Login | RSS

Pages

Recent Posts

Categories

Tags

actionscript Adobe AIR Animation api AS3 blog Bug code conference Conferences and Events crash cursor devnet drawing event firefox Flash Flex flug fotb framework Game HTML javascript key LFPUG library manchester menu Mobile Number open source Papervision3D pdf physics ria search stage swfobject symposium talk tween Video WordPress

Blogroll

Meta


MXNA

FLASH Bookmarks

Planet Flash

Adobe AIR Runtime Version Checker

December 11th, 2009 by Adrian Parr

Version Checker

Have you ever wondered what version of the Adobe AIR Runtime you have installed on your computer? Well, if you have then you’ve probably found it difficult to find out. Luckily Jason Madsen has built a simple AIR App that will tell you. It does what it says on the tin. Very handy!

BTW, if you want to know what version of the Flash Player you have installed in your browser just visit www.playerversion.com to find out. Thanks Aral.

Posted in AIR, Adobe, Tool | 1 Comment »

ActionScript 3.0 Reference for the Adobe Flash Platform (BETA)

October 7th, 2009 by Adrian Parr

BETA ActionScript 3.0 Reference for the Adobe Flash Platform

Adobe have consolidated all their ActionScript 3.0 help documentation for the Flash Platform in to one central place online. It works using search and filters to show you the information you are looking for.

BETA ActionScript 3.0 Reference for the Adobe Flash Platform
http://help.adobe.com/en_US/FlashPlatform/beta/reference/actionscript/3/

Posted in AIR, ActionScript 3.0, Adobe, Flash, Flex | No Comments »

Printing a PDF document from AIR without displaying it or the control bar (using PDF cross-scripting)

October 6th, 2009 by Adrian Parr

Recently I had a project where I needed to allow the user to print out a PDF document from my AIR application, but I really didn’t need the user to actually view the document first and I didn’t want to display the default PDF control bar. I needed some way to send the PDF file to the printer directly from ActionScript. Enter PDF cross-scripting and Acrobat JavaScript. The following information should help you achieve the same result (note you need to have access to a copy of Adobe Acrobat Pro to add the JavaScript code to your PDF file).

There are several steps required for this to work …

  1. Open the PDF document you want to print in Adobe Acrobat Pro.
  2. Add the JavaScript code to your document and save it.
  3. Create an HTML page that contains a JavaScript function and embed the PDF document.
  4. In your Flash (or Flex) file add a button that prompts the user to print the document.
  5. Add the ActionScript 3.0 code that communicates with the HTML page you created in step 3.
  6. Publish your AIR file (making sure you include the HTML and PDF files).
  7. Test your AIR app.

Here is a copy of the PDF file I am printing in the following example.

Right, let’s explain each of the above steps in more detail.

Step 1

I presume you already have a PDF file prepared which you wish to print. Open this file up in Adobe Acrobat Pro. I’m pretty sure this works in version 7.0 and onwards.

Step 2

Open the ‘JavaScript Functions’ dialog box in Adobe Acrobat Pro by going to ‘Advanced’ > ‘Document Processing’ > ‘Document JavaScripts’.

Acrobat Document JavaScript Menu

Enter ‘myOnMessage’ in to the textfield and click on the ‘Add…’ button.

Acrobat JavaScript Functions

Then enter the following JavaScript code in to the window and click on the ‘OK’ button.

JavaScript Editor

function myOnMessage(aMessage)
{
      if (aMessage.length==1) {
            switch(aMessage[0])
            {
                  case "Print":
                        //app.alert("Trying to print PDF");
                        print({
                              bUI: true,
                              bSilent: false,
                              bShrinkToFit: true
                        });
                        break;
                  default:
                        app.alert("Unknown message: " + aMessage[0]);
             }
      }
      else
      {
            app.alert("Message from hostContainer: \n" + aMessage);
      }
}

var msgHandlerObject = new Object();
msgHandlerObject.onMessage = myOnMessage;
msgHandlerObject.onError = myOnError;
msgHandlerObject.onDisclose = myOnDisclose;

function myOnDisclose(cURL,cDocumentURL)
{
      return true;
}

function myOnError(error, aMessage)
{
      app.alert(error);
}

this.hostContainer.messageHandler = msgHandlerObject;

Then remember to re-save your PDF file.

