Flash

Flash Shows a White Flag

Mon, 14 Mar 2011 09:30:00 EDT

After taking heavy fire from Steve Jobs over Flash, Adobe Tuesday ran up a white flag and produced a so-called experimental Flash Professional-to-HTML 5 automatic conversion tool called Wallaby so Flash files can run on Apple’s otherwise forbidden iPad and iPhone. It will work initially on simple stuff like banner ads and animations and create a mix of HTML, CSS and JavaScript that can be edited, if necessary, in Dreamweaver. It doesn’t support movies or sound yet and it reportedly works best at this point with output from the Webkit-based Safari and Chrome browsers.

Adobe Puts Flash Server in Amazon Cloud

Mon, 20 Dec 2010 09:00:00 EST

This week, stalwart packaged applications software vendor Adobe announced the availability of its Flash Media Server on Amazon Web Services cloud infrastructure. It’s a move that should be good for both companies but one that also raises a few questions.

What Computer Programming Language To Learn Next?

Tue, 12 Oct 2010 07:15:00 EDT

After all these rumors on Microsoft buying Adobe, several people asked me what do I think of it, and, of course the second question was (it’s always on the mind of every professional software developer), “What to learn next?”

Search Engines Still Can't Index Flash Sites with Dynamic Content

Mon, 10 May 2010 07:00:00 EDT

There are two types of Web applications: those that care about their discoverability and those that don’t.
If you are developing a Web application in Flash or Flex for, say, financial advisers (FA) of a brokerage house or salesmen of an insurance company, discoverability is not a concern because FA’s or salesmen of your firm will be told, “Go to so-and-so URL and use so-and-so application”. We can happily say that both FA’s and salesmen have discover their RIA.

If you are developing a consumer-oriented RIA , you want random people to discover their pizzeria, department store, medical office or a car dealership. Why a doctor needs a Web site? Mainly to be discovered by people from the neihborhood if someone will google for a family physician. You can say that some doctors also use Web site to post some useful articles or medical form for their existing customers. True. But still, the main reason for investing into development of a Web site is to increase visibility.

Recently, I wrote a blog about iPhone and Flash , and half of this blog was about excellent Google indexing of the plain HTML information about services of our company.
Today, I’ve read an article by Armando Roggio titled “Best practices for Search-Optimized Flash Development” . This article was supposed to give you a feeling that Google really knows how to peek inside your swf file. The author states, “Need proof? Run this search on Google right now, filetype:swf + “comic books.””

Sure enough, if you’ll do it, the search will return several .swf files that have the words “comic books” hardcoded inside. But most of the RIA bring the content dynamically and rightly so. A well designed RIA arrives to the client with the code that makes the screen pretty. The information about the upcoming sale of your local Ford dealer or recall of millions Toyota cars is not hardcoded into the Web site, but is dynamically downloaded from the server. This creates a nice separation of responsibilities – people who create the content of the site don’t have to modify the Web site every time they want to announce a weekend sale at Ford dealerships.

Will Google index and find dynamically loaded content? I don’t think so.

Mr. Roggio quotes in his article executives of Adobe and Google stating how they collaborate and work hard on improving the situation. I’m sure they do, but so far I don’t see the results.

That article also states the following:
“In fact on June 18, 2009, Google announced that it could load external Flash resources, including text, HTML, XML, additional SWFs, and more. This feature means that you can create a Flash application that draws its content from a structured and external XML document.” And a little later the author states, “As of this past summer, Google can and does retrieve this external files.”

I love Google and use it a hundred times a day, but this announcement (if it really was made by Google) is simply not true, and I can easily prove it to you.

Once again, I’ll direct you to the Flash based Web site of our company . Now I’ll reveal some insider’s information. Our Web site is written in ActionScript 3, but the content of every view you see there comes from external XML files.

