What ECMAScript “Harmony” Means for Flash Developers

Posted on August 14, 2008 by ryanstewart

There has been a lot of good coverage about the announcement that the ECMAScript committee is going to stop working on ECMAScript 4 and instead focus on ECMAScript 3.1. And our developer community is rightly wondering what this means. In a couple of words, not much.

While ActionScript 3 was supposed to be an implementation of the ECMA 4 standard, it’ actually still based on ECMAScript 3 and will now be treated as an extension with some additional functionality. I think in a lot of ways this shows some of the difficulty in working with standards organizations. And Adobe will continue to track the progress of ECMA, but we’re not going to start removing namespaces and packages or changing ActionScript to comply with the “3.1″ version of ECMAScript. I’m sure we’ll have more news or transparency around the next version of ActionScript when it gets close, but we want to add functionality for our developers – not take it away. If anything, this gives us more freedom to incorporate your ideas and thoughts into the language while still being a part of the ECMA committee.

I think Adobe has done a lot of good things to help the evolution of ECMAScript into a powerful language for the web. When dealing with partners and committees, you don’t always get everything you want, but it is definitely in Adobe’s best interest to equip web developers (both JavaScript and ActionScript) with a robust, powerful programming language. We’re still going to work to make that happen.

Getting Ready for My 360 Flex Presentation in Style

Posted on August 14, 2008 by ryanstewart

I’m giving my Online/Offline Synchronization with Adobe AIR and LCDS presentation at 360Flex next week and I had a couple of things I wanted to finish on the presentation. But I’ve been staying with my parents and wanted to get in some Colorado backpacking. Luckily, the life of an Adobe evangelist is awesome. I’ve got my local CF server, Flex Builder, and a laptop, so I packed it with the rest of my stuff and when we got to camp I did a little backcountry coding.

Also, I’m pretty sure I’m going to look like a leprous raccoon for my presentation on Wednesday. I got really, really sunburned while I was wearing my sunglasses so I look ridiculous and it’s probably going to be peeling when I present. Apologies in advance.

I’m hoping to grab a bunch of videos of various Flex developers who are doing cool stuff at 360Flex so if you want to show of what you’re up to, send me an email at my shiny new Adobe email address – ryan@adobe.com.

Video Interview: Juan Sanchez on Degrafa

Posted on August 13, 2008 by ryanstewart

Degrafa is one of the more interesting open source projects in the Flex community. While visiting EffectiveUI in Denver I sat down and interviewed Juan Sanchez about the project. In the video Juan gives an overview of the project and also talks about the difference between Degrafa and FXG, Adobe’s declarative markup for graphics.

Some good Degrafa links:

Team members: Juan Sanchez, Jason Hawryluk, Greg Dove, Tom Gonzalez
Degrafa Google Group
Degrafa Screencast

Intro to Degrafa on InsideRIA

Gone Fishin’

Posted on August 12, 2008 by ryanstewart

Just a quick note that I’m going backpacking today and tomorrow so I won’t be in cell/email signal. We’re going to climb Wetterhorn Peak here in Colorado and I’ll be testing out the SPOT/Brightkite integration with my Brightkite account (if you want invites, let me know).

I’ve got a couple of cool video interviews that will be posted here while I’m gone, so luckily the blog won’t get too dusty. I apologize in advance for the email backlog.

Flash Player 10 Mac/Win/Linux Release Candidate Now Available

Posted on August 11, 2008 by ryanstewart

The Release Candidate build for Flash Player 10 on Linux (And every other platform) is now available for you to go grab and check out. A bunch of new things in this version:

Camera input works a whole lot better (V4L1 and V4L2 cameras both work; V4L2 cameras don’t peg the CPU anymore)
Software fullscreen performance is vastly improved
Faster, more stable windowless mode (but be sure to use very recent browser builds)
SSL now handled through NSS instead of flashsupport-OpenSSL alliance
White speckles are gone from video playback
Important stability fixes (fewer crashes)
Still not 64-bit native, just to get that out of the way

I continue to be happy about Adobe’s support for Linux. As more applications move into the browser with HTML or the Flash Player and to the desktop with AIR it makes it easier to switch. Mike Chambers just posted a really good screencast on how to get started with AIR on Linux.