Step 3

Create a blank HTML file and save it next to the PDF file. Then add the following code …

<html>
    <head>
    <title>Load PDF</title>
    <script>
        function callPdfFunctionFromJavascript(arg)
        {
            pdfObject = document.getElementById("PDFObj");
            try {
                 pdfObject.postMessage([arg]);
            }
            catch (e)
            {
                alert( "Error: \n name = " + e.name + "\n message = " + e.message );
            }
        }
    </script>
    </head>
    <body>
        <object id="PDFObj" data="document.pdf" type="application/pdf" width="800" height="600"/>
    </body>
</html>

Step 4

For this example I’m using Flash CS3. Create a movieclip on stage that acts as a button prompting the user to print the PDF document. Give the button instance the name of ‘button’.

Step 5

In this example I have put all the ActionScript code into the document class. The code looks like this …

package
{
    import flash.display.MovieClip;
    import flash.events.MouseEvent;
    import flash.events.Event;
    import flash.html.HTMLLoader;
    import flash.html.HTMLPDFCapability;
    import flash.net.URLRequest;

    public class PrintPdfFromAir extends MovieClip
    {
       
        private var _htmlLoader:HTMLLoader;

        public function PrintPdfFromAir():void
        {
            button.mouseEnabled = false;
            button.alpha = 0.3;
            button.buttonMode = true;
            button.addEventListener(MouseEvent.CLICK, onButtonClick);
           
            trace("HTMLLoader.pdfCapability: "+HTMLLoader.pdfCapability);
           
            if (HTMLLoader.pdfCapability == HTMLPDFCapability.STATUS_OK) {
                _htmlLoader = new HTMLLoader();
                _htmlLoader.addEventListener(Event.COMPLETE, onHtmlLoader_COMPLETE);
                var urlRequest:URLRequest = new URLRequest("load_pdf.html");
                _htmlLoader.load(urlRequest);
                addChild(_htmlLoader);
            }
        }
       
        private function onHtmlLoader_COMPLETE(event:Event):void
        {
            button.alpha = 1;
            button.mouseEnabled = true;
        }
       
        private function onButtonClick(event:MouseEvent):void
        {
            _htmlLoader.window.callPdfFunctionFromJavascript('Print');
        }

    }

}

Basically, we disable to button straight away and add a CLICK event listener. We then check the ‘HTMLLoader.pdfCapability’ property to see if the user has Adobe Reader 8.1 or greater installed on their system. If it equals ‘HTMLPDFCapability.STATUS_OK’ then we can continue. We then create a new instance of the HTMLLoader class, add a listener for the COMPLETE event. We then create an instance of the URLRequest class passing it the name of the HTML file we created in step 3. Next we call the ‘load’ method on our _htmlLoader instance, passing it the urlRequest instance. Then we add the _htmlLoader instance to the stage using addChild.

Normally, when you want to actually display the PDF file on screen, you also need to specify the width and height of the HTMLLoader instance. But in our case we don’t want to actually display it to the user. You may be wondering why we add it to the display list using addChild if we don’t want it to be visible. But I have found that it doesn’t work if you don’t add it to the display list. Not specifying the width and height also means it is not visible (which is what we want on this occasion).

Now we just have the two event handlers to write. The event handler for the HTMLLoader COMPLETE event just makes the button on screen active. We didn’t want the user to be able to click it before the COMPLETE event was fired.

The event handler for the button CLICK event calls the JavaScript function inside the HTML page, which we wrote in step 3.

Step 6

Now you are ready to publish the SWF file and then package it up as an AIR app in the usual way. The important thing to remember is to include the two external files (HTML and PDF) in the AIR Settings dialog box.

Include files

You can create a self-signed certificate for the purposes of testing. I have included my self-signed certificate with the source files (the password is ‘1234′) which you can use if you wish, or you could just create a new one.

Step 7

Once you have exported your AIR file it is a good idea to test it on a few different computers to make sure it works properly. Try it on a machine that doesn’t have Adobe Reader installed, or one that has an older version (< 8.1).

Download example AIR app

Download the example AIR file

Click here to download the example AIR file

Download source files

Download ZIP file containing source files

You can download a ZIP file containing my example source files from here.

Useful links

Here are some other blog posts and articles I found useful …

Posted in AIR, ActionScript 3.0, Sample Code | 6 Comments »

Launched: Adobe Flash Platform Blog

July 29th, 2009 by Adrian Parr

Adobe have launched the Adobe Flash Platform Blog.

