journal

Finally!! I can add my TODOs!! Big props to this guy

The new Edge mag is out and has alot of interesting Flash stuff

Join the Facebook cause Flash Player for iPhone and spread the word!
Watch the presentation here.

I finally got a Chumby!! For all of you that don’t know, Chumbys are a little nerf football type of gadget with a touchscreen, wi-fi, internet appliance that plays flash lite 3 apps exclusively.  I can’t wait to start developing stuff for this thing.  Its completely open source and welcomes software and hardware developers to help build on it.  I never thought I’d be so excited about a glorified alarm clock.  Pick up one or check it out @ chumby.com

Special thanks to my girl for getting it for me!!

Awwww ya!

• Faster!
• ShadeMaterials
• Shaders
• ASCollada (animation support)
• Frustrum Culling
• Multiple Viewports (3d editor anyone?)
• Render to Scene
• and more!

Grab the latest copy on the SVN!!
http://papervision3d.googlecode.com/svn/trunk/branches/GreatWhite

The Adobe Thermo team came out to talk to us this morning. I’d just like to extend our thanks to them and Adobe for coming out and taking the time to understand our project development cycle. Its really great to share ideas with the product teams at companies like Adobe. We’re glad to see you’re listening! Keep up the great work, we can’t wait to use Thermo!!

One of the craziest trends I witnessed in the web development world was that the end user doesn’t matter.  It’s usually, whatever the client wants, whatever budget allows, whatever new feature the programmer can add, etc.  No one ever said, well how would the end user feel.  Mainly because no one represented the end user in the slew of meetings and planning sessions.  Microsoft specifically was notorious for this.  Microsoft had a company full of programmers and not a designer in sight.  And as it grew, the programmers were in command of the ship and had steered it so far off course its now a serious internal problem to get it back.  Apple on the other hand, has designers at the helm and its success is showing.

So Microsoft decided that when it was time to revamp their OS they hired a team of UX professionals.  But even the UX professionals that they hired couldn’t control the onslaught of features coming from all of the teams of the teams that make up the entirety of the Microsoft platform.  The designers even seem to be focused on the redesign and the look rather than the improvement of the experience.  The overall push to make an OS that was better than anything out there created a slew of features that bombarded the user and forced him/her to relearn and upgrade their computers compounding the general annoyance of just being ‘new’.

Instead of focusing on improving core tasks and productivity gains, Vista designers choose to insert eye candy in the form of Aero.  And Aero itself actually compounds the annoyance factor by degrading performance.  Operating systems in general should be lightweight and easy to manage.  Vista should have included better window and desktop management, not a redesigned window. 

The Office redesign compounded the problems even further.  The Ribbon interface was a big leap taken at the same time Vista was being released.  It forces you to relearn how Office works entirely which is a big deal for any business trying to roll out the product.  The first rule in UX design is that software applications should never need to be taught.  A caveman should know how to use it.

The overall performance in Vista is poor, boot times are still too long, basic file copying takes forever, Outlook freezes up and doesn’t respond.  These problems should have been addressed before hitting the market.  A big sloppy OS will not make it in a world a light unix based operating systems.

And the biggest complaint in the UX field is used more in Vista than in XP, dialogs.  Dialogs and message balloons are everywhere telling the user in cryptic technical terms that they’re idiots.  The biggest complaint comes from the User Account Control.  Everytime the OS accesses information that  isn’t a part of your access rights, a dialog asks you for permission.  The OS should know my permission.  Why is it asking me for permission?

So in general, if you make any form of software for computers, if you’re in the software development field in any aspect, always consider the user.  Always consult your UX pro for guidance.  Their is an incredible amount of research and best practices when it comes to UX design and the general understanding and psychology of the end users.  In the end, your users will appreciate the time and effort you took to help them accomplish their tasks quickly and easily.

Includes client side caching, MPEG4 video support, hardware scaling and mulitcore processor support.  More details here.

Note that their are some security and policy file changes that may affect your work, check them out here.

The new server features double performance, better pricing and a couple other features.

DRM

Streams are protected by a 120 bit encryption that is requested on an encrypted channel. It relies on a new RTMPE protocol which is much faster than the later RTMP protocol.  So encryped streams in FMS3 are faster than the FMS2 unencrypted streams.  It also doesn’t require an SSL certificate.

Performance

More than doubled performance, Adobe is also providing improved live video and live content switching so that if a flash lite app requests a stream the appropriate content is sent to it.

Read more here…

Adobe Product Manager Steven Heintz and Senior Principal Scientist Mark Anders provide a sneak peek at Thermo, code name for a product currently under development at Adobe.

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