The “War” Between Flash and HTML/Ajax

Posted on August 11, 2008 by ryanstewart

There is a pretty good rundown of the RIA space and HTML versus Flash/Silverlight on CNet today. If you read through the comments a lot of people trash the article for arguing Apples and Oranges which I think is an encouraging sign that we’ve come a long way. No matter how you slice it, HTML/Ajax and Flash are competitors in a sense. They do very different things but the “5 year convergence” for the technologies looks very similar I think. Frankly, companies like Google and the browsers that have bought into Ajax and HTML must be feeling a little bit frustrated at the speed of innovation that a company like Adobe can achieve with Flash. So there’s tension there. But I hope that we don’t ever get to the point where we have a “winner”.

Flash can do some great, great stuff as a platform. It goes beyond animation because from our platform we’ve built up an ecosystem of servers, tools, and services that enable things like real-time collaboration, powerful video streaming, and system integration. We’ve been able to do that because the Flash Player allows us to do some very, very cool stuff. I hope our direction as a company is to figure out how to get that to merge more into the HTML/JS world.

The first comment on Digg nails it on the head (aside from the last few sentances):

Firstly, HTML has to be in any of these regardless. HTML is the building blocks of any web page, regardless of the other technologies it uses.

We need to bring Flash and HTML/Ajax closer together. You absolutely should be able to reach inside of the Flash Player as a JavaScript developer and pull out some of the good bits that make the Flash experience so great. We shouldn’t force the “1 pixel SWF” or a sand-boxed Flex application. With AIR you get a glimpse of what that’s like. To me, that’s win-win for everyone. You get to use Flash for things at which it excels. You can tap into Adobe’s services, tools, and infrastructure, and we enhance the entire web – including the HTML/JS side.

Design an Awesome Flex Skin and win a MacBook Air (Plus Other Stuff)

Posted on August 10, 2008 by ryanstewart

Juan Sanchez and the crew are putting on the Skin to Win Challenge sponsored by EffectiveUI and Adobe. We want to see some really great themes and so Juan and crew decided that one of the best ways to do that was to give away great stuff for great skins. These skins are for Flex 3, so you can flex all the skinning muscle you already have and use some of the CS3 designer-developer workflow features. The prizes are pretty awesome:

(1) MacBook Air laptop with Solid State Drive (SSD)
(1) Ticket to Adobe MAX 2008 – Europe or North America
A feature on Adobe Developer Connection
(1) copy of Adobe Flex™ Builder™ 3 for Mac or Windows
(1) copy of Adobe Creative Suite® 3 Master Collection for Mac or Windows.

(1) Ticket to Adobe MAX 2008 – Europe or North America
(1) copy of Adobe Flex™ Builder™ 3 for Mac or Windows
(1) copy of Adobe Creative Suite® 3 Master Collection for Mac or Windows.

(1) copy of Adobe Flex™ Builder™ 3 for Mac or Windows
(1) copy of Adobe Creative Suite® 3 Web Premium for Mac or Windows.

The judges are also going to be giving away copies of Flex Builder 3 to people that submit cool skins. We’ve talked a lot about Flex 4 and “Thermo” but both of those are still a long way off. We’re trying to be very transparent and very early with both of them, so Flex 3 still has a lot of time left and it’s important to get some great skins to enhance the Flex 3 experience. Good luck with the contest!

8 Useful AIR Applications that Work in Linux

Posted on August 7, 2008 by ryanstewart

MakeUseOf.com posted a list of 8 AIR apps that work under the Linux alpha of Adobe AIR. There are a few features still missing in the alpha but the team is working on getting a full Linux version out in the near future. One of the engineers, Ashutosh Sharma, has a blog about the Linux version of AIR and he’s got a call for pre-release users out now if anyone is interested in helping to test the final version of AIR Linux.

Balsamiq AIR Application – $10,000 in Revenue in 6 Weeks

Posted on August 7, 2008 by ryanstewart

I missed this last week but Marshall Kirkpatrick has a blog post up about Balsamiq, a mockup creator tool that was built using AIR. the video (below) shows off a pretty slick little application with a nice UI (and I love the Quicksilver-style search). This is one of the reasons I think AIR absolutely changes the game. It makes it really, really easy to quickly build cross-patform desktop apps and in this case, with a little bit of work, one developer was able to make a chunk of change:

It’s a great story of a creative entrepreneur using new technology to address a key market need and finding a healthy number of customers willing to pay for software.

Ryan Stewart – Mountaineer Coding

Just an average guy trying to drink above average beer.

Monthly Archives: August 2008