Good news peoples, i put a little effort into making my Test in Apollo extension work on Mac and it now works! Hoooraaah!
Ive never specifically attempted to make one of my Flash Extensions work on a Mac, so this is a first for me, i learnt a few things about JSFL on a Mac along the way.
Download the latest version of the extension. Version 1.1 from here.
Ive also updated the source-code for those who are interested. Download it here.
Cheers to Mike Chambers for his help with AppleScript.
Grant Skinner and his team have converted my extension into a panel and added some new functionality, check it out here
Ive created a Flash Extension that makes it a peace of cake to test your Flash Movies inside of the Apollo runtime, straight from Adobe Flash CS3 instead of using Flex Builder. You will need Flash CS3, the Apollo SDK and the latest Macromedia Extension Manager. The extension now works on Windows and Mac OSX.
Im also working on a Package for Apollo extension for Flash CS3 which will allow you to Package up your Apollo application into an .air file for distribution, once you have finished development. More news on that soon.
Moving on, the Test in Apollo extension adds a new command in the Commands menu: Commands > Test in Apollo
Download the Test in Apollo extension here.
Download the Apollo SDK from here.
For those that are interested, the source code is available here.
Since Teknision put together Finetune Desktop with Apollo, ive been using it religiously. I archived all of the music on my local machine and cleared up a good 20gb of harddrive space, and now i use Finetune Desktop instead of ITunes simply because a) it is free and b) it allows me to put together playlists of my favorite tunes, share them with everybody and play all my favorite tracks on all of my computers without ever having to have those mp3 files on each machine. I can even play them on my Nintendo Wii.
Finetune is top notch and a great example of what can be done with Apollo, bringing a web-based app onto the desktop in style.
Sign-up, download the free Apollo app and start putting together your own playlists.
Mike Chambers explains why you would want to take your web applications out of the browser, using Apollo.
Today Adobe released an alpha version of Apollo for developers on Labs. Download your copy today and start learning more about the new cross-platform desktop runtime by getting yourself a free pdf copy of Adobe Flex Developers Pocket Guide by O’ Reilly. There is also lots of docco on the Wiki.
Lots of playing and lots of fun to be had in the coming weeks if you have time.
The Apollo team is hosting a mini Apollo conference named Apollo Camp. Apollo Camp is a one night, single track conference hosted by Adobe covering everything developers need to know about getting started with building Apollo applications using Flex. Im going to head over there, since im living in New York nowadays.
More info here, sign up now before all the spaces are filled.
If your interested in the future of Flash as a platform, then Apollo is the next new part of the equation bringing the strengths of Flash to the desktop.
All of you should know of Mike Chambers, the community voice and face of Macromedia for along time and the man behind the blogging intiative at Macromedia(you read MXNA right?), and now of course i can only presume he had alot to do with Labs. Mikes latest outreach to the community is a podcast that you can listen to on your way to work or during some downtime (hopefully from now on weekly).
As a member of the Apollo team, Mikes latest podcast contains an interview (more of a discussion) about some of the concerns people have been having about Apollo being a runtime (say like Java or .NET). Speaking with two of the engineers on the team, the discussion should answer all of your concerns.
More good stuff to come, i would imagine. So, subscribe to the podcast and listen on a regular basis for some straight-from-the-horses-mouth information.
Make sure you checkout this weeks update aswell.
There is an interesting article on CNET which sheds some light on Apollo, the codename for a cross platform runtime that Adobe are working on to take the Flash Player outside of the browser, in other words, Macromedia Central revamped and done properly.