FlashGuru Blog

Macromedia’s Chief Technical Officer, Jeremy Allaire has his own weblog, he introduces his own blog better than i can :

“I’m joining the ranks of what Jon Udell calls CXO Blogs with this semi-professional blog about media, communications and applications over the Internet. Over the past six-months, like many other netizens, I’ve become addicted to browsing and subscribing to blogs. My company has also started using blogspace as a crucial customer and community engagement mechanism. It’s been amazing to see the number of Macromedia MX related blogs spring up. While I’ll sometimes post Macromedia specific content here, the intention is really to explore the broad technologies, ideas and companies that are working on the converence of media, communications and applications.”

Be Sure to check it out, and get it bookmarked for daily reading! Lets hope its updated regularly [Via Illogicz]

The name Peter Hall may appear in your inbox quite regularly if you are subscribed to the Flashcoders mailing list, he has finally got around to setting up his own flash related blog on his site. That should be one to look out for on a regular basis! [Via Mesh On MX] Also Scott Barnes has set up a blog titled Macrofun, which contains information related to Flash MX, CFMX and DHTML, so be sure to check that out aswell!

On Friday, Macromedia announced the release of a new software product, The Macromedia Developer Resource Kit, which contains tonnes of contents and goodies for developers and designers. In terms of flash content on the cd, we have a much awaited DataGrid component with 46 pages of documentation and 3 usage examples, which apparently took 3 months to develop, yikes!! We have a Media Player Component Set and The Flash UI Component Set 3 aswell as a complete mirror image of the Designer & Developer Center and a collection of the best components available on the Macromedia Exchange. The CD costs $99 and can be purchased online here. Well worth the cash!

I would be interested to know through your experiences, how you think that Flash should be pushed as a good medium for deploying websites to potential clients as opposed to say, html, java, dhtml, director and such like, is it the sheer numbers of flash player downloads, its multi-platform capabilities that clients are interested in? is it the interactive capabilities? accessibility features? seamless integration with a backend? maybe its the maintained state that flash provides? or is it something else or a combination of the previously mentioned? what sets its above the rest? obviously i have my own answers, but i was wondering how you see it and your perspective. Hopefully this discussion can serve as a focus point for collecting a list of flash’s strong points and as a direct result of that, help people to push flash to their employers and clients as a tool that enhances and compliments a website.

Ive been doing quite alot of work that involves the new LocalConnection object and during my testing of the applications i have created, it appears that LocalConnection doesnt want to work in any Netscape browsers, other than version 4.7, the application has been tested using Netscape browser versions, 4.7, 4.75, 6, 6.1, 6.2 and the latest 7. We also used the Macromedia Flash Support example of LocalConnection to verify these results. Has anybody else experienced this? and are there any other browsers which this Macromedia example doesnt work with. If so, please let us all know in the comments. Real shame it doesnt work in all browsers, sort of defeats the whole idea, may aswell stick with javascript if there are going to be browser problems:(

Together with its CD-ROM and the companion web site, Flash MX for Interactive Simulation is the first definitive package designed to lead readers to success in using Flash MX to deliver interactive product simulations for use in online and CD-ROM based training, promotion and prototyping. Flash MX for Interactive Simulation teaches a proven methodology, using statecharts and the UCM architecture, for streamlining the planning, design, and implementation of realistic device simulations. Find out more and order your copy at the official website.

Electrotank have been working hard lately to complete a commercial release of their groundbreaking multiplayer mini golf game, the commercial release selling under the name “Mini Golf Gold” now features 36 holes, 2 skill levels(beginner/advanced), a new soundtrack, improved gameplay and full multiplayer support. It is available now for purchase here at a very reasonable $14.99. [Via Ericd.net]

At the last San Fransisco Flashforward conference, Robert Penner was handing out a sample chapter of a book that he was currently in the process of writing, it seems that he has now finished the writing and the book will be available for all of us to buy on September 25th, The book is titled “Robert Penner’s Programming With Macromedia Flash MX” and from the sample chapter i saw it looks to be a Flash Math kind of book, but knowing Robert, there is likely to be alot about OOP, Inheritance and Easing in there too:) Pre-order your copy now!

Macromedia are looking for Macromedia Flash Player 6 Linux, Beta Testers, if you are a Flash Developer or Designer with a linux box, then help them find any bugs there may be in the player! For more information on joining the Beta visit this page. [Via Mesh On MX]

One of the components that the Macromedia User Interface Component Set is very much missing has to be a DataGrid component that lets you easily view tabular data. Branden Hall has written a tutorial that will show you how to use the components in the Macromedia User Interface Component Set to make your own scrolling DataGrid component. Give it a good read!

Ok, imagine the scenario where you have a number of movies on the page, and each movie has to have the capability of sending and recieving data from and to any of the other movies. To achieve this with LocalConnection you have to use a little bit of trickery, because LocalConnection only allows one movie to listen to any given channel at any one time, yet any number of movies can send data along that channel. I have just come across this situation with some work i am doing and my first thought was to create a unique listening channel for each movie with each of the other movies…..
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The webmaster of FlashDevils, has a personal site Junior Online, which contains alot of funky experiments for you to have a gander at, the source files for each experiment are also available for download and there is also a growing prototype library that he is mantaining on his site.

Two blogs worth noting and visiting today, Valyard gets a revamp, lots of new features with a lovely new colour scheme and Flash To The Future a new Flash Device blog thats looking kind of shweeet aswell!

Electric Rain have made a series of online demos available which showcase some of the new capabilities in the soon to be released Swift 3D version 3, checkout the robot hand demo, all i can say is wow! Electric Rain promise flash developers and designers tight integration with the Macromedia Flash User Interface in the next release so look forward to that!