To quote their ‘About‘ page …

“Welcome to the Flash Platform blog from Adobe. This group blog provides the latest news, updates, and insights into the technologies, tools, and partners across the Flash Platform. Join the conversation on the latest topics with our experts, engineers, product managers, and others on the platform team.”

Posted in AIR, ActionScript 3.0, Adobe, Flash, Flash Catalyst, FlashLite, Flex | No Comments »

What’s What on Adobe Labs (at a glance)

July 23rd, 2009 by Adrian Parr

Adobe Labs

I find it is not very easy on Adobe Labs to quickly and easily see what all the current projects are. Just seeing a list of names like Durango and JamJar doesn’t really tell you very much at a glance, and it takes a little while to click through each one in turn to find out what they all are. So here is a list of all the current projects and a short summary (copied and pasted) from their respective pages.

Acrobat.com Presentations

A better way to create, edit, and share presentations with others online. Built on the Adobe® Flash® platform, Acrobat.com Presentations looks and behaves like a desktop presentation application but operates inside a web browser.

Acrobat.com Tables

a better way to work with others on data and information — such as task lists, schedules, contacts, sales numbers, etc. — that are typically created and shared in spreadsheets or simple databases. Built on the Adobe® Flash® Platform, Acrobat.com Tables looks and behaves like a desktop application but operates inside a web browser.

Alchemy

Alchemy is a research project that allows users to compile C and C++ code that is targeted to run on the open source ActionScript Virtual Machine (AVM2).

Blueprint

Blueprint is a plugin for Adobe® Flex® Builder™ 3 and Adobe Flash® Builder™ 4 that allows users to query for Adobe Flex and Adobe Flash code examples found on the Web directly inside of the development environment.

BrowserLab

BrowserLab provides web designers exact renderings of their web pages in multiple browsers and operating systems, on demand. BrowserLab is a powerful solution for cross-browser compatibility testing, featuring multiple viewing and comparison tools, as well as customizable preferences. Since BrowserLab is an online service, it can be accessed from virtually any computer connected to the web.

ColdFusion 9

The ColdFusion 9 public beta release unveils three main themes: unrivaled developer productivity, deep enterprise integration and simple work flow with Adobe Flash® Builder™, Adobe AIR® and AJAX to create expressive applications.

ColdFusion Builder

Adobe ColdFusion Builder is an Eclipse based IDE for ColdFusion development that is deeply integrated with ColdFusion 9. Now you can manage your entire ColdFusion development cycle from concept to production all in one easy to use tool.

Configurator

Configurator is an open source utility that enables the easy creation of panels (palettes) for use in Adobe Photoshop® CS4. Specifically, Configurator makes it easy to drag and drop tools, menu items, scripts, actions, and other objects into a panel design, then export the results for use inside Photoshop. These panels leverage the support for Adobe Flash® built into Photoshop, making it possible to drag and drop audio, video, images, and even other SWF files into a panel design.

Distributable Player Solution

The distributable player solution enables developers to create rich applications for the latest version of Adobe® Flash Lite® and directly distribute their content to millions of open OS smartphones, providing a better on-device user experience.

Durango

Durango is a framework that allows developers to build Adobe® AIR™ applications that can be customized by end-users. Durango allows developers, designers and end-users to easily mashup independent components to create new applications or extend existing Durango-enabled applications. These “mashable” components can be visual or non-visual (e.g., web services). Designers and developers can rapidly create prototype applications and then generate Adobe Flex® MXML source projects for further development. End-users can take parts of their favorite applications and bring them together in new ways.

Flash Builder 4

Welcome to the Adobe® Flash® Builder™ 4 (formerly Flex Builder) public beta release on Adobe Labs. The first thing that you’ve already noticed is that we are renaming Flex Builder to Flash Builder. This name change will create a clear distinction between the free open-source Flex framework and the commercial IDE.

Flash Catalyst

Adobe® Flash® Catalyst™ is a new professional interaction design tool for rapidly creating user interfaces without coding. Transform artwork created in Adobe Photoshop® and Adobe Illustrator® into functional user interfaces. Create interactive prototypes with the ability to leverage them in the final product. Publish a finished project as a SWF file ready for distribution. Work more efficiently with developers who use Adobe Flash Builder™ 4 to create rich Internet applications (RIAs). Designers use Flash Catalyst to create the functional user experience then provide the project file to developers who use Flash Builder to add functionality and integrate with servers and services.

