Wow is all I can say, this is just an incredible piece of software. You can check it out at http://www.photoshop.com/express/ I would love to see an api for this so you can access your images. Anyway AWESOME JOB ADOBE!!
Wow is this some surprising news. Flash CS4 may be moving from a binary source (aka FLA) to a more open source format called XFL. It sounds much like a jar file (zip) where everything is packaged into one file with a manifest or xml file that describes the content contained in the file like sounds, images, etc. There are many, many welcome advantages to this approach. One approach is that anyone could be able to create an swf through command line just like Flex. Another advantage would possibly be in the editing of an image in Photoshop and not disturbing the time line or other embedded assets. The community would be able to build better tools instead of relying on jsfl scripts. I’m thinking serious Ant tasks here. Anyway I am really liking this idea. Awesome job Adobe!!
So Mix 08 is this week and the rumor mill is flying around an off line version of Silverlight much like Adobe AIR. Technically, Silverlight 2.0 is closer to the desktop version of WPF so the possibility is there. Ryan Stewart in this article talks about the possibility of SQLite being in an off line version which is a bit silly. Maybe Access Lite? 
I don’t know, but I don’t think SQLite is going to even be considered. Personally I don’t think Microsoft has put any weight behind an offline version yet. I think they’re so busy trying to catch up to Flash/Flex and the toolsets that they’re just not ready for an off line version yet. Probably next year, but not this one.
Ryan Stewart has an article on RIA predictions for 2008. Most are pretty good, I mean, this is coming from an Adobe insider and all. I’m not to sure about the whole Apple RIA deal. Apple needs a major overhaul of their software platform in general. The .NET platform really blows Apple clean out of the water and its starting to show in Microsoft’s overall growth. If Apple doesn’t pull up soon, the XBOX 360/Zune space is going to shut the door on the AppleTV/iPod, and you bet that Microsoft is on their butts big time. And one thing is exceptionally true, Adobe is underestimating Microsoft. I personally know Microsoft is revamping their Expression suite big time, they were pretty upset about the first version and are taking the gung ho, take no prisoners approach to the next release. Not saying that the first version isn’t impressive, but its unusable compared to Adobe’s tools. One thing is absolutely for sure, we’re gonna hear and see some major movement in the RIA space from Adobe and Microsoft, because after all its the future of the web.
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!!
I’ve always been fond of Eclipse for its incredible community. And I can’t say enough about Adobe’s move to the Eclipse platform with FlexBuilder. The Flash IDE has always been locked into this schizophrenic designer vs. developer experience. Breeding alot of interactive devigners. But I think its safe to say that we can finally split the roles back to designers and developers. Flash being the animation designers and Eclipse being the development environment. And maybe that’s what Adobe wants. Maybe Thermo will become the Interaction Designers IDE of choice and Flash will become the animators IDE. But for now, with that in mind, I’ve setup my environment in FlexBuilder/Eclipse and I just wanted to provide you all with some great tools I’ve come across over the years to facilitate a great coding experience in Flex.
So there are two forms of FlexBuilder right now, 2.0 and the beta 3.0. Both are using two seperate versions of Eclipse which is very important to how you setup your environment and what plugins and features you can use. First off is FlexBuilder 2 which comes bundled with Eclipse 3.2. To keep things kosher, it may be important for you now to just download the FlexBuilder 2 with Eclipse included because now the Eclipse environment is already in Eclipse 3.3 Europa and unsupported by Flex 2.0. Some of the plugins I’ll refer to that you can add to Eclipse are already included in Europa and you may not want to install them in Eclipse 3.2.
I’ll add the update manager links next to the websites. The update manager, for those of you not familiar, is the best way to install plugins for Eclipse. If you go to help, software updates, find new features to install. You can add a remote site, give it a name like Aptana Updates, add the link to the update manager, and it will install the latest updates for that plugin. For those links that you need to go to the website and perform a standard download, you can add a local site and point it to your local directory. I’d keep them all in a lib folder outside of Eclipse. And my best adivce is to refrain from dragging and dropping the plugins and features into Eclipse as much as possible. It will definitely break at some point and you’ll be cursing for hours. Believe me
So here are my plugins of choice:
Aptana : Update Manager Aptana is probably the best plugin out there for web development. Its seriously important to start here because it includes coding support for html, css, js, debugging support for js and ftp. Everything a web developer would want to start out with.
