The talk was recorded over Connect and I will update this post when that is made available.

• Welcome Screen redesign
• Lessons Panel
• Instant Transition Mode
• Full code mode in Code Editor
• Edge Symbol file format
• Google Chrome Frame support for down level browsers
• Auto-Keyframe mode changes
• Editable Time Codes
• Context menu improvements
• Copy & Paste, Import & Export Symbols
• Publish to DPS
• Publish to iBooks
• Render Static HTML
• Localization

That’s a LOT of new stuff since preview 5! In preparation for these release, I’ve recorded six new videos focusing on specific aspects of this release.

Adobe Edge Preview 6: Welcome Screen and Lessons Panel

Joseph Labrecque demonstrates the new enhanced welcome screen and new Lessons Panel in Adobe Edge Preview 6.

Adobe Edge Preview 6: Keyboard Shortcuts Dialog

Joseph Labrecque demonstrates the new keyboard shortcuts dialog in Adobe Edge Preview 6.

Adobe Edge Preview 6: Code Panel

Joseph Labrecque demonstrates the new Code Panel in Adobe Edge Preview 6.

Adobe Edge Preview 6: Exporting and Importing Symbols

Joseph Labrecque demonstrates the export and import of Symbols in Adobe Edge Preview 6.

Adobe Edge Preview 6: Publish Settings Enhancements

Joseph Labrecque demonstrates the enhancements made to publish settings in Adobe Edge Preview 6.

Adobe Edge Preview 6: General Enhancements

Joseph Labrecque demonstrates a few of the general enhancements in Adobe Edge Preview 6.

As always, these and other Edge resources can be accesses via http://memoryspiral.com/adobeedge/.

FLASH LIVES!

The release of Flash Player 11 and Adobe AIR 3 six months ago has greatly expanded the capabilities of the platform in ways that truly overshadow previous releases in terms of the raw capabilities added to the platform – but there are a lot of nice little things to talk about as well.

In this session, Joseph Labrecque, author of the O’Reilly books “What’s New in Flash Player 11” and “What’s New in Adobe AIR 3”, will present a number of examples showcasing the more stand-out features of these releases along with examples of additions recently released with Flash Player 11.2 and AIR 3.2. For those who have yet to explore all of the new runtime additions and enhancements – this is a great opportunity to do so!

Download the slides or view the recording!

AdobeTV

First, check out the great content over at AdobeTV. There are videos from Adobe peeps like Paul Trani and Tom Barclay – and additional materials from myself and my colleagues Anastasia McCune and Justin Seeley:

Learn Flash Professional CS6: Getting Started with Flash Professional CS6 

• What is Flash Professional CS6? (Justin Seeley)
• The Flash interface (Joseph Labrecque)
• The Welcome Screen (Joseph Labrecque)
• The Main Menu Bar (Joseph Labrecque)
• The Toolbar (Joseph Labrecque)
• The Stage and the Work Area (Joseph Labrecque)

Learn Flash Professional CS6: What’s New in Flash Professional CS6

• Generating sprite sheets from the library (Anastasia McCune)
• Generating sprite sheets from the Stage (Anastasia McCune)
• Creating a prepackaged AIR app (Anastasia McCune)
• Using AIR native extensions (Anastasia McCune)
• Simulating mobile content with the new Content Simulator (Anastasia McCune)

Video2Brain

I also have the following new features course available from Video2Brain. A “getting started” course is also in the works.

Adobe Flash Professional CS6: New Features Workshop
Learn What’s New and How It Affects You
In this workshop, Flash authority Joseph Labrecque looks at the new features available in Flash Professional CS6 and shows you how to incorporate them into your workflow. You’ll learn about the awesome new mobile simulator and new export options like sprite sheets and PNG sequences, as well as less obvious additions like advanced debugging and publish options. You’ll also see what features have been removed and how that affects what you do in Flash Professional.

Peachpit / Adobe Press

Lastly, here is a lengthy publication coming from Peachpit and Adobe Press. It’s a DVD course which comes with a small ~50 page book and can be used to study for the Adobe Certified Associate (ACA) exam!

