New Year’s messages from theFlashBlog
I wanted to make a New Year’s post to get the year started off right. My good buddy Ryan Stewart posted the first of a three-part blog post talking about what happened with the Flash Platform in 2009. I won’t try to duplicate that kind of post here as Ryan can out-blog me with both hands behind his back. Instead I just want to send out some messages.
To the Flash community
I’m now into my second year as an evangelist and my love for Flash and its community is stronger than ever. You’re what gets me up the morning and the fact that I get to interact with you on a daily basis is an honor for me. Our community really does feel like a family. Sometimes families disagree and get into spats and we are not immune to that either. Families can be open and honest with each other and say things that are at times harsh. But that is OK because you know that deep down, we all love each other. Other communities try to mimic us because of the tight-knit bond we all have and the immense amount of creative work that is produced by us each year. Be proud to be a part of it. I know I am.
To unnamed company 1
On personal level you guys are great. I count many of you as my friends. You unfairly get a bad rap on everything that you try to do. I wish I could say that I wish you success this year, but I can’t. So far it hasn’t been much of a fight and I don’t expect that to change this year. Focusing on your existing base is a wise way to proceed. Looking forward to seeing you again this year and swapping stories. Oh and fire your marketing team or at the very least tell them to stop copying everything we do.
To unnamed company 2
Like many people, I love you and I hate you. I love the products you make and I suppose I wish deep down, that you felt the same. Your arrogance has gotten you where you are today. But be careful, as many a great institution has let their arrogance be their downfall. Recognize who your allies are in this world, as you may one day need them.
To open-source and standards zealots
I have to admit that of all the groups I deal with, you are definitely the most frustrating. As for standards, I hate to be the one who breaks it to you, but Flash is a standard. It has been made a standard by the people who matter the most, the end users. Everyone knows what Flash is and they will readily update it because they know that it is an integral part of the web experience. You can go on and on about ECMA or whether or not Flex is really open source. In the meantime we will be pushing the Flash Player forward and the end users will benefit from it. Clients and consumers don’t care whether or not the site they are interacting with was built in a proprietary tool or runtime. As for the open web folks, HTML 5 looks to be great and I am looking forward to using it myself. I am the first one to state that Flash should be used only for certain things. HTML will always be a part of the web and I think it is time you acknowledge that Flash is just as much a part of it too. If you want to use HTML and JS to do everything and hope that Safari, Firefox, Chrome, Opera and IE will all agree on the same implementations then I wish you luck. But I gave up worrying about browser differences years ago when I became a Flasher.
To all the complainers
There have been many people who have chronically complained about us over the last year. I put these people into two groups. Group one is filled with passionate people who love Flash but are frustrated with certain decisions or directions that we take. These are the people that I don’t mind hearing complaints from, as a lot of the time, we agree completely with you. If your true objective is to help the Flash Platform become the best that it can be, then please continue ripping us a new one and we will gladly pass that feedback to the appropriate teams. The other group is filled with haters, egomaniacs, and people who are just trying to cause drama. If you say that you think Adobe should give up trying to bring the Flash Player to mobile devices and that in 5 years Flash will be irrelevant, don’t expect to be on our Christmas card list. So to sum up, all I ask is that you bitch-slap us for the right reasons.
To Latin America
I love your culture and think that you have an amazing community of Flashers that have been under represented for too long. I will continue to try and change things in 2010 starting with Flash Camp Brasil and ending with the second Latin Flash Tour. I promise to try and work on my Spanish this year.
I can’t wait to spend 2010 with you all!
