Thought I'd share some of my recent net findings with you all. Mostly Flash 10 fun but I have a few others for you too! Let me know what you guys think!
Links my browser found:
http://freshairapps.com - A blog dedicated to Adobe AIR apps!
http://interactivehug.com/2008/05/19/temp/ - Some insight in to the creative process when building a papervision 3d site.
http://www.fwatheater.com - FWA theater site! Pretty rockin stuff!
http://www.unit9.com/kitchen/ - Fun london ad agency site.
http://www.newezra.com - Portfolio of Jonathan Moore of 2Avanced.
Flash 10:
http://theflashblog.com/?p=385 - Pixel Bender Viewer - How To
http://www.gotoandlearn.com - More from Lee with great FP10 How to's!
http://www.bit-101.com/blog/?p=1266 - Flash Play 10 API's
http://www.gaiaflashframework.com - GAIA Framework (In case you forgot)
Ok no no no... I don't need some people in trench coats to help scare old women! Come on people! Do you use Adobe Flash and live in the DFW area? Well your in luck things are slowly starting to come together on our very own Dallas FUG or as a few of us like to call it the actionscript mafia. We are having a couple struggles getting things moving so if your interested and/or can help run over to dallasfug.com and see what your missing out on!
Today is a big day for the guys at Adobe. AIR 1.0 and Flex 3 have hit the streets and will set them in position to own the RIA marketplace for a long time coming. With the rich history behind Flex and now AIR, Adobe's latest product 
that allows developers from all types of backgrounds to develop RIA's. Its a sure win for Adobe and for anyone using the internet today.
AIR gives developers from Flash, AJAX and Flex backgrounds the ability to develop desktop applications that are immediately usable and cross platform compatible. Something no one can argue is a wonderful step forward for the next generation of the web (3.0?). And what's neat about the cross platform is that it works not only on Windows and Apple machines but also on Linux boxes (Coming soon!). This means developing apps for the One Laptop Per Child project is now easy for us all. This also means your product can now stretch across the world like never before.
Flex Builder 3 is pretty cheap and will only run you$249. Which is a steal for anyone wanting to start learning and building RIA's especially for students. But for those of us that already own Flash CS3 the upgrade to AIR is $0! So if you already coding MXML or AS3 you are already to go and begin coding your own desktop applications! During the AIR beta 3 I put together a super simple FLV and H.264 player that now anyone can download and use on any system they choose! I will update it later today so its compliant with the latest release of AIR 1.0! Very exciting!
I am anxiously waiting to see what AIR and all the developers world wide will be developing this year and the years to come! Great work Adobe! We can't wait to see where this product takes us in the years to come!
Update: I just found a rockin' poster done by eboy for the AIR and Flex3 product launch! Download and print it on some 11x17 paper to spice up your office, its pretty sweet! Great work eboy!
Yesterday when I was looking at the new panels Lee Brimelow released it got me thinking about his tutorials on AIR and video. So I was like, hey, it would be cool to have a super simple AIR app that played my FLV's I've been compressing. It seemed like every player I tried was just a bit much. Soooo... here is my first AIR app. Its really nothing so don't expect anything. Currently, as it is, it has no controls or REAL features for that matter. I just put it together so I could play some FLV's I've been compressing. Really just to view them quickly and see how they looked in a player. Anyway its really just for quick testing tool for developers like me. So don't hold your breath for your new end all FLV player! It does the trick and has some scaling feature when you drag the video onto it, it will resize to the size the video has in its META data. Oh and enjoy my amazing graphics I made for it!
px4 flvPlayer 0.6.3
(0.6.3 cause I always wanted to have some weird beta number on something.)
Features - if that's what you want to call them
- drag FLV's onto it to start playing
- scales to the movies correct dimensions
Download :
1. Get Adobe Air
2. Download the flvPlayer
3. Play FLV's and H.264
To be added later:
- full play/pause/seek/volume controls
- ability to check META data
- screen shot video and save to PNG
- custom chrome
I will most likely open source the entire project so you guys can see my AS3 mess and help out or maybe learn a little. Either way it will be worth it to someone!
