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Writing SWX Chapter for The Essential Guide to Open Source Flash Development

About a month ago Aral Balkan mentioned he wasn't finding the time to write a chapter on SWX for an upcoming Friends of Ed book, so I offered to step in to write the chapter for The Essential Guide to Open Source Flash Development on SWX for Flash and Flash Lite.

It is an honor to be a part of this book with such open source Flash community members as Chris Allen, John Grden, Wade Arnold, Carlos Ulloa, Moses Gunesch and others. You can read bios of all the authors on the book's bio page.

I am wrapping up the last round of review this weekend, and the book should be published and available in July. You can pre-order the book on Amazon.com today for about $31.

Flash Player 9.0.124 Released with Security Updates

We knew this was coming for some time now and today Adobe finally released the 9.0.124 Flash Player which includes security updates that have an effect on any sites you may have built using AMFPHP, SWX, or any other Flash remoting services.

At issue is the crossdomain.xml file -- you'll need to add or update the file to ensure your services continue to function properly. Wade Arnold, a contributor to AMFPHP (which is also included with and used in SWX) has a great write-up on how to fix AMFPHP/SWX including a sample you can download and edit for your domain on his blog.

More details about the player, and the newly revamped Flash Player Download Center, can be found on Justin Everett-Church's blog posting about Flash Player 9.0.124. Adobe Developer Center has a helpful write-up about the exact changes made. Lastly, John Dowdell has an informative post with lots of helpful links.

Adobe has done a great job with communicating to the community that this change would be coming, and has provided a lot of resources to ensure sites were not affected. Today's information push is just another example of the great communication. Kudos, Flash Player team!

The real deal with Flash on the iPhone, from Adobe

Mike Downey, a Platform Evangelist at Adobe, just posted the entire, correct story of Flash on the iPhone. As mentioned in his post, a lot of people have been blogging about how Flash is coming to the iPhone. However, the reports of Adobe CEO's comments about Flash support on the iPhone yesterday were not necessarily complete and accurate, so Mike has taken upon himself to clear the air.

Worth the read, if nothing else, to help guide you through the hype to what the real story is...

Update: Bill Perry, also from Adobe, has also posted an even a more detailed account of the facts on his Flash Devices blog.

Go ActionScript 3.0 Animation Platform Released

Go ActionScript Animation Platform has just been released by the talented (and former Portland resident) Moses Gunesch. You may know Moses as the developer of FUSE, one of the first (and best) ActionScript 2 animation engines. Moses is back with a community-led animation platform initiative which has been in the works for some time.

You can read more about it on the open source project's blog and website, but here is a quick overview from the project's website:

"The Go ActionScript Animation Platform ("GOASAP") is a lightweight, portable set of generic base classes for buliding AS3 animation tools. Go provides structure and core functionality, but leaves the specifics to you.

"Go intends to support both linear (tweened) and physics animation, and could theoretically be extended to other base types, perhaps Collada animation for example. However at the time of this writing Go is at an early stage and the physics side is yet to be developed. Parallel and sequenced tweens are already supported by several optional utility classes: PlayableGroup, Sequence, and SequenceCA – a sequence with "custom advance" options."

Flash 10 / CS4 / “Diesel” Sneak Peek

Today at FITC Hollywood Richard Galvan, Adobe Flash Product Manager, gave a sneak peek at an upcoming feature in Flash 10 / CS4 / "Diesel". I am really surprised that I haven't read about this new feature anywhere else, so I thought I would post for those who couldn't make it to the conference.

That said, I was by no means expecting anything big to come from Adobe at FITC, mainly because they just held MAX where they previewed dozens of new applications and technologies. But, we were blessed with one new sneak:

The next version of the Flash IDE, Flash 10 "Diesel", will feature a brand new timeline animation model. What's the difference? There will no longer be a need for keyframes. Yes, it sounds drastic, but based on the demo, this is going to make timeline animations _much_ easier to work with and make Flash much easier for beginners.

In short you will be able to select an object on the stage, right-click and choose "Add Motion/Shape Tween", and the timeline layer with the object will turn red to signify that it now contains a tween. Then you move the object (if you want to animate its motion) to create the end state. Want to extend the length of the tween? Just drag the timeline layer out over additional frames. Basically, this model completely fixes broken tweens -- you can no longer have a tween that is "broken" because it is missing a keyframe because tweens are no longer tied to keyframes.

An additional cool feature with this is that when you move the object to the end state, a dotted line shows up along the path of the tween, showing you exactly where the object is going to move to. Want to change the path? Just move the object and the line automatically updates. Not good enough? Adjust the line just like any other curved line in Flash/Illustrator making it more rounded, or increase the length by adjusting the end point to your liking. You can also choose the Transform tool and use it to squish/expand or otherwise transform your tween path.

Maybe I missed something and this had been announced at MAX as well, but if not, I am really surprised that I haven't seen this up on MXNA yet!

SWX Contest Announced

Aral Balkan has just announced swxformat.org/contest which seems like a great way to spread the word about SWX and get more developers trying out the new project.

The competition has three categories: Web, Mobile, and API, and each of the three winners will receive a prize package worth almost $4,000. Not a shabby deal at all. The prize packages include a copy of Adobe CS 3 Web Premium Bundle, a one year premium subscription to Lynda.com, a Nabaztag/tag wi-fi bunny, and an iPod Touch. I have a Nabaztag/tag, and winning one of these alone is worth a few hours of work!

If you have been following the SWX project at all, you already know that I have used SWX on a couple of projects and that I am a huge fan of its simplicity. It just works, and it makes your life as a developer easier. What's not to like? This contest is the perfect way to give it a shot and possibily win some cool stuff.

More details on the contest can be found on the SWX site.

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