Lee
Just Ask Us 2 questions answered
| After a long wait (sorry), I have finally recorded the answers to the questions from Just Ask Us episode 2. If you happen to follow me on Twitter and were online last night, you had the ability to watch me record it live and ask more questions. I decided to record it using UStream so people can interact and chat as I record. I will do future episodes in this way too but I will make a blog post with the date and time if you want to see it live. In this episode I answered 50 questions from the original blog post and then took a few more questions from the live chat. Below I have put the list of questions along with the timecode so you can seek to the question that you want to see. |
| Timecode | Question |
| 00:00:59 | I work with SVN and was wondering if there will be a more source control friendly alternative to the FLA file? |
| 00:01:30 | Adobe and Akamai joining forces on a media player is troubling me. |
| 00:02:34 | In Flash Builder, if I copy and paste code that I wrote for another class, is there a way to automatically import the necessary classes? |
| 00:03:26 | One of the big things that people bring up constantly is the lack of optimization with the Flash compiler. Is this being worked on? |
| 00:04:24 | Is Adobe considering expanding the capabilities of the AIR API for a richer interaction with the OS? |
| 00:05:18 | Is there a chance the Flash Player or AIR itself will allow developers to work with threads? |
| 00:06:01 | What is the focus with the next iteration of Flash Player? Can we anticipate some big ActionScript language changes/additions? |
| 00:07:00 | Do you know of any good online academic programs for learning actionscript, flex, and other Flash related material? |
| 00:07:45 | Why doesn’t Adobe release Flash Builder for free? Wouldn’t that further promote the Flash platform? |
| 00:08:38 | Why is Flash CS4 still too buggy and slow (even after the latest 10.0.2 update)? |
| 00:09:40 | Is AS4 finally going to be the grown-up version of ActionScript? |
| 00:10:52 | When is the adobe flash player core team going to make a completely new run-time instead of updating it? |
| 00:11:45 | Why is there no mouse wheel support for Mac out of the box? |
| 00:12:02 | Is Adobe going to rework the animation interface to make it more competitive with Toon Boom Animate? |
| 00:13:00 | Why is the built-in tweening engine slower than 3rd party alternatives? |
| 00:13:46 | I am from tunisia (south africa). I am wondering if there will any evangelism here in my country? |
| 00:14:25 | Flash is a great games platform, so any chance of gamepad/joypad/joystick support? |
| 00:15:15 | How about an easy way to use ASDOC in Flash CS5? |
| 00:16:33 | Will we ever see an option for true GPU support? |
| 00:17:23 | Apple and Microsoft both have very strong distribution networks for independent developers. Is Adobe looking at creating their own? |
| 00:18:10 | Is the 31fps optimal frame rate a thing of the past? |
| 00:18:49 | Will Patch Panel and Switchboard technologies ever merge into one cohesive product? |
| 00:19:57 | Does Adobe have in mind a program for startups like Microsoft’s BizSpark? |
| 00:20:27 | How much does Adobe value videogame coders? |
| 00:21:26 | What is up with the Flash Player settings dialog? It’s embarrassing. |
| 00:22:17 | With basic 3D now supported in Flash, any plans to add a 3D camera similar to how the 3D camera in After Effects works? |
| 00:23:06 | Will there be seamless round tripping between Flash CS5 and Flash Builder? |
| 00:23:20 | What’s going on with Stratus? |
| 00:24:24 | Do you recommend taking the Flash CS4 ACE exam? |
| 00:25:06 | Is the next iteration of the flash player going to have native support for any new image/music/video formats? |
| 00:25:51 | Is it possible to take a project from Flash into AE? For example using XFL? |
| 00:26:30 | Are you going to have diffusion curves in Flash CS5? If you only put them in Illustrator, I’m gonna kill you. |
| 00:27:10 | Most of the Flash dev guys I work with cannot understand why fonts don’t work properly in Flash. Is this being fixed? |
| 00:28:01 | Will we ever see something like an internal SQL in Flash? |
| 00:28:42 | I’m just getting into Flex and was wondering if there was a way to disable the building of the HTML wrapper as the default option? |
| 00:29:27 | Can we expect to communicate to lower level .dlls from Flash nativly to create more powerful applications? |
| 00:29:56 | Is there a way to monitor the process of XML loading and tell the user, instead of freezing up animations and other things? |
| 00:30:47 | What would it take to overhaul the Flash Player to make SWF content more accessible and search engine friendly? |
| 00:31:47 | I need to control 5.1 surround sound system in AIR. Will it be in the next AIR version? |
| 00:32:21 | Suppose I have a table sitting inside MySQL on a server. If the user changes any values inside a Flex DataGrid, I would like that change to propagate to MySQL. What is the best way to accomplish this? |
| 00:33:25 | How do you explain to a client, that Flash is a better option than AJAX? |
| 00:34:52 | Is there is any way to launch native application from AIR? |
| 00:35:29 | I want to use the mic to allow users to record audio snippets, however, I don’t want the expense and fuss of installing Flash Media Server. |
| 00:36:32 | Is Adobe looking for Platform Evangelists outside the US, like Latin America? |
| 00:37:07 | I wanted to ask if there will be a pause method in the Timer class? |
| 00:38:18 | Will there be an embedded player version that can run AS3 coming soon? |
| 00:39:16 | It is awful how textfields represent text with embed images. Will it be improved? |
| 00:40:06 | It’s really frustrating that you can’t resize bitmaps in Flash. What is Adobe doing about this? |
| 00:40:37 | Is there any possibility of an Adobe Flash college tour? |
| 00:41:03 | Will the timeline ever start with frame 0? Seems inconsistent for it start at 1, with the rest of AS3 being zero-based. |
Lee
The dead drop is now underway
Update: This dead drop is now over. Congratulations to the lucky winner!
