I have seen a lot of people complaining about this (and Adobe has responded really well and explained their solid reasoning), but the fix is actually really simple and takes only two minutes to install. Just download the ZIP file mentioned in this blog comment on WordPress.org, copy the included files over your current installation, and you'll be all set. The fix includes a new version of SWFUpload, which is used on the WordPress upload page in the admin panel.

I'm not one to bash Adobe Creative Suite - it does after all make me a living. But this site, in all its simplicity, makes for some great humor. Especially when, as someone who spends most of their working day in Flash and other CS3 applications, I have seen my fair share of CS error messages.

http://whatismyflashplayerversion.com

As a developer, I get this question from clients all the time, so I thought it time to create a simple service where I could send them to check.

In the future I'd like to have the site automatically test to see if the version reported from SWFObject is the same as the latest version, and if not, provide a link (or better yet, Express Install) to the latest version. However, I'd prefer to not have to keep the latest version number updated by hand, so if anyone knows where I can find an official data feed (RSS, a simple text file, etc) of the latest general public release version, please post in the comments.

Enjoy!

Ryan Stewart does a great job of explaining it in his blog post:

So what does that mean? We are giving a special, search-engine optimized Flash Player to Yahoo and Google which is going to help them crawl through every bit of your SWF file. This Flash Player will act just like a person would in some cases. It will click on your buttons, it will move through the states of your application, get data from the server when your application normally would, and it will capture all of the text and data that you’ve got inside of your Flash-based application. We’ve basically provided a very powerful looking glass into SWF files so Google and Yahoo can pull out meaningful information.

Going a bit further, Justin Everett-Church also has a good post where he explains that content producers do not have to do or change anything for their SWFs to be indexable. My guess is, however, that as developers find out what Google likes best, they'll start building with that in mind. Knowing that will be the case, this announcement could have a huge impact on frameworks such as SWFAddress and other means developers have used recently to help make content more visible to search engines.

One key thing to note is Ted Patrick's post in where he makes a point to mention that dynamic data will also be indexed in the process. Considering I build most of my projects with the content being pulled from XML or some other data source such as SWX, this is great news as well.

It seems like the only search engine company left out of the party was Microsoft. As Brooks mentions, I'd bet Microsoft is not interested in offering a service which enhances a direct competitor's platform file format to their Silverlight. It is a shame, but I doubt it will have much of an effect on the Flash community.

You can find more information on the Adobe Developer Center SWF searchability FAQ and in Google's official announcement.

http://blogs.adobe.com/open/2008/04/the_open_screen_project.html

As a part of the announcement, Adobe is publishing exactly how the SWF format works without restrictions, and removing all other barriers to getting Flash on the widest range of devices. Set top/cable boxes, all mobile phones, televisions, your appliances... anything technical, really. Even those devices without a screen and/or user interface. Bill Perry does a great job of going into more detail on the implications for devices on his blog.

Ryan Stewart has a great post explaining all the implications of this announcement, for devices and desktop computers alike. He goes into more detail on the several parts of the announcement, so it is worth the read.

As someone who makes their living from the Flash ecosystem, you should care greatly about this announcement. It may not seem like it to a non-developer, but this is huge for anyone who knows how to use Flash. The thought of having Flash everywhere is finally a reality for those who want to include it in their products as a user interface layer, or even to allow developers to control the product using ActionScript. And this means that your capabilities to design, develop, and then deploy your Flash experiences just became more marketable and useful.

Lastly, as a member of the Flash community, you should also be excited about the implications this has on open source projects such as SWX, AMFPHP, and the like. The more open the specifications surrounding the various parts of the Flash ecosystem, the easier it is for members of the community to create tools and open source projects which contribute to the growth and prominence of said ecosystem... and make all of our lives as participants in that ecosystem that much more interesting and fun.

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.

This is a great example of how to use various services, such as Flickr, to fit your simple mashup needs -- just like David and Shaun spoke about at FITC Hollywood a few months ago. Great idea, fellas!

QuickLook Plugins List is a directory of Quick Look Plugins for Apple’s OS X 10.5 Leopard. If you are unfamiliar with Quick Look in OS X 10.5, you can read more about it here. Basically, Quick Look in Mac OS X Leopard lets you play, view, and page through your files without opening them. And this new site aims to keep a directory of plugins that developers have written for this new technology, allowing you to use this feature with a much greater set of file types such as ZIP, XML, FLV and more.

This all started from a blog post Keith Peters did last month when he mentioned ColorXML which adds color formatting to XML files in Quick Look. I did some research and found several plugins, but they were all scattered around the internet on various blogs and forum postings. Hopefully this new site will help to avoid that scavenger hunt.

If you see that any are missing on the site, I encourage you to use the contact form and send them along. Also, you can help the site out by 'Digging' it on Digg.

Enjoy!

A few days ago I received an email that it was finally my turn to order a Chumby as part of the insider's launch, and today I placed my order.

What is a Chumby? It's a really small wi-fi networked computer that looks like an odd bedside alarm clock. It has a LCD touchscreen, is almost completely open source, can be extended/customized, and you can make Flash Lite 3 apps to run on it. The Flash Lite 3 was one of the big sellers for me - I'm excited to see what I can do with it, especially since I haven't spent much time developing with Flash Lite before. Oh, and it'll work perfectly with SWX!

Engadget has a nice hands-on post from a pre-production model with lots of photos, but here are some stats from the Chumby website:

Wi-fi connectivity • access to the free Chumby Network • 3.5" LCD color touchscreen • two external USB 2.0 full-speed ports • 350 MHz ARM processor • 64 MB SDRAM • 64 MB NAND flash ROM • stereo 2W speakers • headphone output • squeeze sensor • accelerometer (motion sensor) • leather casing • AC adapter included

I'll be sure to post more details and photos once it arrives.

Let's look at the current manifestations of ECMAScript 4, the standard on which ActionScript 3 and the new version of JavaScript are based. There is Flash/Flex (SWF) with delivery to the web browser via a plug-in, JavaScript for direct interaction with the web browser, and AIR (Apollo) for desktop delivery. The only missing piece is server-side deployment, a fact of which I'd bet Adobe is well aware.

PHP is a great server-side language which I use very often, but every language has its own nuances, and switching continuously between PHP and AS3 often opens the door for several small bugs due to the syntactical differences.

As a framework for how much effort it would take to port AS3 for server-side usage, let's look at how PHP5 and AS3 compare on key web development factors. These core features are supported in both PHP5 and AS3:

- MySQL/database integration (PHP built-in, AS3 through classes)
- Open source and free
- Extendable (PHP through plugins, AS3 through classes)
- Large developer community
- Class-based development possible (Full OOP in AS3)

So with most of the features needed already included in AS3 or written by the community, why not take the extra step and port it to the server side? I'm sure Adobe doesn't want to sell Coldfusion 8 short, so there is that corporate hurdle. I could see it being integrated with Coldfusion in a similar manner that ActionScript can be included in MXML through the usage of a code/cdata block.

All said, nothing is stopping the community from developing an open source project based around this concept. A quick search of Google reveals that at least one other person is having similar thoughts.

Would you use AS3 if it was ported for server-side usage?