Flash Collaboration Service

Adobe Flash Collaboration Service is a Platform as a Service that allows Flex developers to easily add real-time social capabilities into their RIA (rich Internet applications). Comprised of both Flex-based client components and a hosted services infrastructure, Adobe Flash Collaboration Service allows you to build real-time, multi-user applications with Flex in less time than ever before. And because Acrobat.com hosts the service, issues like deployment, maintenance, and scalability are taken care of for you.

Flash Player 10

Adobe® Flash® Player 10, code-named “Astro,” introduces new expressive features and visual performance improvements that allow interactive designers and developers to build the richest and most immersive Web experiences.  These new capabilities also empower the community to extend Flash Player and to take creativity and interactivity to a new level.

Flex Builder 3 for Linux

Flex Builder Linux is a plugin-only version of the Flex Builder that you can use to build Flex applications on Linux. Feedback from previous alpha releases has been very positive, and we are pleased to continue offering this version.

Flex 4 SDK

Welcome to the Adobe Flex® 4 SDK beta release on Adobe Labs (previously code named Gumbo). This release marks an expanded role for the Flex framework, now supporting both developers creating Flex applications and designers using Adobe® Flash® Catalyst™ to create interaction design.

Hub

Hub is a client Adobe® AIR® application that connects to Adobe LiveCycle® ES services for the purpose of generating PDFs or assembling different PDFs into packages.  It demonstrates how to connect a client desktop to LiveCycle ES services using Adobe Flex® Remoting. The drag-and-drop client interface allows the user to upload files, watch the progress and retrieve the content back to the desktop with a single gesture. Hub was developed in response to customer requests for a client connector to Adobe LiveCycle ES.

InContext Editing

Welcome to the free preview of Adobe InContext Editing, the first Adobe hosted service developed for web professionals. Adobe InContext Editing is an online service that allows designers to create, manage, and control editable web pages. Web designers can use Dreamweaver CS4 to easily create editable or repeating regions, specify editing options or define CSS styles made available to authors. Content editors and publishers can also use Adobe InContext Editing to update website content through their browser — without learning HTML, installing software, or compromising design integrity.

JamJar

We invite you to see for yourself the kind of interactive, visually attractive, and scalable rich internet application that can be developed using Flex 2 technologies. JamJar provides a private and persistent canvas for small groups to easily exchange digital content in order to Plan events, Exchange ideas, Manage projects, Centralize information and Share files and images.

knowhow

knowhow is a technology preview that delivers single-click, contextual access to relevant help information from a panel in Adobe® Creative Suite® 3 software. knowhow gives users access to a wide variety of information—basic tool descriptions and short cuts, Adobe Help content, as well as community-generated tutorials, tips, and techniques on the web.

LiveCycle Data Services 3

LiveCycle Data Services server makes it possible to easily integrate Flex with Java/J2EE based applications.

Mars Project

The Mars Project is an XML-friendly representation for PDF documents called PDFXML. PDF, an ISO standard format, is the global standard for trusted, high fidelity electronic documentation. The PDFXML file format incorporates additional industry standards such as SVG, PNG, JPG, JPG2000, OpenType, Xpath and XML into ZIP-based document container. The PDFXML plug-ins enable creation and recognition of the PDFXML file format by Adobe Acrobat Professional and reading of PDFXML-format files by Adobe Reader software.

Photoshop.com Mobile Beta

the easiest way to upload, view, and share photos online from your Windows Mobile phone. Getting started is simple. All you need is a supported Windows Mobile® handset and a Photoshop.com membership. Available only to U.S. consumers as a free beta download.

Pixel Bender

The Adobe® Pixel Bender™ technology delivers a common image and video processing infrastructure which provides automatic runtime optimization on heterogeneous hardware. You can use the Pixel Bender kernel language to implement image processing algorithms (filters or effects) in a hardware-independent manner. The Pixel Bender graph language is an XML-based language for combining individual pixel-processing operations (kernels) into more complex Pixel Bender filters.

Spry framework for Ajax

The Spry framework for Ajax is a JavaScript library that provides easy-to-use yet powerful Ajax functionality that allows designers to build pages that provide a richer experience for their users. It is designed to take the complexity out of Ajax and allow designers to easily create Web 2.0 pages. The Spry framework is a way to incorporate XML, JSON or HTML data into pages using HTML, CSS, and a minimal amount of JavaScript, without the need for refreshing the entire page. Spry also provides easy to build and style widgets, providing advanced page elements for end users.

