Tag Archive for 'adobe'

09
Jun
10

why no AIR store?

By Jason Langdon 4 Comments
Categories: Air Tags: , , , , .

Does anyone else find it odd that there’s no Adobe backed central repository for distributing AIR applications? I know that the Central runtime never really went anywhere (apparently due to the technical limitations of the users computer at the time).

So is the world ready for a centralised, built for developers, run for users AIR (dare I say it) App store?

Perhaps it’s time to feed Apple a bit of it’s own medicine, pretending to be innovative in an area that quite clearly has already been done - just not marketed properly.

This time around however, I think Adobe (and it’s throng of Flash developers) can cling to the coattails of Apple’s App Store - but with the promise of being able to use the application across all devices that have the Flash Player installed.

I’m hoping that the latest Flash Player version will allow this to become a reality.

If anyone’s got information about businesses that have already tried to monetise this please add your comments at the bottom.

UPDATE: I’ve been reliably informed by Tink in the comments that there is an Adobe AIR Marketplace. Possibly the fact that I don’t know about it means that there’s still a bit of marketing work to be done somewhere.

27
May
10

Flash 10.1 - Failure is not an option

By Jason Langdon 4 Comments
Categories: Flash Tags: , , , , .

In light of the recent debate sparked by Steve Jobs’ comments regarding Flash and it’s perceived weaknesses I thought I’d take an opportunity to make it patently clear - the perception of Flash is that it’s a slow, memory and cpu intensive, battery sucking sun of a gun!

Now while I found it relatively easy to pick apart what Jobs said in my previous post, there’s certainly a long way to go to convince the rest of the tech world that the things he’s saying are false. It seems that Adobe are putting a good percentage of their eggs in the Flash Player 10.1 basket as a sign to all those interested in the debate that they are trying to address all (or most) of the issues that have been raised. My fear is that if this release isn’t the golden hair child that Adobe’s making it out to be, then we’ve got a bit of a case of the boy crying wolf on our hands.

The more I read (and I’ve been keeping close tabs on what both sides are saying), the more I see the battle lines are being drawn based on a lot of misinformation. Or more succinctly, the naysayers are not aware of the work that’s been going into 10.1 - fair enough I suppose, you’re only as good as your last innings…

So it’s for this reason that the only thing that really matters is that this latest release gets beta tested to buggery, delivers on the feature-set and enhancements that are being touted, and the millions of other Flash developers out there continue to have a livelihood that doesn’t involve jumping through hoops that are wasteful, and frustrating.

I’m slightly miffed that it’s taken a massive kick in the pants by a competitor (though perhaps that’s always the way…) to open Adobe’s eyes to some of the more regularly complained about issues with Flash. The issues that are now trying to be addressed aren’t new, they’re issues that Flash Designers and Developers have been on Adobe’s case about for many years … so long as their eyes are now open (and remain so), well I suppose that’s a start.

I can’t remember a tech issue that’s gotten me this energised for years! So I’m looking forward to seeing what devices start to utilise the forth coming Flash Player, and how they (and there battery life) perform.

Failure is not an option.

01
Jun
09

Flash Catalyst or Catastrophe?

By Jason Langdon 14 Comments
Categories: Flash and Flex Tags: , , , , , , , .

I’ve been watching the large number of blog links regarding the news from Adobe labs that Flash Catalyst is now in public Beta; naturally I had to download and have a go myself.

My first impressions are not good.

It seems like they’ve decided to invent their own usability best practices for the tool shortcuts. Where the hell is the pan tool? Why doesn’t holding the space bar and then using the mouse to scroll perform a pan? Keyboard shortcuts for delete don’t seem to work in the layers panel. Where is the align panel? Do I really have to right click an asset and select an align option from a dropdown? It’s a real mouseathon in the program at the moment. These aren’t really things I see as Beta related, they should just be in the app - which they are in any other CS4 product, so I’m mystified how these issues got through QA to this stage.

Probably the biggest issue is the speed (or lack thereof) of the program. Trying to edit a button’s state is painfully slow. I’m not sure whether this is to do with my system (dual core 2.4Ghz with 4Gb RAM on Vista) but I’d like to know if I’m the only one who thinks the program runs painfully slowly.

Aside from the usability and productivity issues I’m still at a loss as to why the CS4 core wasn’t used for this (or was it?) and even why we need a further dilution of the Flash product base. Surely Flash CS could be re badged as Flash Designer and the Catalyst toolset integrated (I realise I made that sound easier than it would be, but as it stands the introduction of this third tool looks like more of a money grab than anything else). This would go nicely alongside the newly re badged Flash Builder (which incidentally looks very good, so kudos to the Flex team).

