Archive for Adobe
December 9, 2008 at 11:59 am · Filed under Actionscript 2, Actionscript 3, Adobe, CS4, Flash, Flex
Big Spaceship released a nice AIR app today which allows you to download and view the entire AS3 language reference locally. However, you don't need an AIR app to view the language reference offline -- there are actually two other options.
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.
November 22, 2008 at 6:36 pm · Filed under Adobe, CS4
When you purchase any of the Adobe CS4 suites and register the product, Adobe gives you a free gift. Incentive to register, I suppose. They had done this in prior versions (I believe starting with CS3-I could be wrong), but they offered fewer options last time around and I ended up choosing a free Adobe font set.
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.
November 18, 2008 at 8:38 pm · Filed under Actionscript 3, Adobe, Adobe MAX, Flash, Web Apps
While I wasn't able to make it to MAX this year, I did follow Serge Jespers and Andrew Shorten's live blogging of the keynotes and the sneak peek session. Lots of amazing sneaks revealed tonight, but by far the best announcement for developers (in my opinion) was ActionScript 3 as a server-side language. I had actually blogged about how I wish this would be released back in July, 2007.
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.
November 18, 2008 at 10:04 am · Filed under Actionscript 3, Adobe, Flash, Flex, Open Source Flash, SWFAddress
Yesterday Google made a significant announcement which seems to have gotten overshadowed by all the MAX Conference goodness: the Google Analytics team has released an ActionScript 3 API for tracking user events within Flash.
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.
November 4, 2008 at 11:29 am · Filed under Adobe, CS3, CS4, Flash
Update (5/15/2009): It seems that the combination of the Apple OS X 10.5.7 update and the Flash CS4 10.0.2 update fixes this issue!
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As a developer I use both multiple monitors and OS X Spaces when working with the Flash IDE. While I don't usually code within Flash, but rather FDT, I do like to have the actions and output panels open on my second monitor while working in Flash. This allows me to free up space within the main Flash work area and requires much less collapsing and expanding of panels while working throughout the day.
I had come across a bug in Flash CS3 a while back where OS X Spaces would cause the Flash IDE windowing system to become completely unusable after switching between spaces a few times. Sadly, this bug is still present in Flash CS4 - and even more prevalent. So, I decided to email Adobe to see if the issue could be resolved. In the process I took a screencast of my desktop to help them diagnose the problem. Below is what I have sent them:
The issue in question with Flash CS4 (and possibly other CS4 apps) can be found in OS X 10.5 (I'm specifically running 10.5.5) when using two or more "spaces". Additionally, one of the panels needs to be in its own window -- for instance the actions panel should not be docked within the application interface -- and also placed on a second monitor/display from the application.
In the video below I am recording my main display while my secondary display is not visible, and on that second monitor I have an undocked actions panel. The video shows me switching back and forth between two OS X spaces - one with FDT open, the second with Flash CS4 open. As you can see, switching back and forth between the spaces can cause the Flash CS4 interface to become "detached" from itself. This ends up being a very frustrating issue because there isn't a lot that users can do to solve the problem, and any solutions I have found don't seem to work consistently. In fact, the only fix I have found is the bring the undocked windows (in this case the actions/output panel) back onto the main monitor, overlapping the Flash IDE.
Here is the video, re-sized to fit within my blog:
You can also download the original screencast as a Quicktime .MOV here, which is much larger and clear.
Sadly, no fix yet, but let's hope if enough people also note the issue it will be fixed in the next update.
November 4, 2008 at 12:24 am · Filed under Actionscript 3, Adobe, CS4, Flash
Since installing Flash CS4 a few weeks back, I have been searching my hard drive looking for the offline help and ActionScript 3.0 language reference. Using the offline docs can be much faster than waiting for the online version to load, and they are helpful on planes or in other places you don't have internet access. A great resource to bookmark, which is what I did in CS3 but haven't been able to do in CS4 since they were not in the same or a similar location.
Well, it took me quite a while, but I finally found the correct location in CS4 and thought it might help save someone a few minutes of searching by posting it here:
OS X:
/Library/Application Support/Adobe/Help/en_US/AS3LCR/Flash_10.0/index.html
Windows:
C:\Program Files\Common Files\Adobe\Help\en_US\AS3LCR\Flash_10.0\index.html
You can also find the entire offline documentation for the Flash CS4 IDE at the following location in OS X:
/Library/Application%20Support/Adobe/Help/en_US/Flash/10.0_UsingFlash/index.html
Note: Since I only have a copy of Flash CS4 for OS X, I don't have the path for Windows. If you find the docs location on Windows, please leave a comment and I'll update the post.
[Update: Windows path added. Thanks!]
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