Stratus

Adobe® Flash® Player 10 and Adobe AIR® 1.5 introduce a new communications protocol called the Real-Time Media Flow Protocol (RTMFP). The most important features of RTMFP include low latency, end-to-end peering capability, security and scalability. These properties make RTMFP especially well suited for developing real-time collaboration applications by not only providing superior user experience but also reducing cost for operators. In order to use RTMFP, Flash Player endpoints must connect to an RTMFP-capable server, such as the Stratus service. Stratus is a beta, hosted rendezvous service that aids establishing communications between Flash Player endpoints. Unlike Adobe Flash Media Server, Stratus does not support media relay, shared objects, scripting, etc. So by using Stratus, you can only develop applications where Flash Player endpoints are directly communicating with each other.

Text Layout Framework

Welcome to the beta release of the Text Layout Framework for Adobe® Flash® Player 10 and Adobe AIR® 1.5. The Text Layout Framework is an extensible library, built on the new text engine in Adobe Flash Player 10, which delivers advanced, easy-to-integrate typographic and text layout features for rich, sophisticated and innovative typography on the web. The framework is designed to be used with Adobe Flash CS4 Professional or Adobe Flex®, and is already included in the next version of Flex, code named Gumbo. Developers can use or extend existing components, or use the framework to create their own text components.

Wave

When a friend posts a status update or there’s new content on your favorite site, be the first to know.  Adobe® Wave™ software gets the information you care about right to your desktop.  Click on the Adobe Wave badge on a website you want to follow and you’re ready to go.  Best of all, you’re in control: you choose which sites can contact you.  If you’re no longer interested, turning it off is a click away — Adobe Wave does not share your email address with websites. With Adobe Wave, get all of your notifications through a single application. You don’t have to worry about downloading a separate notification application for each website. To find out more, click on a notification to take you to a browser pointing right where you want to go.  Built with Adobe AIR® technology that has been installed over 200 million times, Adobe Wave lets you see all your most recent alerts at a glance.

XMP Library for ActionScript

Welcome to the XMP Library for ActionScript v1.0 preview. Adobe® Extensible Metadata Platform (XMP) is a labeling technology that allows you to embed data about a file, known as metadata, into the file itself.  XMP is an open technology based on RDF and RDF/XML.

Posted in AIR, ActionScript 3.0, Adobe, Flash, Flash Catalyst, FlashLite, Flex, HTML, Mobile | 1 Comment »

Adobe’s inspiration for the AIR logo?

February 27th, 2009 by Adrian Parr

Inspiration for Adobe AIR lgo

Yesterday I went to Flash Camp London (a free event sponsored by Adobe) where I found some of the sessions useful and enjoyed meeting up with my fellow Flasher friends. But did anyone else there notice the similarity between the cleaner blocks in the toilets and the Adobe AIR logo? Or was it just me :-)

Either this was the inspiration behind the logo design or a cunning marketing drive by Adobe to subliminally get us all to create more AIR apps. You decide.

Posted in AIR, Adobe | 3 Comments »

Flash CS3 Displays A Blank Error Dialogue Box

September 4th, 2008 by Adrian Parr

Blank Dialogue Box

I’ve just discovered a way to generate a blank dialogue box in Flash CS3. This was on a PC, I’ve not tested the Mac version yet. You’ll need to have the Adobe AIR Update for Flash CS3 Professional installed.

Just follow these step-by-step instructions …

  1. Open Flash CS3.
  2. Create a new Flash File (Adobe AIR).
  3. Save the file as ‘a&b.fla’.
  4. Click on Commands >> AIR - Create AIR File.
  5. Create a self-signed digital certificate if you don’t already have one, enter the password and click the ‘OK’ button.
  6. Voila!

Basically it is the ampersand (&) that is causing the problem. I’m not sure exactly which reference to the ampersand is causing the problem. Let me know if the above steps work for you.

Posted in AIR, Flash | 1 Comment »

AS3 Code Libraries (APIs)

August 19th, 2008 by Adrian Parr

Here is a round up of some of the most popular ActionScript 3.0 (AS3) libraries out there to use. Let me know if I have missed an important one off.

NOTE: This list was originally for my personal use (that I thought I would share), it is not intended to compete with or replace the list maintained by OSFlash.

Update 29/10/08: Ted Patrick has put together a list of ActionScript Cloud/Service APIs that he going to highlight during his Adobe MAX 2008 keynote presentation.