Adobe Flash Professional CS6: Learn by Video
Core Training in Rich Media Communication
This critically acclaimed training program from Adobe Press and video2brain combines exceptional quality HD video and a printed reference to teach the fundamentals of Flash Professional CS6 as well as the basic principles of rich media design. Structured around the objectives of the Adobe Certified Associate exam “Rich Media Communication Using Adobe Flash Professional CS6”, the product includes 10 hours of video, complete with lesson files (included on the DVD), assessment quizzes, and review materials. The video’s unique interface allows the viewer to jump to any topic and bookmark favorite sections. The unique Watch-and-Work mode shrinks the video into a small window to allow the student to follow along with the instructor in Flash.

Experienced instructor Joseph Labrecque presents all the foundational features in Flash Professional CS6 through workable examples. The student gains a solid understanding of the tools so they can continue along any path: animation, gaming, application and mobile development, or working with premium video solutions.

Joseph starts with a survey of all major application interface elements, asset creation and manipulation, and document properties and file types. He continues with a deep look into the Flash Library and the use of different symbol types across projects to exploit robust animation techniques using the timeline. Next, he explores the inclusion of sound and video, the ActionScript programming language, and application development for mobile devices. Finally, Joseph demonstrates testing and debugging applications before compiling and publishing onto a variety of platforms.

The D2W conference in Kansas City, MO is coming up fast! This will be my second year at D2W and I’m getting pretty amped up for it. For those not in the know; D2W is the Designer/Developer/Mobile Workflow Conference and includes just a stunning amount of great people speaking, organizing, and attending: tons of Adobe and community people… authors, video tutorialists, and real honest-to-goodness experts in such a variety of areas.

I’m thrilled to be speaking again this year, this time on two of my most favourite subjects: Flash and Edge :)  Check out the session information below.

The Flashy Side of Adobe Edge

Thursday, May 17 9:45 a.m. – 10:45 a.m.

What features could Adobe Edge possibly include that would appeal to designers and developers working in Flash Professional? Well, turns out to be a whole lot! From authoring motion content to rich interactivity for the web, Edge effectively borrows a lot of the familiar constructs and paradigms from Flash Professional – and even improves upon some. We’ll walk through similarities between Flash Professional and Edge and how designers familiar with older toolsets can adapt that knowledge when integrating Edge into their workflow. We’ll also look at methods of sharing assets and the transport of content between related applications.

Also, I’ll be giving away a copy of my “Adobe Edge Quickstart Guide” during the session! Bring business cards!!!

Register for D2W now at http://d2wc.eventbrite.com/!

Adobe Flash Professional CS6: New Features Workshop

Learn What’s New and How It Affects You

In this course, Flash authority Joseph Labrecque looks at the new features available in Flash Professional CS6 and shows you how to incorporate them into your workflow. You’ll learn about the awesome new mobile simulator and new export options like sprite sheets and PNG sequences, as well as less obvious additions like advanced debugging and publish options. You’ll also see what features have been removed and how that affects what you do in Flash Professional.

In this workshop you’ll learn all about the new and upgraded features in Adobe Flash Professional CS6. The contents of this course include:

Introducing Flash Professional CS6
This chapter introduces Flash Professional CS6 and provides a quick overview of the new features we’ll cover in this course.

Exporting Assets
This chapter will look into some of the exciting new export options that are included in Flash Professional CS6.

Mobile Content Simulator
This chapter provides a detailed examination of the new Mobile Content Simulator. This exciting new tool greatly speeds up the testing of mobile-specific APIs using enhanced simulation.

Debugging
This chapter explores some of the debugging enhancements included in Flash Professional CS6.

Publishing Options
This chapter will examine enhancements to the various publishing options that are now available. We’ll also examine new functionality such as captive runtime support and ANE integration.

Additional Considerations
This chapter wraps up the course with some thoughts on the future of Flash Professional and the platform in general.

