Flash & AS3 info, source, & experiments
Rants & Raves
GoogleMaps introduces “StreetView”
May 30th
Yesterday, Google introduced a new technology called “StreetView.” It allows you to see a panoramic view of any street that you want, from any location that you want! It allows you to:
- View street level photographs (select cities)
- Take virtual walks; pan, rotate and zoom
- Explore cityscapes, landmarks, points of interest
- Find shops, restaurants, parks, hotels and more
Although there aren’t many cities supported *yet*, more will be on the way. Brilliant work. See it here.
Oh, and in-case you were wondering how the data was collected, check out the company behind the technology, immersivemedia.com.
Animated Cursor
May 25th
Hopefully things will slow down at work so I can get back to the tutorials. In the mean time, check out the best animated cursor I have ever seen (and I typically can’t stand most animated cursors). It was created by www.1-click.jp, but I hosted it here in-case they ever move it.
FLV Video Player Review
May 17th
I had reason to run a downloaded flv file on my local system today. I tried three different players in the following order:
- Flash Video Player by FlashGuru
- Apollo Flash Video Player by Mutationevent.com,
- FLV Player 1.3.3 by Martijn de Visser
The first two both installed just fine, but when I double clicked my .flv file, the respective player started up and then nothing happened. So I moved on from those players in about 30 seconds.
The third player by Martijn de Visser installed easily and played my flv file when I double clicked on it first try! It has a nice, very simple interface, with a couple of basic features (such as zoom 1x, 2x, load file, load url, etc). The player certainly is lacking in advanced features and the author is aware of this and created a spot to post your wishlist for v2 features. However, that was back in April ’06 and he hasn’t blogged much since then, so the project might be abandoned–I can’t tell. Either way, this basic player serves its purpose well. Download it here:
Seven2 Interactive & Spokane FPUG
May 11th
I live and work in Spokane, Washington, USA. Recently, I’ve been dreaming of having a SFPUG (Spokane Flash Platform User Group); but after trying hard to hire some good Flash developers for my current employer (DigiDeal), I was convinced that all of the good Flash developers in my somewhat-smaller-city were already working with me…
And then, out of nowhere, in steps a company I had previously never even heard of, Seven2 Interactive. They’re a Spokane based outfit that has done some very nice work for some pretty big namers, such as Nintendo, MTV, Cingular, etc. I met up with the two founders today, Tyler & Nick, over sushi. It seems like these guys are as cool as their company’s work is. The inside of Seven2′s office was very stylish–they even had three conference rooms named Rock, Paper, & Scissors–rad. Cool facility, cool view, and even a cool game room. It’s good to see impressive Flash & design work coming from Spokane.
My dream for having a SFPUG has been renewed. Anyone else in the area that’s interested? Drop me a comment…
Internet Anarchy over “Free Speech”
May 1st
I’ve never seen anything like it before in my life. It’s a large scale internet revolt. In-case you haven’t yet heard, the hex code to break the HD-DVD encryption was publicized on wikipedia and digg (among other various places). Both places removed it. The result? Check out Digg’s home page as of about five minutes ago and then Digg’s home page as of right now:
It shut Digg down! It’s everywhere. It’s hidden all over Flickr in various images such as these:
People are hiding it in tons of wikipedia articles that have nothing to do with it to make sure wikipedia can’t keep up. Someone even registered the domain name! It’s being blogged about everywhere in articles such as this.
My thoughts? I honestly wouldn’t even care except that I have never seen anything like this before in my life. The great strength of the internet is information sharing. The scary weakness of the internet is information sharing. In a matter of minutes (literally), this thing has spread so far no one can stop it. Is this actually a good thing? What if it was the “noc list” so-to-speak? What if it was the secret to your company’s livelihood (and therefore the source of your paycheck)? What if it was your personal bank account information?
I believe in freedom of speech and I love the concept of internet communities and information sharing, but there is obviously a line somewhere. Everyone would agree it is drawn before our personal bank account information, but not before freedom of the press to speak out against an oppressive government.
Where exactly is this line drawn? Be careful not to jump on a bandwagon too quickly without considering the implications…
The Aftermath:
After the revolt blew over, Digg.com founder Kevin Rose wrote: “…after seeing hundreds of stories and reading thousands of comments, you’ve made it clear. You’d rather see Digg go down fighting than bow down to a bigger company. We hear you, and effective immediately we won’t delete stories or comments containing the code and will deal with whatever the consequences might be. If we lose, then what the hell, at least we died trying.”
I respect Rose’s choice to fight it; although it would seem very sad to me if the company truly did ‘die trying’ to defend freedom of speech for the very users that were the cause of their downfall. More on the subject at Forbes…
Flex SDK Goes Open Source
Apr 26th
Although I went on a rant about Adobe yesterday, I really do like and respect the company–even more so today. If you haven’t heard yet, Adobe just open sourced the Flex SDK as of this press release. This is definitely a bold move. From the release:
“The definition and evolution of Flex has been influenced by our incredibly talented developer community from day one,” said David Mendels, senior vice president, Enterprise and Developer Business Unit at Adobe. “The decision to open source Flex was a completely natural next step. I am incredibly excited to deeply collaborate with the developer community on Flex, and further fuel its momentum and innovation.”