Update: I added H.264 support. And it was incredibly easy. Really as easy as a simple 'if' statement. Thanks for the idea Freddy! If you do place an MOV on it that isn't H.264 format it just won't play or will stop the video that was playing and wait for a new video to be loaded. I will do some error handling to this at a later date. Enjoy for now!
Do you love you some Flash? Are you a flash developer? Are you a flash designer?
Did you answer yes to one of these questions and you live in Dallas, Tx? I sure hope so!
I have been thinking about getting the Dallas flash community closer. How you ask? Well, how else! Get us all together for a few beers and a little actionscripting! 
In all seriousness I am hoping to find about 10-20 Flash guru's that want to get together to start collaborating and teaching each other some tips and tricks. We have a great community here of Flash developers with a lot of talent and I think its time we start tapping into it. I haven't worked out ANY details as of yet. I really just wanted to try and get a head count of who might be interested. So if you don't mind helping with the cause and emailing your fellow flash buddies, that would be great! Who says Dallas can't do what the other big cities are doing? Now lets see what we are capable of!
I will start gathering a list, so if you guys could either emailing me or comment on this post about your interest that would be great. Then in about a week or so I will gather up all the emails and see how many people we have intrested and go from there. Also if you are interested in speaking to the group or have a facility that we could all meet up at I would be very interested! My email is corbanb[at]gmail[dot]com. I can't wait to hear from you all.
Update: I don't have any location details but I am thinking like the second Wednesday of the month after work. Like 7 - 8PM possibly.
So I have been reading these types of posts:
http://www.reflektions.com/miniml/template_permalink.asp?id=456
http://aralbalkan.com/1126
and wondering what is gong to be happening with flash. And if you guys are going to be killing off the mid to low flash developers as time goes by and on into the new flash players etc?
So here is my questions:
Why are we making it more difficult for non programmers to pick up actionscript and play with it? It used to be so easy for many types of designers/developers to open flash and instantly get a lot out of it. It seems like you have wanted to cater to the few that bitched about actionscripts non traditional programming format and not to the designers turned developers. Now we have gone into the AS3 days where we can't code on buttons (which is fine for me but maybe hard for others) and we can hardly code on the timeline for that matter. We are needing to start hiring engineers almost to develop flash sites now because its become so complicated to understand this new programming language. I mean this is what made flash so amazing in the past. I went to art school and got a job dong flash. And in two years I could code great sites and simple games. Now I am able to do about anything in AS2 but moving to AS3 has been a huge leap cause OOP is a completely new concept. And I think it is for MANY non traditional developers and developers wanting to pickup a product like flash WAS.
What does this mean to the future of flash? Are we going to see the traditional advertising flash sites start to fail due to budget and demand for creative engineers (which are few and far between) that want alot of money. Are you guys developing a product for app developers? Or for the MASS amounts of AS2 developers out here creating great creative work. I mean do you think flash would be where it is if it wasn't for designers to be able to open flash read a few tutorials and start tweaking code. The imperfections of actionscript coding style is what made it so appealing to SO many people worldwide. No longer can a creative director understand how to tweak a AS3 site without a tremendous amount of ramp up time to learn OOP concepts.
This new community you are trying to build is great for Flex/AIR but terrible for Flash. The creative appeal is falling away and now becoming a DEVELOPERS playground and not a 'devigners'/designers playground. You are going to find less and less designers converting to developers as time goes on making the gap that much wider between the two. And much harder for businesses to communicate between the two departments. Which will again kill the creative appeal to flash. All I ask is please be careful what you do with our precious flash. And don't forget about the mass amounts of developers that made flash what it is. By coming from a design background to become self taught flash developers who helped create the product you have today!