For example, if I decide to change the information on the Home view, there is no need to recompile the Web site. I can just use Notepad, TextEdit, Vi, or any other available plain text editor to modify the content of the home.xml file that is being downloded as soon as the compiled SWF file arrives to the Web browser.
Let’s an experiment. The Home view of our Web site starts with the following long statement:

“Do you want your RIA application to be done right the first time? We've built lots of great RIA applications for our clients. Our teams of Flex developers are geographically located in the USA and Eastern Europe. “

Now, copy/paste this long text fragment (with or without double quotes) to Google’s search field. Hit Search. Do you see Farata Systems anywhere in the vicinities? I don’t.
This Web site was deployed about three years ago, and this poor little text we’ve been using in this experiments hasn’t been changed for a couple of years either waiting for any search engine to notice and index it.

You may ask, “Did you use deep linking available in Flex to provide unique URL’s for different views of the in your Web site helping search engines to index the content?” No I didn’t. Our Web site was created in ActionScript long time ago to be as light as possible.

But I know a firm with a complex commercial Web site written in Flex that did use deep linking feature, but it didn’t help. They are considering re-developing the Web site in HTML/JavaScript. Unfortunately, this won’t help, unless they will put the entire content of the Web site inside HTML (but this is not possible and stupid). Using AJAX won’t make them happy if they decide to keep the content dynamically loaded.
If you’ve developed a large Web application with deep linking Flex feature and have good results in terms of Web analytics, I’d love to hear from you.

Now the happy end.

I’ll continue recommending Flex and Flash as the platform of choice for developing of the enterprise RIA. Don’t pay attention to those who predict that HTML5 will kill Flash. It won’t happen for another 10 years, and we need to develop and deploy our RIA today. The fact that someone can purchase H.264 patent licensing royalties and stream the video has very little to do with a robust and well written platform for enterprise RIA such as Flash.

But if your cousine Vinnie asks you to develop a Web site for his new Italian restaurant, use Flash very carefully - mainly for embedding interactive widgets here and there.

Jobs to Adobe: ‘Yer Stinkin’ Flash is Over-the-Hill. Get Over It.’

Sun, 02 May 2010 08:45:00 EDT

As a diversion from its high-profile “who-knows-where-it-will-end” dogfight with Gizmodo over an errant iPhone prototype, Apple has posted a longish open letter on its web site over the signature of its CEO Steve Jobs reiterating all the reasons why Apple has no use for Adobe’s Flash technology. Steve – or his ghost writer – says Adobe mischaracterizes the Apple ban when it says it’s business-driven and only meant to protect the Apple App Store. He claims it’s technology-driven.

Adobe Ships Creative Suite 5

Fri, 30 Apr 2010 05:33:00 EDT

Adobe Systems Incorporated (Nasdaq:ADBE) today announced the availability of the Adobe® Creative Suite® 5 product family, the highly-anticipated release of the industry-leading design and development software for virtually every creative workflow. With more than 250 new product features, the Creative Suite 5 product line brings exciting full-version upgrades of flagship creative tools and workflow enhancements to designers and developers — enabling the creation, delivery and optimization of content across media for greater impact and results.

Adobe Introduces Adobe Flash Catalyst CS5

Mon, 12 Apr 2010 08:05:00 EDT

Adobe introduced on Monday Adobe Flash Catalyst CS5, the new professional interaction design tool that allows designers to rapidly create expressive Web application interfaces and design interaction without writing code. With Adobe Flash Catalyst CS5, Flash Professional CS5 and Flash Builder 4, designers and developers will be able to collaborate and work more productively together. Full details of the announcement and a list of new features in Flash Catalyst can be found in the press release for your reference.

Adobe Flash vs. The World

Fri, 09 Apr 2010 22:30:00 EDT

Does it seem like everyone is ganging up on Adobe these days? Apple and Microsoft have made some bold moves lately in an attempt to prevent Adobe’s Flash technology from transferring the same dominance it has on the PC onto mobile devices. At the recent Mobile World Congress exhibition Microsoft’s Steve Ballmer announced that the new Windows Phone operating system would not support Flash “out of the gate” and gave no indication on when Flash support might be available. Apple took the battle further when they nestled a controversial passage into their new iPhone SDK that effectively bans any Adobe Flash application from the company’s flagship device. This move certainly caught Adobe by surprise and has angered millions of Flash developers throughout the world. To add fuel to the fire, Steve Jobs, when asked why the new iPad doesn’t support Flash, said “We don't spend a lot of energy on old technology” and reportedly told Wall Street Journal staff that Flash was a "CPU hog" and a source of "security holes."

