Rob Gonda's Blog - Adobe

Multitouch Screen Using Flash +1 Adobe -1 Microsoft

Fri, 09 Jan 2009 15:57:00 -0400

Adobe Flash is getting more and more popular as the platform to develop multi-touch applications on.

Check out a post at http://www.multitouch.nl/?p=216 regarding a Summit that will be organized between Natural User Interface and Adobe in 2009 with the main focus on development of multi-touch solutions on Adobe’s Flash platform.

In case you haven’t seen my post on our NUI Group community website regarding that event, please have a look here: http://nuigroup.com/forums/viewthread/3582/

This video was made as a proof of concept of Flash applications running on the tracker of NUI Suite Snowflake.

Flash Player 10 Release Candidate Now Available

Tue, 12 Aug 2008 09:52:00 -0400

A release candidate of Adobe Flash Player 10, code named "Astro" is now available for download on Adobe Labs. Once you download it make sure to visit this page and try the new 3d engine, it's AMAZING!

Cairngorm Project Moves to Adobe Open Source

Sun, 10 Aug 2008 21:52:00 -0400

The Cairngorm project, lightweight micro-architecture for rich Internet applications built in Flex or AIR, is now hosted on the Adobe Open Source website. Milestone builds, documentation, and the latest source code are available for all to use. Cairngorm is now evolving towards a project that will invite community leaders and enterprise adopters to partner with Adobe Consulting in the ongoing development of Cairngorm.

Flex Gumbo API reference available

Thu, 24 Jul 2008 15:18:00 -0400

The ASDoc API reference for Flex Gumbo, the next version of Adobe Flex, is now available at http://livedocs.adobe.com/flex/gumbo/langref/. Adobe will be updating this reference approximately every other week.

Please use the Adobe Forums to comment on the API reference.

For general information about Gumbo, see the Gumbo page.

Gumbo: next version of Flex

Wed, 16 Jul 2008 00:08:00 -0400

The next version of Flex, code name Gumbo, is now in active development. It is has 3 primary themes:

Design in Mind: provide a framework meant for continuous collaboration between designer and developer.
Developer Productivity: improve compiler performance and add productivity enhancements to language features like data binding
Framework Evolution: take advantage of new Flash Player capabilities and add features required by common use-cases

Next steps

Watch a presentation on the Gumbo plan (~14 mins)
See Ely Greenfield discuss designer/developer improvements
Read a longer description of the Gumbo themes
View and comment on the specifications

Download builds of Gumbo from here

Milestones

These milestones are very much a work in progress:

Milestone	Date
Product Defined	July 2008
Beta 1	Late 2008
Final	H2 2009

Adobe Reader 9 Released

Thu, 03 Jul 2008 19:43:00 -0400

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.

AMP: Adobe Media Player launched

Mon, 21 Apr 2008 00:48:00 -0400

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.

Flash Media Encoder 2.5 Released with H.264 Encoding

Fri, 18 Apr 2008 17:12:00 -0400

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.

ColdFusion 8.0.1 Ajax Improvements

Mon, 14 Apr 2008 22:29:00 -0400

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.

ColdFusion Wins Jolt For Best Web Development

Thu, 06 Mar 2008 14:29:00 -0400

ColdFusion 8 won the Product Excellence in the Web Development category at the 18th annual Jolt Product Excellence and Productivity Awards, as announced yoday.

ext 2.0.2: Simple Tasks v2 - Multiple lists, NativeWindows and Reminders

Wed, 05 Mar 2008 20:40:00 -0400

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.

Adobe AIR: ShifD

Wed, 05 Mar 2008 20:13:00 -0400

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/

ColdFusion is not dead (or even dying)

Sun, 07 Oct 2007 00:21:00 -0400

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.

Adobe Max: Day 2: Thermo

Tue, 02 Oct 2007 15:49:00 -0400

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 ...

Adobe Max: Day 1

Mon, 01 Oct 2007 23:55:00 -0400

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.