If you are looking for something more comprehensive: I have a Adobe Flash Professional CS6: Learn by Video: Core Training in Rich Media Communication course that will be released soon as well.

You can also grab the full session recording!

Some of the highlights for me included an updated demonstration of Monocle – a powerful new SWF profiler that seems to offer just about any information one would need when profiling Flash applications. Also of note was a demonstration of ActionScript Workers – finally we are about to have concurrency in ActionScript!

Interested in watching the whole thing yourselves? It was actually recorded by a number of community members and can be viewed via the following:

• Mike’s Presentation
• Lee’s Presentation
• Both presentations as recorded by (John Wilker)

Related to all of this; now that Flash Player 10.2 and AIR 3.2 have been released, both Flash Player 11.3 and AIR 3.3 betas are now out at Adobe Labs. Lots of good stuff:

• Full screen keyboard input
• Frame label events
• MouseEvent.RELEASE_OUTSIDE
• ApplicationDomain.getQualifiedDefinitionNames()
• Drivers gating hardware acceleration relaxed to 2006
• New driverInfo details
• Low latency audio support for streaming audio through NetStream
• BitmapData.drawWithQuality
• BitmapData.encode()
• Protected Mode for Firefox
• Flash Player background updates
• Low latency audio support
• Texture Streaming for Stage3D
• USB debugging for AIR iOS
• Enhanced Background behavior for AIR iOS
• Stylus support for Android 4.0
• Simulator Support (Mac)
• Aspect Ratio Enhancements
• Improved Mac App Store Support

Want more insight? Thibault Imbert has even deeper information on these goodies over at ByteArray.org.

Be sure to have a look at the Flash Runtimes Whitepaper if you haven’t already – it contains a ton of great information and will be updated as things are added in the future.

Lastly, I want to make it clear that (IMO) Flash is not “dead” in any way from where I am standing. I was pretty beaten down by the debacle in November and going into this year – honestly didn’t expect to be doing much Flash work at all. Turns out that pretty much all I am doing is related to Flash apart from my work with Adobe Edge.

I have 3.5 contracts with publishers for Flash content – the majority of that work is actually complete on my side of things. I’ll be talking more about these projects very shortly. In my day-to-day job at the university, I’ve being doing all sorts of crazy stuff with Flash, Flex, and AIR and have had plenty of client work in this area as well. In fact, I’ve had to turn potential clients away numerous times and most all of this is Flash related!

Maybe mine is a unique case – but with my own experiences over the past few months along with chatter from others working in the industry, coupled with some really (I mean really) positive internal messaging I’ve heard from Adobe, and topped off with events like this recent one with Mike and Lee… no denying it. Flash LIVES!

This is actually an Adobe Edge animation – click through to view!

My publisher, Packt, has provided me with a giveaway for 360|Flex. I’ll collect business cards during my session and will draw one name for the givaway. The winner will receive a print copy of my new Adobe Edge Quickstart Guide!

Leveraging BlazeDS, Java, and Flex: Dynamic Data Transfer

Flex developers have it easy when using ColdFusion to transfer data over the Action Message Format (AMF) transfer protocol because these services are built into the core ColdFusion server. What if you aren’t using ColdFusion though? Can you get the same benefits of AMF when using Java? Yes – by employing the open source Adobe BlazeDS project!

This talk will include an overview of these technologies, how to configure them to work together, and provide examples of data transfer across systems through a variety of ActionScript/Flex code examples. Additionally we’ll examine a use-case for BlazeDS, Java Spring, and Flex in higher-education to aid in the gathering of a variety of media types to perform assessment activities across departments through a unique system of binary and textual submissions by responder groups within certain participating programs.

So that’s my session, but there are a ton of other great speakers and topics being presented. A bunch of people from Adobe, Appcelerator, and Sencha are going to be there too. Nightly parties and extended training sessions on Sunday. All good stuff!

Check out the schedule!

Have a chance to chat with all the great speakers, sponsors, and attendees!

And don’t forget to REGISTER! It has sold out in the past!