Dear Apple...So?

Sat, 06 Feb 2010 14:30:00 EST

Here's yet another well written blog by Rachel Luxemburg that looks like a petition to Steve Jobs. So? Such write-ups won't have any effect on Apple's decision about Flash Player. It's a cold blooded decision, and if the real reason for not letting FP on iPhone OS is to keep control of the applications and have a cut from the iStore, writing blogs and I'm also a big fan of Adobe software typing this comment on MBP and want Flash Player to be on iPhone and iPad. So? Open letters won't help.

Can You Fire a Team?

Sat, 06 Feb 2010 13:00:00 EST

Yesterday, I finished my dinner in a French restaurant with traditional crème brulee. This time I’ve also ordered a small glass of Sauternes wine. Then we went to our friend’s house to follow it with some good old port. But no matter what software developers drink or eat in February 2010, one way or the other the conversation will slide into a No-Flash-Player-on-iPad discussion. Apple pretends that they will never allow Flash Player on Steve’s OS (SOS), because it’s buggy. Adobe’s CTO, Kevin Lynch, states that Apple doesn’t cooperate. After the third round, I made a statement that when the dust settles, everyone will thank Steve Jobs for forcing Adobe to make Flash Player better and faster, which is a win-win situation for all application developers.

Adobe Update: "Unambiguous Statement" Coming

Fri, 25 Dec 2009 21:30:00 EST

Remember me?

Sorry for lack of posts. Happy to report I am very busy on both the pressDOOH and Preset fronts, and seeing a lot of airports (but dodging storms).

Anyway, there is encouraging news on the Adobe Flash licensing beat - with a senior Adobe guy promising: Adobe will make an unambiguous statement in the new year.

This was from the Director of Adobe's Open Screen Project, which is Adobe's big cross-platform initiative. He found me through another Adobe guy who conceded the company's position was confusing, and promised to look into it. He found me through Stephen Randall of Locamoda. So if we do get clarity, finally, Stephen gets a gold star.

Nate Kidwell of DS newcomer Ludicast, which uses Flash extensively, has also been a big help, and pointed me (among other things) to a post on a Flash developer's blog, called ickydime.

The comments are the interesting part of the post, as it drew in some Adobe people.

One noted:

Anyone can install Adobe Flash Player from adobe.com. But to *redistribute* Player in your own device requires agreements with Adobe -- otherwise anything might get called "Player". The Open Screen Project doesn't require cash licensing, but does require certain capabilities such as the ability to update.

The developer/blogger then responded:

From your recap, it sounds as though you can install the Runtime if the device goes to Adobe.com for the installation AND if the device has the ability to update the player.

Another Adobe person chimed in, noting first that the end user licensing agreement is getting old:

If you check the date, the EULA is from Feb of 2008.

Also, keep in mind that Adobe may not be the ones distributing the player binaries. Through Open Screen Project, partners can license source for porting in which case the EULA does not come from Adobe.

Also note that OSP royalty free terms are for open systems with the goal of providing a consistent runtime for web browsing and applications. Closed systems do not qualify for royalty free licensing.

So ... the issue is at least now on the Adobe radar, though it would be great to read something, from someone, that is not burdened by licensing-speak. What I get from these exchanges is a sense - repeat sense - that everything is peachy if the digital signage playback software you develop and distribute does not include Flash right in the build. The PC being used as the playback engine needs to go out to the Internet cloud to fetch the latest version and install it on the box, and then sit, deployed, in the field, able to go back to Adobe to get updates and patches to the Flash player.

If the Flash player is part of the build and offer to customers, you need to get licensing. I think.

