Adobe completed its Acrobat 9 transition with the release of Adobe Reader 9. The free PDF viewer application can now view Flash content embedded in PDF documents, and offers substantial performance improvements compared to previous versions of Adobe Reader.
Version 9 also added new collaboration support, added PDF Portfolios support, improved PDF form support, updated the user interface, and more.
Adobe Reader 9 is available as a free download at the Adobe Web site.
The Adobe Media Player (AMP) finally launched with exciting content from CBS, MTV, PBS, Scripps, Universal Music and many more networks... Adobe demo'd this at Adobe Max 2007 and I've been using the betas for months...
"Adobe® Media Player software provides control and flexibility to view what you want, when you want — whether online or offline. You can queue up and download your favorite Internet TV content, track and download new episodes automatically, and manage your personal video library for viewing at your convenience."
Download Adobe Media Player.
Adobe released Flash Media Encoder version 2.5, defined as a software designed to enable you to capture live audio and video while streaming it in real time to Flash Media Server software or Flash Video Streaming Service (FVSS).
It now supports H.264 video codec and the Advanced Audio Coding (AAC) audio codec. The AAC support is via a plug-in which can be purchased from MainConcept.
Adobe ColdFusion 8 Update 1 (8.0.1) was released April 3rd (most of you knew already). The good and safe news is that it seems to work fine... nothing broke with the update.
What was updated? You can get the full list here, but I will concentrate only on the Ajax part.
The docs say "We have improved functionality in several areas including AJAX functions, CFPDF, and CFIMAGE. And we have updated several software libraries including Yahoo YUI, EXT JS, Spry, and the FCKEditor."
The FCKEditor component used in the cftextarea tag’s rich text editor has been updated to version 2.5. As a result, the rich text editor now supports Safari 3 and Opera 9.50 browsers. This is great news, but 2.5 was released 11/30/2007... 2.6 was just released, so they went with the latest stable, though it was pretty safe to try the 2.6 RC, which was released a while back.
Next, the Spry framework has been updated to version 1.6.... not too much to say there, I don't care much about it.
Now the important part, the Yahoo YUI Library used for some AJAX-based controls has been updated to version 2.3 and the Ext JS framework used for some AJAX-based controls has been updated to version 1.1.1... I assume they did this because Ext JS 2.0 (released in October 2007 btw) was a major update and it would have taken too much to adapt it? Adobe, trust me, I understand SDLC, but in today's world CF helps us keep up with rapid changing technology and it would be totally worth it ... you will have to upgrade it at some point .... hopefully 8.0.2 will incorporate the a much newer version of Ext.
In collaboration with Adobe, one of the key additions in Ext 2.0.2 was Adobe AIR 1.0 support for running in the application sandbox. Also, the Simple Tasks AIR application sample was rewritten to take advantage of more of the native functionality in AIR and gained some cool custom Ext components that can be used outside of AIR.
Ext 2.0.2 does a great job wrapping some of the AIR API JavaScript functionality ... check out this blog entry for more.
Following the release of Adobe AIR, ichameleon/group/, has been working with Adobe and the New York Times on a small AIR demonstration app called ShifD: an awesome little app that helps you organize your notes and see them online, your mobile phone, iphone app, or the AIR based desktop app. The Adobe Air app was written entirely in AJAX using jQuery and a custom made MVC framework, wrapped around the Adobe AIR shell. You can signup for an account at http://www.shifd.com and/or download free tools at http://www.shifd.com/tools/.
Important: You must use jquery 1.2.3+ with AIR 1.0. Previous versions have application sandbox issues.
This launched along with Adobe AIR, which will allow us to take our html/flash/flex applications to the desktop. In fact, Adobe announced that Adobe AIR, Flex Builder 3, and the Flex 3 SDK are now live on their website.
Related links:
Flex/AIR on the Adobe.com home page:
http://www.adobe.com/
Flex Builder 3
http://www.adobe.com/products/flex/
Adobe AIR
http://www.adobe.com/products/air/
Flex 3 SDK
http://www.adobe.com/cfusion/entitlement/index.cfm?e=flex3email
New Rich Internet Applications site
http://www.adobe.com/resources/business/rich_internet_apps/
Re-launched Adobe Open Source Website
http://opensource.adobe.com/
It's not dead (or even dying), it's just...
Not dead, just ... stealthy
Not dead, just ... getting the AJAX treatment
Not dead, just ... in an upgrade cycle
Read more at a new ComputerWorld rectifying story.
Thermo is amazing! It will bridge the gap between designers and developers, allowing developers to get in the game at an earlier stage; allow customers to feel the application and not just see it in planning phase... Prototyping just upgraded to a whole new meaning. The customer doesn't know what he wants until he sees it; now this applies to RIAs as well, how nice is that?! I really can't wait to start using it.
You read about it on the blogs, but there's nothing like seeing it in action ... even on early stages, I can already visualize us being an early adopted and using it on every RIA project.
Without getting too deep into the demo, Thermo allows to create a new RIA project, spits out Flex code... allow designers to use familiar tools such as layers ... or you can import a PSD, separate all assets, convert graphics into controls, group data into arrays for dummy data.... it's amazing ...
Max is huge! The hotel is huge, the conference center is huge, the attendance is huge ... Amazing conference ... kudos to Adobe for putting this together.
There is more ColdFusion emphasis that I expected, which is great.
The opening keynote was impressive; first of all, feating 5000 people in a single room is impressive... then speaking for 2.5h, go Kevin! One of the most impressive demos was 1080p HD Flash Video using h.264...
Afterwards, for a change, I didn't attend any session, but the networking was worth it ...
Tomorrow I have my ColdFusion Powered Ajax session and then I may attend a few others...
Will post more tomorrow.
Oh yes, the Adobe Media Player has potential! More on that later too.
Announcements: AIR Beta 2 available. Flex 3 Beta 2 Available. AIR Beta 3 will incorporate h.264. Flash 10 / Astro will incorporate Text Rendering API. Flash 10 / Astro will incorporate 3d capabilities, such as rotateX,Y,Z. Adobe Media Player has tons of monetizing opportunities through Ad Capabilities. ColdFusion 9 will allow server side ActionScript 3.