Update 28/11/08: I have just come across the Actionscript Classes website. A very handy resource.

Update 11/01/09: Rich Tretola has a small list of AS3 Libs on his blog EverythingFlex.

Update 12/01/09: The Flashchemist has compiled a similar list on his blog.

Update 27/02/09: Check out Spark Project which includes the FLARToolkit for Augmented Reality

Update 11/08/09: I just stumbled across this (old) list of projects.

Update 19/12/09: Sean “theflexguy” Moore has just written a blog entry called ‘List of 34 More ActionScript 3.0 APIs‘. This is a follow-up to his original post ‘List of 22 ActionScript 3.0 API’s‘.

Update 22/12/09: “30+ ‘Must Try’ Open Source Actionscript 3 Libraries” and “30 MORE Awesome Open Source AS3 Libraries”

Update 28/01/10: “30 Classes AS3 bem úteis!”

Update 29/01/10: “15 Awesome ActionScript 3 Frameworks To Inspire Your Next Project”

Update 24/02/10: Emanuele Feronato has a good list of Isometric Engines on his blog

Update 19/03/10: Tom Krcha has posted a list of Flash Gaming Engines, plus a few others that were new to me

Update 09/07/10: FluxDb has a huge list of AS3 Libraries

3D Engines

3D Game Engines

2D Game Engines

Isometric Engines

3D Animation Framework

3D Physics Engines

Augmented Reality

Animation Tweening Engines

2D Physics Engines

Security

Audio Libraries

Particle Systems

Data Visualization

Loading Kits

OOP Frameworks

Other APIs and libraries

Posted in AIR, ActionScript 3.0, Augmented Reality, Flash, Flex, Papervision 3D, Tweening | 84 Comments »

Adobe Developer Week 2008 Screencasts Available

May 9th, 2008 by Adrian Parr

Adobe Developer Week 2008

The screencasts from the Adobe Developer Week (March 27th - 28th, 2008) are now available to watch online. There are 20 eSeminars in total and they were recorded using Adobe Acrobat Connect. The topics covered include, building AIR applications, ColdFusion 8, Flash Lite 3, Flex, Creative Suite 3 and BlazeDS. If you missed any of these when they were broadcast back in March I reccommend taking a look and watching a couple (though I did find the audio slowly got out of sync with the visuals).

Watch the screencasts here.

Posted in AIR, Adobe, Conferences and Events, Flash, FlashLite, Flex | No Comments »

101 Adobe AIR Resources

April 24th, 2008 by Adrian Parr

Adobe AIR Logo

Jason Bartholme has posted a good list of 101 Adobe AIR Resources on his blog. He has broken the links down in to the following categories …

  • Getting Started
  • Application Collections
  • Articles
  • Bloggers
  • Language-Specific Integration
  • Popular Applications
  • Resources
  • Third Party Integration
  • Tutorials

Posted in AIR | 1 Comment »

Flash on the Beach 08

April 21st, 2008 by Adrian Parr

Flash on the Beach 08

Yipee! Ordered my Flash on the Beach 08 ticket this morning. The tickets went on sale this weekend (just gone) and already 150 tickets have been sold. The first 250 tickets can be purchased at the reduced Super Early Bird price of £199 for the 3-day conference pass. They are also holding two pre-conference workshops on the Sunday (28th Sept), I have booked for the Papervision3D session.

Currently, there are 94 Super Early Bird tickets left. So get in there quick if you want to save some money.

At the time of writing, the confirmed speaker list (with links to their personal websites) includes …

I’m really looking forward to it. I went to both the 2006 and the 2007 conference and it is a fantastic event. We’re so lucky to have an event like this held in the UK. I always come away from it inspired, fired up and wanting to learn more. Many thanks to John Davey for organising this awesome event every year.

If you haven’t been before, get your tickets and see for yourself. I’ll see you there …

Posted in AIR, ActionScript 3.0, Adobe, Conferences and Events, Flash, Flex, Papervision 3D | No Comments »

Adobe AIR Stopwatch

April 15th, 2008 by Adrian Parr

Stopwatch

I’ve just built a handy stopwatch Adobe AIR app. Basically, it is a simple timer with Hrs:Mins:Secs.Ms, Start, Pause, Continue and Reset. The number of times I have needed a simple timer like this and havn’t had one, so I decided to build one myself. I’ve used Adobe AIR so that it installs on your system like any other application and is also cross-platform.

