So while this is extremely exciting (as in, I just became an iPhone developer in 5 minutes this morning exciting) there are a few things to note:

1. This is only for standalone applications - meaning iPhone/iPod Touch applications that you download from Apple's App Store either on your phone or via iTunes. It does not include Flash played via the Safari mobile web browser. So no online Flash video just yet. Ryan Stewart, an Adobe Platform Evangelist tweeted the following today during the keynote: "When Apple is ready to bring the full Web browsing experience to iPhone users, we'll be ready to bring Flash Player to Safari."

2. You cannot load external SWFs into the apps you compile for the iPhone. The official line on this is: "iPhone applications built with Flash Platform tools are compiled into standard, native iPhone executable packages and there is no runtime interpreter that could be used to run ActionScript bytecode within the application." But in reality, Adobe is just staying within the limits imposed by Apple and their "no running other bytecode in apps" rule.

3. This won't be available until Flash CS5 is released. The good news here is that a public beta of Flash CS5 will be released before the end of 2009.

You can read all about this announcement over on Adobe Labs: Flash Professional CS5 Applications for iPhone, at the official Adobe press release, and in the Adobe Dev Center where they have posted an article about Developing for the Apple iPhone using Flash. The Dev Center article goes into some good technical explanation of what is going on behind the scenes.

There is also an extensive technical FAQ available on Adobe Labs which is worth the read.

Lastly, you can see some quick video of the Mythbusters-type segment they did as the announcement below:

I've been using the update for a few hours now, and it certainly makes Flash seem a bit snappier. In addition, my initial tests are showing that the OS X Spaces bug with Flash has been fixed. This was a major annoyance for me, and several other developers based upon the popularity of my blog post on the subject.

Thanks to Adobe for listening to customer feedback and working hard to get this update out as soon as possible.

Update: Based on comments below and other feedback I have received, it appears that the Flash CS4 update alone does not fix the Spaces issue for everyone. However, the combination of the latest Apple OS X 10.5.7 update (released 5/12/2009) and the Flash CS4 update seems to do the trick.

After some searching I came across a JSFL command for Flash CS3/CS4 that finds the parent symbol in the library of the item currently selected on the stage.

To install the command, download this file, unzip it and place the resulting JSFL file here:

Mac:
/Users/[username]/Library/Application Support/Adobe/Flash CS4/en/Configuration/

Windows:
\Program Files\Adobe\Adobe Flash CS4\en\Configuration\

You can also replace CS4 with CS3 for your flavor of choice.

Once installed, select the object on the stage that you wish to locate in the library and is likely buried way, way deep inside nested folders that the Illustrator to Flash process created. In the toolbar choose "Commands" and then "Find in Library". The object will now be highlighted in your library panel. Digging for the symbol no longer required.

I'd like to point out that I am not claiming to have written this script, but I found it on some site far, far off on the Internet and which I can no longer locate to provide credit where credit is due. I do remember, however, it was provided "free and open source", so all should be well.

The app includes class references for Adobe AIR 1.5, Adobe Flex 3.2 and Flash Player 10. I've been testing it this weekend and it has run great.

There is more information on Mike's website for the app, including a download link for the iTunes App Store. If you want to install the app directly on your phone, you'll need to search for "Mike Chambers" to find the app while it works its way into the App Store search.

Here is the description from the FlashPDX blog:

Join Lee Brimelow as he describes the recent changes and additions to the Flash Platform. New tools like Flash Catalyst along with major updates to Flash authoring, Flash Player, and Flex means a lot of new things to stay on top of. This informal session will allow you to get answers to your questions directly from Adobe.

I have seen Lee speak several times at various conferences, and it is always both informative and entertaining. If we're lucky he may even include some MMA action between his slides...

I was prompted to start looking at conference prices for 2009 when I heard that Flash On The Beach Miami's Super Early Bird pricing has been extended through Christmas. John Davey, the conference organizer, sent me a short email stating, "I think everyone is worried about the economy, and although it is worrying me too, I think a show of 'giving back' will be appreciated." I agree, John. And, thanks!

So, without further delay, here is a breakdown of pricing comparing some of the 'major' Flash/Flex conferences:

When looking at the table, you'll no doubt notice a few things right off. First, FlashForward continues to be the most expensive conference of the bunch at about a whopping 50% more expensive than FOTB or 306|Flex for the standard ticket price. I should mention that FlashForward has not posted their prices for 2009 and the table includes their 2008 pricing. Since the conference just changed hands last year (it was purchased by Beau Ambur of Metaliq) and they dropped the prices at that time, it is most likely safe to assume that they will keep the prices as-is this year.

Another item to consider is that with a new edition to be held in Miami, Flash on the Beach no longer requires international travel. My prior comparisons all had to take into account a flight to London and the very lopsided exchange rate for US Dollar to British Pound. With that no longer being necessary, FOTB is now even a better bargin for those of us in the States. Especially when you realize that all of the headlining speakers from the Brighton edition have also committed to speaking in Miami.