Stay tuned.

Built4Flash Launched by Farata Systems

Sat, 12 Dec 2009 22:30:00 EST

There are about 250,000 developers working with Flex and AIR. If you add an army of ActionScript developers, this number will grow substantially. Where do you go if you have a technical issue while developing RIA? As of today, there no one place to ask questions and get answers. A respected forum flexcoders uses the outdated and hard to follow Yahoo! groups. Some people try to find answers visiting blogs they trust. Some developers post their questions on Twitter. About a year ago Joel Spolsky and Jeff Atwood released a well designed and easy to follow knowledge exchange stackoverflow.com, where people earn reputation by suggesting the right solutions to people’s problems. Flex/Flash/Air developers started to post their questions there among the plethora of questions on other technologies and programming languages.

Create Free Web Player with Moyea PlayerBox

Thu, 29 Oct 2009 06:00:00 EDT

When creating and designing your website and blog, do you want to create your own web player to present videos? It's time to get your own player with Moyea PlayerBox, which facilitates player creation and player skinning with new version.

Adobe May Cooperate with Apple to Transplant Flash Player to iPhone

Tue, 20 Oct 2009 22:51:00 EDT

According to the CEO of Adobe America, Adobe company is planning to transplant its flash player to iPhone. Adobe CEO indicated that Adobe may cooperate with Apple to ensure the smooth flash player application on iPhone in Adobe company’s first quarter performance conference early this week. These comments were made when he was asking about the [...]

Flash Platform Services for Distribution

Mon, 21 Sep 2009 08:15:00 EDT

Today, Adobe made a very interesting announcement - Adobe Flash Platform Services for Distribution is available to the public. To put it simple, it’s a new way of distributing, promoting, and measuring the usage of your applications on the Web.

Adobe Flash and Flex Accessibility with Screen Readers

Tue, 08 Sep 2009 13:15:00 EDT

First, yes, screen readers can read Flex applications. And yes, its fairly easy. But, I’ll discuss how in a future post. But, if you’d rather send people to your old HTML version of your site when using a read, there is good news. Flash Player has the ability to detect if a screen reader is running on the client machine, even if JavaScript is disabled and/or the Flex application is not compiled as an “accessible swf”. This is possible with the Accessibility class.

Adobe To Open Up Flash Messaging Protocol

Thu, 22 Jan 2009 07:25:00 EST

Adobe says it’s going to publish the Real-Time Messaging Protocol (RTMP) specification designed for high-performance transmission of audio, video and data between Adobe Flash Platform technologies. Think AMF, SWF, FLV and F4V formats compatible with Adobe Flash Player. The RTMP disclosure will be the latest advance of the so-called Open Screen Project.

Intel and Adobe Putting Flash on TV

Tue, 06 Jan 2009 04:05:00 EST

Adobe and Intel plan to collaborate on porting Adobe’s Flash widgetry to Intel’s Media Processor CE 3100, a way to put Flash-enhanced web content and rich Flash applications on television. The chip is bound for cable set-top boxes, Blu-ray Disc players, digital TVs and retail-connected AV devices.

Flash Player 10 is released!

Wed, 15 Oct 2008 00:01:00 EDT

Adobe Systems Incorporated today announced the immediate availability of Adobe® Flash® Player 10 software. Interactive designers and developers can leverage the new expressive features and visual performance improvements in Flash Player 10 for unprecedented creative control to deliver the most compelling Web applications, interactive content and high quality video to users across multiple browsers and all major operating systems.

Bringing Voice and Messaging to Flash and AIR

Fri, 10 Oct 2008 18:00:00 EDT

Director of Ribbit's Developer Platform, Chuck Freedman, will explore an evolution in web communication. With the growing demand of RIA and voice-over-the-web solutions, developers finally have a full suite of communication APIs to add to Flash. Coding with Ribbit, Freedman will demonstrate how to send SMS messages from your application. The session will explore features that let users check voicemail, listen to and even read their messages. We will see how to easily make and receive calls from Flash so customers can call you (or your client) without leaving the web page or picking up the phone. Freedman will reveal a killer app that can do it all - something attendees will quickly be able to build too, after experiencing this session.