I haven’t upgraded to CS4 as yet, and it’s for some of the reasons above that I haven’t. I just don’t know where the Flash products are headed, and quite frankly if this is where they’re going I may jump ship completely onto HMS Flex and let the “designers” out there handle getting the assets I’m after into a state in which I can use them. Though the right side of my brain may have something to say about that statement…

13
Dec
08

Google Maps geo-location by IP Flex example

By Jason Langdon 16 Comments
Categories: Flex Tags: , , , , .

Following on from my earlier post regarding Google Maps and Flex, I’ve put together a new example which I reckon’s pretty nifty.

Somehow my idea was spawned by Andrew Shorten’s post which discussed using Google Maps and the new Adobe Cocomo service to create a collaborative mapping application. And I say somehow, as I’m not really sure how I went off on the tangent of geo-locating IP addresses when the original post was about two users drawing stuff on a shared map! Maybe they can see where each other is on the map and start drawing a line until they meet somewhere in the middle…

Anyway, (il)logic aside here’s the example I whipped up:

View source is enabled in the following example.

The “Geo-locate IP address” text field should auto populate with your current IP address. The initial map will load and center on London.

When coding up the infowindow that displays, I found this reference on the Google site very useful - http://code.google.com/apis/maps/documentation/flash/reference.html

The actual information is coming from a whopping great big file that I’ve uploaded to my server which was supplied by Maxmind. There’s a few other databases that they supply, so I might add some more features to this example down the track. And they have pay for use and free versions of all their data, which is great!

05
Dec
08

Come together, right now… over Groups

By Jason Langdon 0 Comments
Categories: General Tags: , , , , , .

I’m a bit late on this one I know (had it in my todo’s to blog about it back when Max US was on) but Adobe have created a very cool Groups website to promote and manage the hundreds of different user groups around the world that deal with Adobe technology.

Here’s my beloved South Oz group (G’day Steven ;-)

The number of groups in London is still a bit thin on the ground, or am I not searching for the right keywords…?

And I love the welcome message, should just about cover everyone I reckon!

Will be interesting to see what comes of the community over the next few months and just how useful the site will be for networking purposes. Hopefully everyone that attends User Group meetings will be encouraged to go onto the Groups site and register as a member of their group (and any other ones they might be interested in). As a bit of a working nomad at the moment that should make it easier to network with your next port of call before even arriving there.

16
Sep
08

Flash Player ate all the pies!

By Jason Langdon 5 Comments
Categories: Flash Tags: , , , , .

I just checked out the latest Flash Player release candidate and was interested to see that the file size of the Mac and Linux versions are over 5.45Mb and 3.8Mb respectively. The PC version is still under 2Mb (which is very small for what it’s now capable of).

That got me to thinking about a few things. What were the average player sizes for the last few Flash Player releases? This led me to the Flash Player Archive page on the Adobe site. I downloaded the Flash 7, 8 and 9 archives and got to knocking up a quick average of the player sizes. Rather strangely there’s Linux releases in the Flash 7 archive but none in the Flash 8 archive (which I later discovered was due to there being no Flash Player 8 for linux per se as they went straight to 8.5)

Here’s the rough figures:

Note: I’m using the .zip, .exe, .hqx, .dmg or .tar.gz size not the actual size of the player inside the archive. Obviously this isn’t terribly scientific but I wanted to get a general guide to the increase in size of the actual single file end users have to download to install a player.

 Flash 7 Flash 8 Flash 9 Flash 10
ActiveX
 0.75Mb* 0.83Mb 1.33Mb 1.80Mb
Plugin
 0.69Mb 0.95Mb 1.43Mb 1.76Mb
Mac OS X
 1.68Mb (PowerPC) 1.42Mb (PowerPC) 2.10Mb 5.45Mb
Linux
 1.00Mb no stats available 2.83Mb 3.78Mb

* There was a 300Kb decrease in size from the initial release to the final release of this version of the Player

So that brings up a few questions. Why is the Flash Player 10 Mac release so much bigger than the Flash Player 9 one? Is there a lot more code optimisation still to do for this release?

The Linux version also seems to be getting bigger relative to the PC version. Is this because the PC version can utilise functionality already available to it in Windows, or…?

Is there a magical size that if the Flash Player were to exceed, users would be less inclined to download it? Or even if the Player was 10Mb it would still have the same penetration it currently enjoys?

Lots of things to ponder, and comments to make!

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