360|Flex has always had some of the lowest prices for a conference. They started out with all tickets priced at $360, but had since risen the price to $480. For their next conference they are taking a new approach of tiered pricing. As you can see above, the first 100 tickets are at the old $360 rate, the next 200 are at the standard $480 rate, and the last are at a premium rate of $550 (which is still about half of the cost of FlashForward).

Of course there is always the extra costs that go along with conferences like flight and hotel. Those certainly add to the cost, but for the most part are the same across the board (except in the case of international travel and/or exchange rates as mentioned previously), so I don't take those into consideration here.

What are your thoughts on the price of conferences in 2009? Am I missing any conferences that you would like to see added?

I had previously posted about the offline help and language reference locations in Flash CS4 which allows you to access the local copy of the language reference from within a web browser. But did you know that you could also access these local files from within the Flash CS4 help panel?

Normally when you access the help panel in Flash CS4 it automatically tries to load the online version of the documentation and language reference. I assume Adobe chose to do this so they could keep it updated and you could benefit from other user's comments in the Live Docs.

To access the local copy of Flash CS4 help and the language reference, just tell Flash to “keep you offline”:

Go to Window > Extensions > Connections. In the panel that pops up, click the arrow at the top-right and select “Offline options”. From there you can check the box for “Keep me offline”. Flash will then always default to using the offline help.

I should note that doing this may also prevent you from using any other panels which call out to the internet, such as Kuler and the Flash startup/new file screen. As of now I'm not using any Internet-connected panels and I have the splash screen set to not show on startup, so this works quite well for me.

Over the past year I had decided one can indeed have too many fonts, so when prompted to choose my free gift after installing and registering CS4 Master Collection, I chose the two free copies of Layers magazine. What a great opportunity to get some professional introduction to the new tools and features in CS4, right?

Wrong. And really, there are three problems compounded here.

First, the Layers issues which I was emailed (see problem number two) were for July/August (four months old) and September/October (two months old).  Why give away two issues of a magazine so old that they can't contain any CS4 information? How does this benefit users for the new software they just paid well over $2,000 to purchase? I understand some people might get upset that they didn't get their free gift right away and they have to wait up to two months for the next issue to be released, but they did choose a magazine. And I'd say it is fair to assume that people know they will be waiting for the latest issue to arrive if they choose to order a magazine. Either way, it took Layers (or Adobe) about 3 weeks to even send me an email to "pick up" my digital copies... which were up to four months old. This leads me to my second point.

Second, I received an email from Layers and Adobe saying that my two free issues of Layers were "now available" and I should "pick up the Jul-Aug-08 issue now". Reading through the email it is more trying to get me to subscribe to a fairly expensive magazine (even with the 60% discount) then anything else, but clicking on the pick up link takes you to a third-party digital delivery provider. When I got to the site I was fairly annoyed. If I chose to get a magazine as my free gift, why am I being provided a digital copy? I suppose I missed something when choosing my gift that notified me it would be a digital "download"? Even saying it is a "download" is incorrect, because as far as I can tell you can only view it online and when connected to the internet, without resorting to some hackery anyways.

Third, once I did "download" my digital copies, I was even more surprised to find that they contained no CS4 content, but rather all old CS3 content. So much for that introduction to the new tools and features in CS4 I was hoping for. A table of contents from the 'latest' issue is at the right.

All in all, I probably would have been better off taking the free fonts. Don't make the same mistake I did.

What does this mean for developers?

From what I read in the live blog, it allows you to write ActionScript 3 which runs on the server by defining a .sas file containing your AS3 code. In the same file you can also define code to run both on the server and in the client by setting a runat variable: runat="client" for client side code and runat="server" for server-side code.

As you can see in the photo above, pulled from the live blog feed, you can run ActionScript code on the server from within your normal client-side application code. If you can't quite make it out, the photo is showing MXML in Flex Builder.

And in this photo you can see how ActionScript can be embedded within HTML, just like PHP, etc. Notice how both client and server-side code allow calls directly to databases with an executeQuery() function, passing in an SQL statement.

I'm eager to hear more about this, but from what I can gather, unfortunately not much else was mentioned at the sneak peek session. Nothing on Adobe Labs yet, either. As more details become available, I will certainly be sure to blog about them.

Update: Looks like it is coming with the next release of ColdFusion server, codenamed Centaur, which makes a lot of sense. Some additional details can be found over at this blog post.

Yes, you could track events prior to this announcement by manually calling the JavaScript function embedded within the HTML page via ExternalInterface and passing it a unique identifier, but now you have two new options: either use the simple Flash or Flex component, or use the Flash or Flex AS3 tracking library. It should be noted that all four of these methods are being released as open source under the Apache 2 License.

Also, it looks like Rostislav will be looking at including this new GA library in his SWFAddress project (which already has support for tracking page views via the method I mentioned above).

The project is being hosted on Google Code where you can download the source and find documentation.