Bringing Voice and Messaging to Flash and AIR

Sat, 20 Sep 2008 15:00:00 EDT

Adobe Flex, Flash and Loosely Coupled On Demand

Sat, 20 Sep 2008 03:00:00 EDT

Adobe Flex and Flash are the ideal technology for Rich Internet Applications because you can build those applications with reusable components that are Loosely Coupled. In his session, learn how you can create an On-Demand Authoring Environment for creating Rich Internet Applications bound to any database or web service using Flex 2 and Flash CS4.

Adobe Gives Yahoo & Google Special Flash Treatment

Wed, 09 Jul 2008 06:00:00 EDT

Adobe says it's going to 'dramatically improve' the search results of dynamic web content and rich Internet applications (RIAs) for Google and Yahoo by giving them optimized Flash Player technology. This new widgetry, which will read and index SWF files, is supposed to uncover information that is currently undiscoverable by search engines and provide more relevant automatic search rankings for the millions of RIAs and the other dynamic content that runs in Flash Player.

Product Review: Adobe Flash Player 10

Fri, 30 May 2008 08:15:00 EDT

I might have skipped some of the new features of Flash Player 10, but you can always refer to the official FAQ page. Visit Plash Players 10 page on Adobe Labs to download new player (there is no debug version yet). The standalone debug versions are also available. You can use the official demos and Flash Player 10 API documentation to build your applications using special version of Flex SDK. Adobe's Flash Player team made a substantial progress with new release of this very solid VM, which makes it even more solid platform in the RIA space.

Adobe Puts Out AIR for Linux

Fri, 04 Apr 2008 05:30:00 EDT

Adobe has put an alpha pre-release of AIR for Linux up in hopes, it says, of getting feedback from the community, not to mention winning adherents. It's English-only. The company also joined the Linux Foundation to encourage the growth of RIA technologies on Linux, it said. The company says Linux developers can use HTML, AJAX, Flash and Flex to build rich Internet applications (RIAs) that deploy to desktops across operating systems.

The Next Big RIA Service: Sprout

Mon, 17 Mar 2008 14:15:00 EDT

These days RIA tools are created mainly to two groups of people: Web Developers and UI Designers. The second group is represented by creative people who can design screens but are not programmers. Big guys are trying to come with tools that would bring together these two groups of people who currently live in different planets. But there is another group of people that need these tools.

Notes from Adobe conference for educators

Wed, 05 Mar 2008 01:00:00 EST

These are the notes from Adobe Education Designer and Developer Conference that Adobe put together for people who are teaching Adobe software at various universities around the country.

Car Manufacturers Go with Adobe Flex RIA

Sat, 16 Feb 2008 13:15:00 EST

OK, car manufactures go Flex. Will they lose or gain customers because of that? Car manufacturers want to have fancy consumer sites. It's a world of RIA, and having interactive Web sites should bring more people to car dealerships. But poorly performing Web site can turn into lost revenues.

AMF 3 Specification Is Published

Mon, 04 Feb 2008 11:30:00 EST

Action Message Format (AMF) is a protocol that is used to serialize the data coming into Flash Player or going out to other programming environments that need to communicate with Flash Player. Say, if you create in Java an instance of the class MyOrder, this instance can be converted into a string of bytes, sent over the wire to Flash Player and then recreated there as an instance of the ActionScript object. The rules of how to do this are defined by a communication protocol, such as AMF.

Does Adobe's Promotion of Flex Put Flash Programmers at a Disadvantage?

Thu, 31 Jan 2008 17:00:00 EST

I ran into an interesting blog written by a Flash programmer who feels that Adobe's promotion of Flex puts him and other Flash programmers at a disadvantage. And he knows how to resist!

