Flash The Ripper

Kevin Hoyt from Adobe and Sam Stokes from Microsoft will have a debates on technologies, platforms and future today, 12 February 2009, 7:00 PM (PST/GMT +8), in the Bronco Student Center (Ursa Minor) at California State Polytechnic University in Pomona. Microsoft and Adobe will demonstrate their evidences of domination. Adobe, who gave the world Photoshop, Flash, Flex, Dreamweaver and AfterEffects, engage developers to create cross-platform media prodigies online as well as a desktop applications, being able to run with or without the internet connection, which is possible with Adobe Integrated Runtime, or just AIR. Microsoft gives developers the opportunity of creation online applications which are full of media and animation with Silverlight and power of C#. Interesting.

Debates will be translated online in two options:

1. For users who have got a mid-bandwidth channel, higher quality.
2. For users with low-bandwidth, lower quality.

At the moment, a nice ballet is translated there, with interruptions sometimes.

By the way, Kevin Hoyt recently published an useful AIR application with sources, which itself is a set of 75 samples of JavaScript AIR applications with centralized launch interface. It worth looking inside, especially when you know how much power is in the JavaScript frameworks like ExtJS, which embraces the AIR too.

This works like magic – now Flash Developers can easily create AIR applications on their own. Lee Brimelow appeared in the Adobe TV show where he has shown the process of creation of the simple AIR application using solely Adobe Flash CS3 IDE. So, here’s the full recording of this show:

Short and useful tutorial. I just emphasize the moment of enabling AIR development in your copy of Flash CS3 IDE. In order to get the full pack of joy, you just have to make sure that you have installed all necessary updates from Adobe in the following order (sequence can’t be changed: each next item strongly depends on the previous one):

1. Adobe Flash Player Update for Flash CS3 Professional (9.0.2)
2. Adobe AIR Update for Flash CS3 Professional (9.0.3)
3. Adobe Air 1.1 Update for Flash CS3 Professional

After installing these updates you’ll get the full AIR features including multilingual applications support. In the ‘Create New’ section of the Welcome Screen, you’ll see a new item named ‘Flash File (Adobe AIR). In Commands menu, two new items will appear:

Fig 1. Screen shot from the Lee’s show. AIR File creation options within Flash CS3 IDE.

Magic, magic!

The contest for the best new name for AIRApps is finished. Congrats to the Mr. Mike Hays of SOHOS Network ??” he got the Adobe CS3 Master Collection as a prize! He suggested the best new name which is O₂apps.com (I shouldn’t have propose O₂Apps.net! )

So, AIRApps.net is now O₂Apps.com. Go to the new domain, feel comfortable: all your credentials and data are kept the same excluding the domain name. The site design is updated: it was red with bit of jpeg artifacts, it is blue and clear now.

I wonder how easy they transfered the whole big and complex site to the new domain. This means that system design was close to perfect, right?

I hate it, but it’s true.

I can’t interpret this Twit from Samuel Agesilas Pastel in other way: Saffron AIR UML goes live tomorrow!

Here’s the Google 3D Maps with added motion blur (experimental) and plain 2d mode. Installer and Sources are available.

Screen shot (click to install)

Now I’m thinking about upgrading sources to the fresh release of Papervision3D which has 40% performance growth.

Download the latest version here: Google 3D Map Adobe AIR Application.

I’ve updated the sources and installation file of the Google 3D Map Application made with Adobe Apollo to the latest Adobe AIR version. People who requested it — you can now download the sources and Google 3D Map 0.3 AIR Installation File.

New features:

- Map scrolling made much more smooth. Just smooth.
- Mouse wheel support: wheel to zoom camera in/out, Shift + Wheel to move camera above the horizon.
- Now uses native AIR chrome.

To run this version Google 3D Map, you need Adobe AIR Runtime Beta 1 – latest release at the moment.

Click screenshot to download / install app:

Please note: to compile the project from sources, you need the Papervision3D library. I’ve included its classes in the sources, but you surely should check out the latest version of this great library to get a taste of cute flash 3d programming.

Some details about migration from Adobe Apollo Alpha to Adobe AIR Beta 1: the main differences in application structure is renamed application container: now you use <mx:WindowedApplication> instead of <mx:ApolloApplication>. Also, there’s some changes in the application.xml file. Read the good tips on migrating here: Re: Apollo to AIR migration topic at the codeapollo.com forums.

Download the latest version here: Google 3D Map Adobe AIR Application.