Category Archives: Flash

Still Waiting…

Posted on by
1

Here’s a simple, observable lesson for historical perspective:

Adobe LiveMotion will *destroy* Macromedia Flash! (tweets from 2002)

AJAX will *destroy* Adobe Flash! (tweets from 2005) ...though this could go for 'Macromedia Flash' too.

Microsoft Silverlight will *destroy* Adobe Flash! (tweets from 2007)

Sun Microsystems JavaFX will *destroy* Adobe Flash! (tweets from 2007)

HTML5 will *destroy* Adobe Flash! (tweets from 2009)

Adobe AIR will *destroy* Adobe Flash! (tweets from 2011)

Guess what? Not dead yet. Not by a long shot.

Stay tuned to happenings around Adobe MAX next week for more insights :)

Flash Player 11 and AIR 3 Books

Posted on by
Reply

Adobe today announced that Flash Player 11 and AIR 3 will be shipping fairly soon. This is great news for the community because the runtimes are LOADED with great new features. How do I know the features are great? Because I’ve been working with them for the past couple of months while writing a set of companion books for O’Reilly about them both! In fact – the drafts are complete as of last night and are currently in tech review.

What’s New in Flash Player 11

Comprehensive Quickstarts for Browser-Based Experiences

Author: Joseph Labrecque
Publisher: O’Reilly Media (October, 2011)
ISBN-13: 9781449311094
Pages: 60 (estimated)

This book will detail the various enhancements, new functionalities, and general improvements available in this new version of Adobe Flash Player. Each item is explained in detail and when possible, a series of screen captures and a full code examples will be provided, enabling you to both grasp the new feature in a visual way, and integrate the feature into your own code quickly, based upon example.

What’s New in Adobe AIR 3

Comprehensive Quickstarts for Desktop and Mobile

Author: Joseph Labrecque
Publisher: O’Reilly Media (October, 2011)
ISBN-13: 9781449311070
Pages: 80 (estimated)

This book will detail the various enhancements, new functionalities, and general improvements available in this new version of Adobe AIR. Each item is explained in detail and when possible, a series of screen captures and a full code examples will be provided, enabling you to both grasp the new feature in a visual way, and integrate the feature into your own code quickly, based upon example.

More information will be provided once these books are in the hands of the editor!

Creating Custom Context Menus in Flash

Posted on by
Reply

The assets for my 5 minute quick tip talk for the 2011 Adobe Education Leader Institute are located here. This is the completed example (Flash Professional CS5.5):
[download AEL2011_FlashContextMenu]

Here is an image preview:

Custom Context Menus!

Here is the SWF:

Flash Player 10.2 or greater is required!

And here be the code bits!

package  {
	import flash.display.Sprite;
	import flash.ui.ContextMenu;
	import flash.ui.ContextMenuItem;
	import flash.ui.ContextMenuBuiltInItems;
	import flash.net.URLRequest;
	import flash.net.navigateToURL;
	import flash.events.ContextMenuEvent;

	public class CustomMenu extends Sprite {
		private const MENUITEM_FVM:String = "©2011 Fractured Vision Media, LLC";
		private const MENUITEM_JOSEPH:String = "Joseph Labrecque";

		public function CustomMenu(){
			buildMenu();
		}

		private function buildMenu():void {
			var myMenu:ContextMenu = new ContextMenu();
			myMenu.hideBuiltInItems();

			var menuItem0:ContextMenuItem = new ContextMenuItem(MENUITEM_FVM);
			menuItem0.addEventListener(ContextMenuEvent.MENU_ITEM_SELECT, visitURL);

			var menuItem1:ContextMenuItem = new ContextMenuItem(MENUITEM_JOSEPH);
			menuItem1.addEventListener(ContextMenuEvent.MENU_ITEM_SELECT, visitURL);
			menuItem1.separatorBefore = true;

			myMenu.customItems.push(menuItem0);
			myMenu.customItems.push(menuItem1);

			this.contextMenu = myMenu;
		}

		private function visitURL(e:ContextMenuEvent):void {
			var site:String = "";
			switch(e.target.caption){
				case MENUITEM_FVM:
					site = "http://fracturedvisionmedia.com/";
					break;
				case MENUITEM_JOSEPH:
					site = "http://josephLabrecque.com/";
					break;
			}
			navigateToURL(new URLRequest(site), "_blank");
		}

	}

}

Adobe Press: Mobile Development with Flash Professional CS5.5

Posted on by
Reply

I’m happy to announce that I’ve undertaken a new authoring project for Adobe Press along with co-author Peter Elst and video2brain! The project is titled Mobile Development with Flash Professional CS5.5 and Flash Builder 4.5 : Learn by Video and is available for preorder on the Adobe Press website and at Amazon.com.

At this point, I’m nearly half-way through recording my video segments for the project and feel as though everything is coming together really nicely. I’m using Flash Professional for most of my segments, although the lessons Peter is working on will cover Flash Builder as well. While the Flash Professional code editor definitely leaves something to be desired after doing so much work with Flash Builder, I’m finding the focus on Flash Pro to be a rather welcome one for myself. I expect recording to be completed during the first week of June.

Anyhow- this makes two major publications so far this year- both of them on topics that I just cannot get enough of!

Note that I’ve set up a page to include information for all my publications over at http://josephlabrecque.com/books/.

Mobile Development with Flash Professional CS5.5 and Flash Builder 4.5 : Learn by Video

Authors: video2brain, Peter Elst, Joseph Labrecque
Publisher: Adobe Press; 1 edition (August 26, 2011)
ISBN-10: 0321788109
ISBN-13: 978-0321788108

Mobile Development with Flash Professional CS5.5

After an industry debate that made headlines for months, designers and developers can use their Adobe Flash Professional, Flex, and ActionScript skills to quickly begin developing applications for the iPhone, iPad, and iPod touch, as well as for Android devices. In this in-depth course, you’ll learn from the ground up how to set up your system to become a mobile developer, create applications, and master each step of the publishing process.

Where to buy?

Flash Video: Across Desktop, Tablets, and Phones

Posted on by
Reply

The University of Denver held a TEDx event today. We fed an RTMP signal through a VBrick unit to an internal Flash Media Server for authentication to be distributed over CDN and exposed to viewers through the Open Source Media Framework Strobe Media Playback.

I was curious how the feed would look over a variety of devices. Here are the results :)

Microsoft Windows 7

BlackBerry Tablet OS

Google Android

Excellent!