Here is the Flash movie of it …

And you can install the AIR file from here and here is a version that uses SWFObject to embed the install badge.

The source files are available here.

Adobe AIR Marketplace

It is also available for download from the Adobe AIR Marketplace.

UPDATE 26/08/2008: Simple Stopwatch 1.0 has been selected by Softpedia for inclusion on their website.

Posted in AIR, ActionScript 3.0 | 3 Comments »

Adobe AIR Eboy Poster

April 10th, 2008 by Adrian Parr

At the Adobe on AIR Tour in London yesterday, everyone was given a cool postcard created by Eboy. Mike Chambers also gave away a couple of posters to people. You can view a high-res version of the poster here.

Posted in AIR, Adobe, Conferences and Events | 5 Comments »

Flash, Flex, AIR and RIA Conferences 2008

March 27th, 2008 by Adrian Parr

Just thought I’d put together a list of all the Adobe Flash, Flex and AIR conferences I know of that are going on around the world this year (plus a couple of others that are related, ie. SXSW and MIX). If you know of any other ones that I have missed then let me know and I’ll add it to the list.

January 2008

none

February 2008

TOCA ME
TOCA ME
February 23rd, 2008
Munich, German

FITC
FITC Amsterdam 2008
February 25th - 26th, 2008
Amsterdam, Netherlands

360|Flex
360|Flex Atlanta
February 25th - 27th, 2008
Atlanta, US

March 2008

MIX08
MIX08
March 5th-7th, 2008
Las Vegas, US

SXSW
South by Southwest (SXSW)
March 7th - 11th, 2008
Austin, US

Adobe Developer Week
Adobe Developer Week 2008
March 27th - 28th, 2008
Online

April 2008

360|Flex
360|Flex Europe
April 7th - 9th, 2008
Milan, Italy

Scotch on AIR
Scotch on AIR
April 11th, 2008
Dublin, Ireland

NAB Show
NAB Show 2008
April 11th - 17th, 2008
Las Vegas, US

FITC
FITC Toronto 2008
April 20th - 22nd, 2008
Toronto, Canada

May 2008

flashconference 2008
10th flashconference 2008
May 8th, 2008
Stuttgart, Germany

OFFF
OFFF
May 8th - 10th, 2008
Lisbon, Portugal

WebManiacs
WebManiacs 2008
May 19th - 23rd, 2008
Washington DC, US

FFK08
Flashforum Konferenz 2008
May 21st - 24th, 2008
Cologne, Germany

Multi-Mania
Multi-Mania
May 23rd, 2008
Kortrijk, Belgium

Web Flash Festival
Web Flash Festival
May 23rd - 25th, 2008
Paris, France

June 2008

Scotch on the Rocks
Scotch on the Rocks ‘08
June 4th - 6th, 2008
Edinburgh, Scotland

flashbelt
flashbelt
June 10th - 13th, 2008
Minneapolis, US

webDU
webDU 2008
June 12th - 13th, 2008
Sydney, Australia

FITC
FITC Chicago 2008
June 22nd - 23rd, 2008
Chicago, US

July 2008

none

August 2008

Flashforward
Flashforward 2008
August 20th - 22nd, 2008
San Francisco, US

Flex Camp London 08
FlexCamp
August 28th, 2008
London, UK

September 2008

Flash on the Beach
Flash on the Beach 2008
September 28th - October 1st, 2008
Brighton, UK

October 2008

Flash on Tap
Flash on Tap
October 7th - 9th, 2008
Rescheduled: May 28th - 30th, 2009
Boston, US

Flashpitt08
Flashpitt 2008
October 10th, 2008
Pittsburgh, US

The Actionscript Conference
The Actionscript Conference
October 19th, 2008
Singapore

Singularity
Singularity 08
October 24th - 26th, 2008
Online

November 2008

MAX
Adobe MAX 2008 North America
November 16th - 19th, 2008
San Francisco, US

December 2008

MAX
Adobe MAX 2008 Europe
December 1st - 4th, 2008
Milan, Italy

January 2009


Adobe MAX 2008 Japan
January 29th - 30th, 2009
Tokyo, Japan

Adobe on AIR Tour Europe
Don’t forget that the Adobe on AIR Tour is coming to Europe this spring. Starting off in Madrid, Spain on March 31st, and then running through to June 13th in Milan, Italy. Check the website to see if it is coming to a European city near you (it is in London on April 9th at The Brewery).

