Despite the let down of non-US pricing being 1.6 times the US cost once again, and also some comments on the CS4 logo, the response has been overwhelmingly positive. I'd have to agree, but I also think that not too much new information was provided today other than pricing. At least for Flash CS4, I had seen and/or heard about all but one of the features discussed today at various conferences over the past year or more. The one new feature to me: Procedural modeling with Deco and Spray Brush. Nice small surprise feature addition.
While the enhancements across all of the CS4 apps are worth noting, I mainly work in Flex and Flash, so the rest of this post will focus on Flash CS4. There are some great posts out there already this morning, so I'll link to those instead of regurgitating the same content:
Keith Peters - I like Flash CS4
Keith does a great job going over some features as it applies to developers, and describes how some minor changes (aka the not-hyped ones) have really solved some of his pain points while working in the IDE. Keith has also posted some screenshots of the new interface.
Jen deHaan - Flash CS4: The photo tour of features
Jen has re-started her blog, now focusing it on Flash CS4 and the new motion model for animation. This post has the most thorough collection of Flash CS4 screenshots. I would also say the most official seeing as how Jen works for Adobe. If you can't wait until the release to check everything out, this is the blog post to read.
According to Flash Platform Evangelist Lee Brimlow, Adobe will announce the CS4 suite on September 23rd via a web broadcast that you can register for today. The news is also posted on Adobe.com, so it is safe to say this is official.
Lee is careful to mention, however, that this is not the release date for CS4 -- just the announcement of new features and what one can expect when CS4 is available for purchase. I'm guessing that, like Adobe did with CS3, they will post additional betas such as Flash CS4 to Adobe Labs for everyone to play with after the announcement on the 23rd. Dreamweaver CS4, Fireworks CS4 and Soundbooth CS4 betas are already available for download on Adobe Labs.
I finally got around to watching the 360|Flex keynote with Mark Anders, Justin Everett-Church and more, and just like somanyothers have blogged, there is some really great information included on Flex 4 (Gumbo), Thermo, Flash Player 10 and more. While the video is over an hour long, it is worth the investment in time:
Adobe released beta 2 of Flash Player 10 this afternoon, and I was very excited to see in the release notes that they have added in a new method of the Loader class, unloadAndStop(). From said release notes:
unloadAndStop — This new ActionScript 3.0 API adds unload functionality similar to the unload behavior in ActionScript 2.0. After calling unloadAndStop on loaded content it will be immediately removed stopping all audio, removing eventListeners, and becoming inaccessible through ActionScript.
In short, this should make it much simpler to free a loaded SWF for garbage collection, as opposed to having to resort to hacks like SoundMixer.stopAll() and then praying that the content isn't just floating around somewhere waiting to be picked up.
In the comments of Grant's post I read about an additional item that has found its way into FP10 beta 2: calling System.gc() will now work in all Flash Players, not just the debug versions as stated in the AS3 documentation:
System.gc()
Language Version : ActionScript 3.0
Runtime Versions : AIR 1.0, Flash Player 9.0.115.0
Forces the garbage collection process.
For the Flash Player debugger version and AIR applications only. In an AIR application, the System.gc() method is only enabled in content running in the AIR Debug Launcher (ADL) or, in an installed applcation, in content in the application security sandbox.
Once again, great job Adobe at listening to the requests of your developers!
When your projects include SWF files created with Adobe Flash or Flex, the newly updated Insert Flash feature in Dreamweaver, which now uses the open source SWFObject 2.0 codebase, enables you to visually preview your SWF file in context using Live Preview and even design the static, alternative HTML/CSS content right in Design view, too.
The thing that struck me most here was that SWFObject 2 will be used as the default for embedding Flash content in HTML pages, which is very cool. For those who don't know, Adobe has always rolled their own embedding code which was cumbersome at best. Every developer I know would end up creating their own HTML files and using SWFObject to embed Flash - in essence redoing what Dreamweaver had already done for them, albeit poorly. It is nice to see Adobe yet again making great use of the open source contributions of the community.
What is more exciting to me, however, is that one can assume Flash CS4 and the next version of Flex (either Flex 4, or an update to Flex 3) will use SWFObject to embed the SWFs they publish as well. A quick search of the SWFObject Google Group confirms this as well.