XMLBuddy : Xml buddy is one of the best freebees out their for xml support. If you’re hardcore like I am, you’ll want to jump right into Oxygen but it will cost ya. If not another tool I recommend is the XPath plugin below.
XPath Developer : Update Manager Comes with a slew of other great plugins, Multi clipboard for copy and paste craziness, QuickREx which is a great little regex tester much like Xpath dev, and tinyHTML which provides itty bitty html formatting.
JDT Java Development Tools, if you’re downloading FlexBuilder 2 you should download this to get Ant Support. Downloading is a bit different though, go to the Eclipse.org updates, which should already be added to FlexBuilder 2 and select the jdt option.
Subclipse : Update Manager Subversion is definitely the one and only cvs system out there and a great way to manage the repo.
FDT 3.0 : Update Manager For those of you totally interested in FDT I’m going to provide a link but 3.0 is still a little weird and buggy to me as far as AS3 is concerned. Plus the fact that it doesn’t support AS3 debugging yet is a show stopper for me.
FMS : Flash Media Server Editor, if you’re working with the Media Server this plugin is a no brainer and highly recommended.
So here’s a great list of tools that you’ll want to pickup. As far as Europa goes and Flex Beta 3, there are alot more great plugins for you to use that take advantage of the Eclipse Web Tools Project. These involve more of the scripting languages like php and ruby. But installing Aptana will give you alot of what you need. There are installation instructions on how to install other scripting language tools on the Aptana website and I’m just not going to get into them here to keep this post primarily Flash based. But when it comes to other languages there is ALOT more plugins out there.
If you have any other plugins that you like, go ahead and add a comment on the blog and I’ll post them up for others.
The second video down, but they’re all pretty good vids.
Adobe has just launched the Inspire Experience Design site to showcase the work of “90 experience-focused professionals” with “expertise in interaction, visual and motion design, user research, information architecture, engineering” and “backgrounds in architecture, education, mathematics, writing, and game design”, who are all “unified around the idea of creating great digital experiences”.
“We are obsessively focused on the quality of digital experiences for a reason: most digital experiences suck. Experience design doesn’t mean making something pretty. It means empowering a user, easing their burden or leveraging their skills. It means connecting people to the things they need, when they need them.
Experience design is born of the recognition that interaction is a process and not a static thing. Experience matters because what’s really important is how it makes you feel, think and respond. The world that we are creating digitally is complex and dynamic. The quality of the experiences that are enabled will determine how we all feel about living in that (this!) world.”
Adobe has released AIR Beta 2. This release tackles a number of issues and dramatically improves desktop integration. What’s new:
Full details of these changes can be found in the Developer FAQ.
Security Updates
Adobe spent a lot of time revamping the security model for AIR specifically breaking out security into two sandboxes to allow developers to better manage their security needs:
|
Capability |
AIR Application Sandbox |
AIR Classic sandbox |
|
Default access to AIR API’s? |
Yes |
No |
|
Access to functions written in Application Sandbox that use AIR APIs via SandboxBridge? |
N/A |
Yes |
|
Can load remote script? For example, <script src=“remote_url”></script> |
No |
Yes |
|
Can execute cross-domain requests (XHR)? |
Yes |
Yes |
|
Support for getting strings to code after load event?
|
No |
Yes |
|
Ajax frameworks will work without any changes? |
No |
Yes |
The AIR HTML Security FAQ goes into great detail about the rationale behind the changes and how they might effect AIR application development.
Important Links
Adobe AIR
http://labs.adobe.com/technologies/air/
Develop with Adobe AIR with HTML and JavaScript
http://labs.adobe.com/technologies/air/develop_ajax.html
Migration instructions (moving from Beta 1 to Beta 2)
http://labs.adobe.com/wiki/index.php/AIR:Migration
AIR SDK for Building Applications:
http://www.adobe.com/go/getairsdk
Sample Applications:
http://www.adobe.com/go/air_samples
AIR Dreamweaver CS3 extension
http://labs.adobe.com/wiki/index.php/AIR:Dreamweaver_CS3_Extension
Aptana plugin (beta 2 compatible)
http://www.aptana.com/air/