One other Flash conference that has happened in the past, but it doesn’t look like it is happening any more is Spark Europe.

Posted in AIR, Adobe, Conferences and Events, Flash, Flex | No Comments »

Adobe Flex 3 and AIR Released

February 25th, 2008 by Adrian Parr

Adobe Flex 3 and AIR

Today Adobe officially released Flex 3 and AIR (Adobe Integrated Runtime) for the desktop. I won’t say too much about them here, as there is already plenty of info out there in the blogosphere. If you want to find out more, follow the links provided.

Posted in AIR, Adobe, Flex | No Comments »

AdobeAir Website

February 19th, 2008 by Adrian Parr

MasterCool By AdobeAir

I just did a quick Google search for “adobe air” and the sixth result was this website (www.adobeair.com) for air conditioning units. I did a quick Whois Lookup on the domain and it looks like they are genuine and have had that domain name registered since 1999. Just a coincidence?

Posted in AIR, Adobe | 1 Comment »

15 Things to look in to during 2008

January 31st, 2008 by Adrian Parr

Here is a list of things I want to look in to during 2008. If there is anything you think I should check out but have missed off this list then let me know.

  1. Papervision3D
  2. Tweener
  3. TweenLite
  4. Go (Go ActionScript Animation Platform)
  5. KitchenSync
  6. Xray (The AdminTool)
  7. AS3 Bulk Loader Library
  8. SWX: SWF Data Format
  9. Adobe Flex 2 & 3
  10. Adobe AIR
  11. Eclipse and FDT 3.0
  12. Cairngorm
  13. PureMVC
  14. ActionScript 3.0
  15. SWFAddress

Not necessarily in that order. Wish me luck!

Posted in AIR, ActionScript 3.0, Adobe, Flash, Flex, Papervision 3D | 2 Comments »

Location of Flash Shared Object (SOL) files

January 30th, 2008 by Adrian Parr

If you are anything like me, then when you need to find your Flash Shared Object (SOL) files, you can never find them on your computer. Well, just as a reminder, they can be found here on a PC …

C:\Documents and Settings\<username>\Application Data\Macromedia\
Flash Player\#SharedObjects\<random string>\<domain>\
<path from webserver>\<filename>.sol

and on a Mac they can be found here …

Macintosh HD:Users:<username>:Library:Preferences:Macromedia:
Flash Player:#SharedObjects:<random string>:<domain>:
<path from webserver>\<filename>.sol

I also recently noticed that the path to data saved from Adobe AIR apps is stored here on a PC …

C:\Documents and Settings\<username>\Application Data\
<AIR App Reverse Domain Name>\Local Store\#SharedObjects\
<flashname>.swf\<filename>.sol

and on a Mac they can be found here …

Macintosh HD:Users:<username>:Library:Preferences:
<AIR App Reverse Domain Name>:Local Store:#SharedObjects:
<flashname>.swf\<filename>.sol

Hope this is of some help, and will save you a bit of time trying to find them.

There are also a few useful tools out there that will allow you to check (and modify) the contents of SOL files. Try ASV SOL Viewer and Editor, SolVE: Local Shared Object Viewer/Editor or SOLReader.

Posted in AIR, Flash | No Comments »

O’Reilly’s InsideRIA launched

January 29th, 2008 by Adrian Parr

InsideRIA

Last week O’Reilly launched the InsideRIA website, a portal/blog for Rich Internet Application developers around the world. It looks like it is going to be a great resource and it currently has articles written by respected people such as Colin Moock, Rich Tretola,  Tony Hillerson, David Tucker, Tony MacDonell,  Andrew Trice,  Andre Charland, Jonathan Snook and Raymond Camden.

The also have an InsideRIA Atom feed (which I have added to my Google homepage).

Posted in AIR, ActionScript 3.0, Adobe, Flash, Flex | No Comments »

Adobe on AIR Bus Tour is heading to Europe

January 28th, 2008 by Adrian Parr

on AIR

The Adobe on AIR Bus Tour is coming to Europe (minus the bus) this summer. At the time of writing the details (locations and dates) are still being finalised. Keep up-to-date by checking the Bus Tour Weblog and the on AIR Weblog. You can also follow the tour via video, Twitter and Flickr.

Posted in AIR, Adobe, Conferences and Events | No Comments »

« Previous Entries