Category Archives: Flash Professional

"Demand for Flash engineers has suddenly Surged" – WSJ

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The Wall Street Journal posted an interesting article about how full-time Flashers “can now command more than $150,000 a year in salary,” according to GreeneSearch recruiting firm.

“In Silicon Valley, hot job categories come and go as different technologies shift in and out of favor. The latest example: Flash engineers.” Writer Pui-Wing Tam says that start-ups, such as online gaming companies – are looking for Flash developers who are creative and can code. (That’s you, right?) The Flash developer cited in the piece said, “I make 150% more than three years ago.”

Awesome.

Here are some resources to help you hone your skills:

Unlocking the iPhone for Flash Developers

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Over the weekend there was a great article in TechCrunch about the large number of Flash developers who are ramping up to deliver apps on the iPhone using Flash Platform tooling.

As you know, since we announced the Packager for iPhone at MAX, we’ve been running a small pre-release program for Flash Pro CS5. Adobe pre-releases give a small set of developers early access to builds of our tools (in this case Flash CS5) to test and to create content. Developers in our pre-release work closely with our product teams to give feedback and submit bugs. The fun part in the case of the Flash pre-release is the end product of working with our developers, they end up building and getting apps into Apple’s App Store.

We wanted to share a couple of the apps that were built by our pre-release developers that we thought would be interesting to our readers.

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Alchemist
Alchemist is an addictive puzzle that challenges player’s memory, reaction and logic. You are playing an apprentice who has to help his Alchemist master to test our secret formulas and find the one that produces the most gold.


Boost Your Brain
Are you smarter than your friends? Boost your Brain is a collection of fun and addicting games including logic puzzles, mental calculations and memory trainers.


iGevalt
iGevalt is a 3D dreidel simulator for Hanukkah. A dreidel is a four-sided spinning top, played with during the Jewish holiday of Hanukkah.

We’re starting to see our developers coming to the CS5 pre-release with existing web apps and games they have that they want to build for the iPhone. Our own Ted Patrick made his Sudoku game run as an AIR app and an iPhone app from the exact same code base. Want to do the same? If you have an app you want to build, shoot us a mail at iphone-prerelease@adobe.com. We’ve got a few spots open on the pre-release if you have a specific app you’d like to port.

There will not be a beta for Flash Professional CS5

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Adobe is no longer planning to release a public beta of Adobe Flash Professional CS5. This is a change from the plan that we announced in October at Adobe MAX 2009.

Since the original announcement we have seen a ton of interest in Flash Professional CS5 and the included Packager for iPhone. Developers in the pre-release program continue to provide great feedback and take advantage of the new features. We’ve also seen a number of new applications built using ActionScript 3 and delivered to the App Store.

We are changing our plans in reaction to this strong positive feedback. We want to make sure that we can provide the earliest possible delivery of the final software to the large number of designers and developers interested in Flash Professional CS5 and the included Packager for iPhone.

We understand that some people will be disappointed. Many of us were looking forward to a beta. But in the end, we think that what is most important is to get the release version completed and in your hands as quickly as possible.

New content in the Adobe Developer Connection

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Adobe Flash Builder 4 beta includes a new feature called the Network Monitor, which you can use to debug network traffic between a Flex application and an application server at runtime. Read David Gassner’s article and try out this new feature by using Adobe ColdFusion and a set of sample Flex applications. Meanwhile, follow Sujit Reddy G and learn how to build a Flex application that connects to a BlazeDS Remoting destination using Flash Builder 4 beta.

Just released, Adobe LiveCycle Data Services ES2 (version 3) simplifies the development of web applications using Flash and Java. Download a trial version of the software and read Anil Channappa’s article to get an overview of the new capabilities in the release.

If you are finding yourself with some developer holiday downtime during the next few weeks, get inspired by some of the amazing Flash websites picked by veteran website reviewer Rob Ford as the best Flash experiences in 2009—and then cast your vote for the best site of the year. In the meantime, Rodney Smith continues his series on using ActionScript 3 to bring 3D motion to your Flash projects. This time, it’s how to pan, zoom, and move objects within a 3D space.

Also, improve your understanding of search engine optimization by watching SEO gurus Jay Middleton and Damien Bianchi discuss best practices for optimizing SWF-based content for search engines.

New content in the Adobe Developer Connection

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Flex developers interested in new opportunities may want to look at the developer preview of Adobe Flash Builder for Force.com. Flash Builder for Force.com is a new development tool for building cloud-based, rich Internet applications (RIAs) that can be deployed in the browser through Adobe Flash Player or on the desktop leveraging Adobe AIR. In the tutorial series, Building a desktop application with Flash Builder for Force.com, Jeanette Stallons steps developers through the process of building an application from start to finish, covering salesforce.com, Stratus, Flex, and AIR fundamentals.

Also be sure to check out the newly released Day 4 of our popular video training, Flex 4 beta in a Week, to learn about extending events, accessing remote data, and creating a typed data model.

Apart from the data-centric capabilities, Flex 4 support, and other great features, Flash Builder 4 beta 2 introduces some new and updated features to improve developer productivity and make writing MXML and ActionScript code faster and easier. Read the article by Jason San Jose, Developer productivity improvements in Flash Builder 4 beta, to learn about the Call Hierarchy view, enhanced states syntax support, changes to code hints, and editor improvements.