One of the Most Interesting Features of Adobe Flex 3

Thu, 20 Sep 2007 17:00:00 EDT

Adobe will release Flex 3 around February of 2008. It has a number of improvements and new features, in particular it'll bring Flash designers and Flex developers together. Creative Suite 3 will have an easy way to incorporate Flex content right into the timeline of Flash IDE. Containers created in Flash will be able to have content developed in Flex. Earlier this year I saw a presentation of Silverstream from Microsoft. I was impressed by the ease of developing fancy GUI applications by a Web designer who did not know programming. He?d just create fancy graphics (using the timeline) and effects adding the place holders for the code to be written by Sillverlight developers. Now Flash designers will also easily incorporate Flex code in their creations.

Flash Player 9 Penetration

Wed, 05 Sep 2007 13:15:00 EDT

Adobe has published statistics on the penetration of Flash Player 9 as of June 2007. The numbers look pretty good - over 90 percent of the users in mature markets have it already installed. 90% is not a 100% and not even 98% that Flash Player 8 already enjoys. Since the penetration speed looks pretty similar for the version 8 and 9 of the player, it?s safe to assume that Flash Player 9 will reach its 98% mark in the Summer of 2008.

How and Why AJAX, Not Java, Became the Favored Technology for Rich Internet Applications

Thu, 07 Jun 2007 10:15:00 EDT

'The Java backlash,' writes Bruce Eckel, 'has been building up steam, and we're starting to see some fundamental shifts because of it.' Java has been around for 10 years yet applets are not the primary way that we interact with the web. Applets are not ubiquitous, and everyone got excited about AJAX instead.

What's Cooking Among Good Lookings?

Tue, 17 Apr 2007 12:45:00 EDT

Who's better looking? Flash Player or Sliverlight? As of today, 98% of the world computer users know what Flash Player is and only 2% or so know what's Silverlight. But this will change pretty soon. Both Flash Player and Silverlight can read any plain HTTP feed. Flex also offers faster binary protocols for communication with the server side applications written in Java and other languages, including a third party solution (offered by Midnight Coders) for integration with .Net. I am not sure if there are any such deals for fast communication between Silverlight and non .Net applications.

Beyond 'Request-Response' Modes of Web Services

Fri, 23 Feb 2007 23:00:00 EST

Geographic Information Systems (GIS) services today are going mainstream. Corporate executives and individuals at home are demanding access to many of the same GIS capabilities previously used only by engineers, geologists, and government officials.

Integrating a Flash Interface into Flex 2

Thu, 08 Feb 2007 11:00:00 EST

My goals here are to integrate www.adobe.com/products/flash/ Flash with www.adobe.com/products/flex/ Flex, i.e. not just treat it as a design asset tool, but as a contributor to the functionality of the client; using Flash for enhancing the design, and helping reduce transition code which tends to be verbose in Flex.

Flash Player 9 on Linux and Adobe marketing

Fri, 06 Oct 2006 08:15:00 EDT

Flash Player 9 enters pre-Alpha stage on Linux. Adobe marketing needs to work harder.

Understanding Classpaths

Sun, 01 Oct 2006 17:45:00 EDT

All objects in recent versions of ActionScript are defined by something called classes. Think of classes as blueprints that determine the unique combination of characteristics, actions, and reactions that comprises a particular object of a certain type. By 'object,' we are talking about the familiar things a Flash developer deals with every day: movie clips (the MovieClip class), text fields (the TextField class), buttons, sounds, math functions, components, you name it. They are all defined by classes.

Extending Adobe Flex with Flash

Thu, 21 Sep 2006 14:45:00 EDT

While a large Flex application is loaded, the user may experience unpleasant delays, which can be used productively to logon to this application. Besides, it'll give the user perception that your application loads faster.

The OSFlash Initiative: Web Developer's & Designer's Journal Interviews Aral Balkan

Mon, 21 Aug 2006 04:00:00 EDT

Aral Balkan of OSFlash.org answers a few brief questions about the amazing promise that the Flash Platform holds in the age of Web 2.0 and the role that Balkan sees for open-source Flash in that equation.