The dead drop has now started so if you want the prize package go and check out the live map to see where I am right now. Check the last updated text on the map to see when the last update was. I may be going through a 3G dead zone. This experiment will also serve as a good test of AT&T’s nationwide network coverage.
One you find me there is a code printed on my tailgate which you need to enter into this web form in order to claim the prize. Don’t have Flash on your mobile device? You can also see my current position by going to this static page. Want to make your own tracker? You can also get a raw XML representation of my position on this page.
My truck is a dark blue 2003 Ford Ranger. You’ll be able to tell it’s me by the stickers in the back window.
Good luck!
Lee
Catch me to win the utlimate Flash CS5 prize!
So as I mentioned in my last post that I will be driving across this great country beginning tomorrow morning. As a part of that I am doing a different kind of dead drop where your mission is simply to find me out on the road. I have created the ultimate Flash CS5 prize package for those who track me down. The package consists of the following:
- The coveted Adobe Dead Drop Winner coin.
- A new iPod Touch that you can use to create applications for with CS5 if you don’t have an iPhone.
- A full boxed copy of CS5 Master Collection as soon as it is released.
- Assuming you meet the requirements, I will get you added to the Flash CS5 pre-release so you can start playing right now!
You have to admit that those prizes are worth getting out on the highway for. Of course there are some loose rules to this dead drop that you must follow in order to win. These rules are the following:
- The dead drop begins once the official blog post goes up sometime tomorrow. So don’t wait outside my house tonight thinking you will just catch me as I leave.
- There will be a maximum of 5 winners and there cannot be more than one winner per state. Follow me on Twitter to see the latest contest status.
- Assuming you are an actual Flash user (i.e. not an MS evangelist), I should have no problem adding you to the pre-release. But this part of the prize is NOT guaranteed.
- I will hand you the dead drop winner coin when you find me. The iPod Touch and Master Collection CS5 will be shipped to you. The iPod will ship within a couple of weeks and obviously CS5 will ship when we release it.
So what will you have to do when you find me? All will be explained in the kickoff post tomorrow. If you are planning on participating keep a close watch on my Twitter feed as well as my blog.
Lee
The Catch Me If You Can Dead Drop
I’m going to be heading to my parents house in Virginia for the holidays and have decided to drive. I’ve always loved road trips and have really missed seeing the country this way. Back in the day I used to drive from coast to coast with no sleep without even thinking about it. We’ll see how I do this time. I will be taking I-40 across the country which will keep me out of most of the inclement weather. I-80 at this time of year can be very bad news when going through Utah and Wyoming. I will begin my journey sometime early on Monday.
Since I’m doing this road trip I thought that it would be a great opportunity for another dead drop! This one is quite different from the other ones you may have read about. I built a cool little iPhone application in Flash CS5 that updates a database with my current GPS location. Assuming I have a data connection it should do it every few seconds. I have also built a Flex 4 application that plots my current position using the Google maps API. It also will automatically update my position every few seconds. The goal is simple. Find me out on the open highway and do a yet-to-be-determined action to claim the prize. More details will come about the prizes, rules, and what that action will be. Below is a screenshot of the Flex application which you’ll be able to use to track me.
Stay tuned!
Lee
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