Developers interested in sharing open standards and best practices for video player applications built on the Adobe Flash Platform may wish to check out the Open Source Media Framework and then follow R Blank’s tutorial presentations, Building video players in Flash with the OSMF, to get a feeling for how the OSMF helps standardize the way that media players—particularly video players—are built on the Flash Platform.

New content in the Adobe Developer Connection

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Flex developers often use a combination of tools as part of their workflow, and Adobe Flash Builder 4 beta takes that into account. Follow Tim Buntel’s article to learn how well Flash Builder 4 can play with four other Adobe products in both data-centric and design-centric phases of a project: Adobe ColdFusion Builder beta, Adobe LiveCycle Data Services 3 beta, Adobe Flash CS4 Professional, and Adobe Flash Catalyst beta. Then move on to Elad Elrom’s article on how to use Pixel Bender with Flash Builder 4 beta as a number crunching engine.

Augmented reality (AR) made a big splash this year when GE’s Smart Grid reached mass-market appeal. Experienced Flash developers can dig into Samuel Asher Rivello’s AR project, which overlays a 3D model of the Eiffel Tower onto a 2D marker using FLARToolkit code libraries and a webcam. For those just getting up to speed with Flash CS4 Professional, check out Dan Carr’s five short presentations to learn about working with timelines, symbols, instances, buttons, Motion Editor, and ActionScript 3 in Flash. Finally, check out Paul Robertson’s new QuickStart on understanding the benefits of using the Vector class in ActionScript 3.

Web video producers might want to explore Lisa Larson-Kelley’s updated web video player template, which makes it easy to publish multiple videos on the same web page without authoring a new SWF for each one. Also use Jens Loeffler’s live dynamic streaming and digital video recording sample app to set up a dynamic streaming environment without any coding.

Recent content in the Adobe Developer Connection

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As an Adobe Flash Platform developer, you’re probably frequently integrating video and sound into your projects. In this issue we have new sample projects on using Adobe Flex and Adobe Flash to work with media.

Jens Loeffler shows you how to create a video sharing application in just a few steps using Adobe Flex Builder and Adobe Flash Media Server. Dan Carr explains how to manage audio in a media project using Adobe Soundbooth with Adobe Flash Professional. Doug Winnie provides an iterative approach to the designer-developer workflow with Adobe products and technologies.

For those of you gearing up for the next release of Flex, check out Tim Buntel’s article, Five great new features in Flash Builder 4 beta. Meanwhile, Flex developers who are interested in mapping should not miss Matt Sheehan’s article. It teaches you how to build a basic interactive map with zoom and pan functionality, and then extend the application to include multiple providers and markers.

New content on the Adobe Developer Connection

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Flex developers: Secure your applications with the Flexible Chimp project and Spring BlazeDS Integration project. Ryan Knight and Jon Rose show you how in their article, Enterprise security for Flex.

If you want to learn more about ActionScript programming in Adobe Flash CS4 Professional, you’ll want to watch Doug Winnie’s recent ActionScript video tutorials. In these videos, Doug teaches designers how to code interaction and animation, as well as basic programming concepts. Also be sure to check out the Components Learning Guide for Flash CS4 It will help you reduce your development time and effort by using building blocks for creating rich interactive applications on the web.

For the more advanced crowd, ActionScript expert Colin Moock’s Lost ActionScript Weekend turns a fireside chat with friends into a series of real-world lessons about ActionScript 3.

To get e-mail updates of our new content, subscribe to our newsletters: News Flash, The Edge, and the ADC update. You can also visit the Adobe Developer Connection to check for new content.

New Content in the Adobe Developer Connection

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As part of our weekly content launches in the Adobe Developer Connection, we’ve recently published some new articles for Flash Platform developers.

The new skinning architecture in Flex 4 beta makes it easy to completely change the look and feel of an application. Follow Ryan Frishberg to learn about the new improvements by writing a basic skin for a button and then delving into skinnable components. Building on what you’ve learned there, Evtim Georgiev addresses a number of pain points in skinning, CSS, components, states, animation, text, and graphics tags. He also shows you how to create a custom layout in his article, Spark layouts with Flex 4 beta. Meanwhile, read Tim Buntel’s article to learn how a brand new approach in Flash Builder beta can simplify the development of data-centric applications.

If you are working with web video, you’ll want to learn how to customize the ActionScript 3 FLVPlayback component, the built-in solution in Adobe Flash CS4 Professional for displaying video on the web. Also be sure to download two updated templates: spokesperson presentation with synchronized graphics and showcase website for personal video.

Flash animators: Dig into Chris Georgenes’ popular series covering the entire process of creating a digital animated character in Flash CS4 Professional. And there’s a bonus: a killer animation technique that creates convincing 3D effects while remaining in the 2D realm. Also be sure to check out Tom Green’s article on Integrating Flash CS4 with After Effects CS4.

To get e-mail updates of our new content, subscribe to our newsletters: News Flash, The Edge, and the ADC update. You can also visit the Adobe Developer Connection to check for new content.