Today Adobe announced that they have created a partnership with Google and Yahoo! to start indexing SWF files for their search engines! Its about time! Ok no hard feelings Adobe for the wait. Honestly we are really just starting to hit FULL stride with Flash content being the standard for nearly all rich web content. So its understandable that this ahs been on the back burners of most everyone. Keyword 'most'.
Where is Microsoft in this deal? They WANT to be the leader in search but they aren't following the trends of the world around them? HAHA. Well one maybe Adobe couldn't let them inside the player cause they would know to much. But also maybe MS is doing there normal nose in the air thinking they don't need anyone else.Who knows. All I know is that MS is never going to be anything again in the search game with deals like this going on.
Well great work Adobe, Google and Yahoo! we all love you for thinking about us and keeping your eye forward to a better web!
Check these links for more info on the announcement:
Adobe Press Release
Lee Brimelow on the announcement
Posts from Ryan Stewart: One and Two (more links here too)
Looks like the Flash 10 player news is spreading like wild fire! Go Astro Go!. If you want to follow the news and compile some examples for yourself I suggest following some links my friend Josh Spoon has posted on where to start your flash 10 experiments! It looks like a ton of people have already posted some great videos and sample code for you to start playing with Astro! I suggest getting started now! No time to waste. Thanks for the links Josh!
Ok I'm kidding but it does involve "Astro" and no not the dog from the Jetsons! Its the first release of the Flash 10 Player! Yes kiddos the future is here! Since I haven't had time to really dive in and see whats going on. I'll let a few of the other folks around the Flash Community Tell you about it. But first here is the features Adobe wanted to talk about first!
Key New Features
3D Effects - Easily transform and animate any display object through 3D space while retaining full interactivity. Fast, lightweight, and native 3D effects make motion that was previously reserved for expert users available to everyone. Complex effects are simple with APIs that extend what you already know.
Custom Filters and Effects - Create your own portable filters, blend modes, and fills using Adobe® Pixel Bender™, the same technology used for many After Effects CS3 filters. Shaders in Flash Player are about 1KB and can be scripted and animated at runtime.
Advanced Text Layout - A new, highly flexible text layout engine, co-existing with TextField, enables innovation in creating new text controls by providing low-level access to text offering right-to-left and vertical text layout, plus support for typographic elements like ligatures.
Enhanced Drawing API - Runtime drawing is easier and more powerful with re-styleable properties, 3D APIs, and a new way of drawing sophisticated shapes without having to code them line by line.
Visual Performance Improvements – Applications and videos will run smoother and faster with expanded use of hardware acceleration. By moving several visual processing tasks to the video card, the CPU is free to do more.
Looks like the guys pushing adobe to make some noise will be very happy! Oh and check out the links below for more infomation on the newest release of the Adobe Flash 10 Player, code name Astro.
Links
http://labs.adobe.com/technologies/flashplayer10/ - Demos, downloads, videos and more!
http://www.kaourantin.net/ - 3 Posts talking about enhanced sound feature
http://www.bit-101.com/blog/ - Keith Peters talks more on sound
http://blog.digitalbackcountry.com/ - Ryan Stewart talks about the Player launch.
http://opensource.adobe.com/ - Flash Player 10 Beta with Flex SDK 3 [via digitalbackcountry.com]
http://www.zeuslabs.us/ - Gratuitous Text Effects Courtesy of Flash Player 10
http://theflashblog.com/ - Lee talks about the new player and features
Hey guys I had heard about this a while back but hadn't been reading it much. But today I was taking some time to get some AS3 work under my belt and decided to spend sometime with it. Although its not super deep information it gives you some great high level tips on AS3 and its changes. So If you are still new to AS3 and looking for a few more little tips jump over to Kirupa's site and get started reading the AS3 Tips of the Day!
Hey just a quick FYI for you Flickr users they now are allowing us to upload videos. Only downside is the 90 sec max time stuck to it. Here is the first video I saw on Flickr and its some Flash art by Eric Natzke. If you are not familiar with Eric Natzke I think its time you start watching his work in Flash, it will inspire anyone.
You're clients will love it! And in the end you will know more about the sites you build and how to better drive traffic to certain areas! Win! Win!
Ok so I have been using Google Analytics for quite sometime now and I must say i love it! So if you don't know by now Google provides FREE website statistics that go above and beyond any stat tracking systems I have seen to date. Well that is for something that is FREE. Anyway I want encourage all of you to get out there and start using Google Analytics for all your flash site going forward. Its really very simple to implement into your flash sites and even track individual events that occur in each of your sites. Please see analytics.google.com for more information on setting up your personal analytics with google and to get the Javascript needed for the code below to work. With that said let's get on to some actionscript!
googleAnalytics.as (right click - save as)
/// GOOGLE ANALYTICS SIMPLE TRACKING
/// Script by: corban baxter
import flash.external.ExternalInterface;
function gaTracking(page) {
ExternalInterface.call("pageTracker._trackPageview", page);
}
//end
Code for simple call
gaTracking("/flash/home"); //sends event to google's analytics system
Now what you can understand from this is... You can call this function during ANY event function etc that you so desire. And any string combination that you want to pass to it is fair game. Use best practices when passing in the strings though so its easier for you and your clients to read when you all are reviewing the numbers. Ok so thats that! Cheers!
Enjoy! Oh and Let me know if you find any issues with this.
