Digital Primates» adobe

Lots of new prereleases from adobe

tapper — Mon, 25 Oct 2010 15:40:30 +0000

Late last night adobe released several new betas on the labs.adobe.com site, including: • 64 bit Flash Player (Code Named “Square”) • Flex 4.5 SDK (Code Named “Hero”) • Flash Builder Next (Code Named “Burrito”) • Flash Catalyst Next (Coe Named “Panini”) Square is obviously very interesting, as more and more end users now have 64 bit machines, it is great that the flash player will now be able to leverage the full power of the underlying operating system. It seems that 64 bit players are now available for Windows, Mac and Linux. Hero is another great release, with Adobe continuing to move the flex sdk forward. In this release, many of the components which were not migrated to the spark architecture in the 4.0 release have now been completed, including the DataGrid, Form, and Image components. Even more interesting is the rework done to make to make Flex applications run well on mobile devices. Having done a few AIR for Android applications using AS3 without the flex framework, I look forward the increased productivity I can realize by leveraging flex on these devices as well. Burrito and Panini are both improved tools to allow developers and designers increased productivity with the new SDK. In addition to supporting the latest SDK, Burrito also includes a workflow to ease development of mobile applications, a series of coding improvements, such as the introduction of templates, metadata code hinting and more. All told, these new releases promise to push the flash platform forward, and increase the world of possibilities for those of us who develop for the platform.

What’s under your skin

tapper — Tue, 21 Sep 2010 13:52:42 +0000

At 360|Flex DC yesterday, I presented my “Whats under your skin” presentation, all about architecting components with skins and layouts. I had a great audience, who was very engaged and asked lots of pertinent questions.

For anyone interested, here are the slides. The code for the ShoppingList component can be found below from the download link. The code for the Clocks are proprietary, and can not be shared. Sorry. Download

Apple, Adobe, and all that nonsense

tapper — Fri, 09 Apr 2010 09:04:00 +0000

By now you have surely heard all the hullabaloo around Apple Adobe and iPhone/iPad development. Until recently, Apple’s position was understandable from a business perspective, in that, if they allowed Flash applications to run on the iPhone, iPhone customers could use free Flash applications over the web, and not have to buy them from the Apple store. While this position sucks for apples customers, they remain a loyal bunch, who continue to seek out new ways to tithe to their mothership. Adobe has been quietly pleading with Apple to reverse this position, but has been working on alternative ways of allowing developers to build applications which can be deployed to the Web, Desktop, or any Mobile device, including those by Apple. Chief among these efforts was the Creative Suite 5 Packager for iPhone which is scheduled for release in the next few days. Yesterday (4/8/2010) apple announced the iPhone OS4, and release a new set of Terms of Service, which amongst other things, explicitly forbids iPhone/iPad development with 3rd party tools (such as the CS5 packager mentioned above). This is clearly going to far. Its bad enough that developers who want to build apps for apple devices already need to pay $99 + 30% of all revenue to Apple. Now, they also need to use apples tools to build these applications. The reaction to this has been varied. The followers of the “Cult of Apple” see this, and everything else Steve Jobs does, as as good move, which will save humanity from itself. Adobe supporters have reacted with outrage, including (but not limited to) Jesse (TheFlashBum) Freeman calling on Adobe to stop developing software for MacOS. Oddly, many of the MacOS fans I know first switched to Apple from Windows because they despised Microsoft’s anti-competitive practices. Funny, of all the anti-competitive steps MS has ever taken have been much less harmful than those taken by Apple recently. Of course, Apple claims they won’t support flash because its not “open.” This is hilariously hypocritical, as Apple’s devices are the least open things out there. To write an iPhone application, you need to use approved development tools, get apples approval on the software you write, and sell it through apples store. Which of these things seems open to you? Did I mention that the Adobe opened the source code for the Flash Player, when they donated it to the Tamarin project (http://www.mozilla.org/projects/tamarin/). Strange how the closed can criticize the open for lack of openness, and be believed by so many. As I’m not a MacOS person, I have no Mac to burn in effigy, but instead of buying a new iPod, as I had planned, instead I picked up a ZuneHD. In short, if Apple wants to screw over their customers, I simply see that as between them and their customers, and can only react by not being a customer. However, I wonder where all the new iPhone apps will come from, after Apple is done alienating all the developers of the world.

