-down of what our current project is all about, and why Adobe Flex was in our mind the only answer.

PS

for my friends across the pond for ‘taps’ read ‘faucets’.  (when will you guys learn it really is our English, the clue is in the name, write out 1000 times “the colour grey”) - see you soon

Hi all,

So I’ve finally got around to setting up a blog site, all I need to do now is fill it with words!

Over the next few days I’ll be adding plenty of interesting Flex & actionScript 3 stuff, loads of free components, code libraries, in-depth features on using Flex & Cairngorm You’ll also be able to follow my progress as I develop Flex & actionScript applications for companies all over the UK .

So, I hope to be seeing, and talking to you all soon.

Cheers,

Glenn