Now, although this would normally make sense to me, it doesn’t make half as much sense as it would for Adobe to have open sourced the FlashPlayer, which is not a direct source of income for them. The Linux community has been shouting loud for this to happen for some time now (with good reason, imho). If Adobe doesn’t want to support the FlashPlayer on Linux (which I *completely* understand and even agree with to some degree), they should just open source the FlashPlayer. Doing so would allow the community to create a better Linux player, integrate Flash content into more unique /non-traditional applications on any OS, and generally increase the spread of Flash content across all media platforms. Then, the demand for the ability to create Flash content would increase. If Adobe maintained the control of the applications used to develop the content that is used by these players, this would definitely increase their revenue. This seems like more of a “natural next step” then releasing the Flex SDK.
I say this only to question the true motives for going open source, not just to be another complainer. It doesn’t seem a complete coincidence that Microsoft Silverlight was officially released 11 days ago. But regardless of their motives, I tip my hat to Adobe for this bold move. Like Josh Tynjala talked about, there is definitely the possibility that people will be able to develop Flex and perhaps even Flash content without need for Adobe products. And although they will still have a monopoly on their FlashPlayer, this is not the product that brings in money for them.
In any case, I do agree that this will “further fuel its momentum and innovation.” Which, not so coincidentally, will help Flash platform development to remain more attractive than Silverlight (unless Microsoft follows suit). Way to go Adobe.
Adobe CS 3 Web Premium installation fiasco
Apr 25th
My copy of Adobe Creative Suite 3 Web Premium arrived in the mail today! It contains the following major programs on a single DVD:
- Dreamweaver CS3
- Flash CS3 Professional
- Photoshop CS3 Extended
- Illustrator CS3
- Fireworks CS3
- Acrobat 8 Professional
- Contribute CS3
Needless to say, this image expresses how I felt when I opened the package:
However, after I finally got the installation process to complete almost *two hours* later, this image better expresses how I felt:
So I made the [apparently grave] mistake of installing Photoshop CS3 Public Beta when it first came out. After attempting to install my new suite, I got the following conflict:
No problem, just use the Add/Remove Programs tool to get rid of Photoshop CS3 Public Beta. Oddly enough, the uninstaller completed successfully, but didn’t do a single thing! I did a quick web search to see if anyone else had this problem and discovered this Adobe tech note titled, “Remove Photoshop CS3 public beta.” It instructed me to use a cleanup script that Adobe had created for just such a problem. It came with a not-so-comforting little disclaimer:
“WARNING: Before running the CS3Clean Script, it is critical that you back up your hard drive including all data, content, and applications. Failure to do so, and failure to follow the instructions included with the script, could result loss of the contents of your hard drive.”
Are you kidding me!? I have to backup my *entire* hard drive in order to go from an Adobe Photoshop CS3 Beta to the real deal?? Did I just go back in time 10 years? And according to this Adobe forum post, the backed up data had to be on some media that was complete disconnected from the system!
…Well, to avoid the possibility of wanting to go postal on Adobe if I lost my data, I decided I would heed the advice, although I was not at all happy about it.
Once complete, I downloaded the Adobe cleanup script zip archive, but noticed it contained the following file:
I seriously thought there was a fair chance I was about to lose my entire hard drive by continuing with the process; but since I didn’t seem to have an alternative, I did it anyway.
I had to run the CS3Clean.exe script 3 times! The first time I discovered that I apparently didn’t have the “Windows Installer CleanUp Utility” installed on my system and had to download it here. After running the script the second time, it had an option to “preview” the changes that would occur without actually doing them–I thought this a wise idea so I went with it. Unfortunately, after the preview, the script shut down automatically and I had to start it back up from the beginning. It actually executed fully the third time, at “level 1″ (whatever that meant). Finally, the CS3 installation began successfully–or so I thought. When installation finally completed, I got the following error:
No Illustrator CS3? And no reason?? I still haven’t figured out why there is a problem with this and the last time I called Adobe I had an hour wait time. Grrr…
Oh, and another screwup: when I started Flash CS3 there was an “Upgrade Check.” It automatically correctly determined that I was upgrading from CS 2.3 Premium and asked for me to enter the serial #. I entered the serial number and it said it was invalid. Apparently, I had to enter the serial number on my CS2 Premium case labeled “Acrobat Pro.”
Seriously, this is the worst install experience I’ve ever had. Setting up my Linux distro was easier than this. I’m usually a fan of Adobe, but this was a big mistake of theirs in my eyes. Jumping through all these hoops and problems is lame, but more importantly, no one’s hard drive should ever be at risk because they want to install an Adobe product.