I’ll be speaking at Adobe MAX again this year

tapper — Tue, 02 Jun 2009 10:06:00 +0000

For the 9th year of the last decade I’ll be speaking at Adobe MAX, being held this year in Los Angeles, between October 3rd and October 7th. This time, adobe has asked me to present two sessions, one an “Intro to Flex 4,” and the other a session on “How not to code Flex Applications.” You can find information on registration and everything else at max.adobe.com

If the schedule stands as planned, I’ll present my “How not to code” 10/6 at 3pm, and my “Intro to Flex 4″ 10/5 at 11:30am

In case you are wondering, here is what I have spoken on in years past…

2009 – Los Angeles – How Not To Code Flex, Intro to Flex 4
2008 – San Francisco – Intro to Flex 3
2007 – Chicago – Intro to Adobe AIR / Building Desktop applications with HTML and AIR
2006 – Las Vegas – Getting Started with Flex Development
2005 – Anaheim – Creating Better Performing Flex Applications
2004 – New Orleans – Using ColdFusion to Power Flex and Flash Applications
2003 – Salt Lake City – XML in ColdFusion / Building Components in Flash
2002 – Orlando – Styling a Flash Application
2001 – Orlando – Did not speak
2000 – Washington DC – Planning a Spectra Application

How not to code Flex Applications

tapper — Tue, 19 May 2009 12:05:00 +0000

How Not To Code Flex Applications

View more presentations from jefftapper.

Download

Flex Camp 360 NJ

tapper — Tue, 07 Oct 2008 16:10:00 +0000

File this under the better late than never…

On September 26 and 27th, the folks who bring you Flex 360, put on a 2 day "Flex Camp" in New Jersery, which went over extremely well. I was presenting on Testing with Fluint (formerly known as DPUint). Of course, I promised my slides and materials would be up on here before the end of the weekend. Well, realizing its over a week later, I'm finally getting them uploaded now.

So, if you were one of the many asking for those materials, here they are.

slides
source code

You can stop waiting, its been released.

tapper — Wed, 09 Apr 2008 16:04:00 +0000

I’m a bit late in releasing this news, but our “Flex 3 Training from the source book” was released last week, and is now available from our publisher, as well as the major online bookstores such as Amazon, and Barnes and Noble. Speaking of Amazon, we are currently the #843 best selling of all their books, #15 in the Computers and Internet / Software category, and #8 in Computers and Internet / Programming. Thanks to all of you who have bought our book, and pushed the sales ranks so high. Anyhow, I know folks have been asking me for months when this book would finally be released, and the answer is, last week. Enjoy.

CFUnited Europe, AJAXWorld, and more conference stuff…

tapper — Tue, 04 Mar 2008 02:03:00 +0000

Next week I'm off to London to speak at CFUnited Europe, and the following week, I'll be speaking at AJAX World East. In both places, I'll be speaking about the joy that is Flex 3 in all its forms. The CFUnited talk is more focused on how Flex can improve the lives of CF Developers, while the AJAX World one is more focused on how Flex can help RIA developers increase their real world Retursn On Investment from RIA's. On another note, CFUnited has just released the session schedule for their Washington DC Conference in June, and rumor is that the session schedule for WebManiacs should be available shortly.

My Speaking Engagements for the first half of 2008

tapper — Tue, 22 Jan 2008 07:01:00 +0000

1/18 – Flex Camp Chicago

1/24 – Flex Camp Omaha

2/24-2/27 – Flex 360 Atlanta

3/12-3/13 – CFUnited Europe

5/1-5/4 – CF.Objective()

5/19-5/23 – WebManiacs

6/25-6/28 – CFUnited

H.264 Support in FlashPlayer

tapper — Wed, 22 Aug 2007 06:08:00 +0000

I missed it yesterday, when it was announced, but Adobe has now announced support for H.264 (also know as MPEG4) in an upcoming version of the flash player. H.264 is the same standard which is used by BluRay and HD-DVD — the ability to have this type of video in our web applications is absolutly huge. Remember, not that long ago, Adobe announced plans for the Adobe Media Player (AMP), as a desktop application which was built with AIR and Flash — now, AMP will be able to use H.264 as well as FLV for its video content.