My favorite music browsing/listening service, Pandora, just released a beta desktop client... and it's built using Adobe AIR. Sweet! Yet another example of how easily you can move from web to desktop using AIR. As Pandora was always Flash-based, it's not a surprising move (and the design/look/feel is pretty much just like the site so not a huge jump forward in functionality), but a welcome move nonetheless- I'm not a fan of listening from my browser and much prefer the OS X dock controls the AIR desktop client provides. You can read more about the desktop beta at the Pandora team blog, and download/install the desktop beta here.
Recently in Flash Category
Amidst all the new iMac/iLife/iWork iNews this week, I somehow missed this little tidbit (thanks to JD for the nod)- Apple's new 'My iTunes' site offers several downloadable/embeddable page widgets to share your iTunes prefs with the world- and said widgets are delivered in Flash format.
Widgets and code snippets like this aren't quite breaking news, but given all the chatter recently about what Apple ISN'T doing with Flash today (most notably the iPhone, of course), I found this a rather interesting example of some cool things Apple IS doing with Flash.
I love it when standards and Flash play nicely together, and the release of swfIR today really illustrates how Flash can be used to progressively enhance images in your standards-compliant markup- and in a nicely unobtrusive manner. Inline rotations, drop shadows, rounded corners, dynamic resizing and flexible borders are now yours for the price of a svelte JS include and 'shim' SWF file, at the expense of a simple <span> wrapped around your image. And of course, like sIFR before it, should your user agent not support swfIR the original image - with it's pristine and standards-compliant markup - is shown as expected, sans the glitzy effects. Kudos to the swfIR team - Jon Aldinger, Mark Huot and Dan Mall - for this tasty morsel of progressively-enhanced joy.
You can read more at the swfIR site, and find additional commentary at both Jeffrey Zeldman and Mike Davidson's weblogs (as they cued me in on swfIR to begin with). Good stuff.
I've been meaning to post a review of Focal Press' new book "Flash 3d - Animation, Interactivity and Games" for a few weeks now, but found myself digging through it more and more, which is a sure-fire sign that I'm enjoying it thoroughly. And that's definitely the case. Big thumbs-up from me, especially if you've been daunted by 3D animation and/or development before. Kudos to co-authors Jim Ver Hague and Chris Jackson for presenting this material in such a down-to-earth and easy to disseminate format.
Now I must admit I'm a bit bummed that this book is even necessary- as being a long-time After Effects user I've been using 3D cameras in AE for quite a while and have always wished the same functionality was available in my vector animation app 'o choice, Flash. But I digress. In lieu of real 3D cameras, objects/primitives and views in Flash, this book does a fantastic job of both walking through the basics of 3D perspectives and geometry, and getting down and dirty with real-world examples and implementations you can chew on right here, right now.
Starting with a great overview of perspective and depth - the book quickly moves into a very well-explained set of chapters covering the mathematics and spatial environment required to animate and code in 3D, and how to apply those principles to your Flash projects. No worries to the algorithmically-challenged- if you skipped geometry and trig in school, you won't get lost here.
After a blitzkrieg (but well-explained) run through the fundamentals of 3D space, the book rounds out it's tail section with a discussion of 3D objects and elements, and how to both transform planar objects 3D space as well as extrude/add dimension to them in order to simulate real depth and volume. And the companion CD-ROM includes source and reference projects to supplement all of these great examples throughout. All in all, a very well-done book that fills a rather large void that's existed for a while in the Flash animation world.
If you're interested in adding rich 3D effects and perspectives to your Flash projects, whether simple spatial tricks to add dimension to your planar animations or full-blown environmental simulations with camera perspective, "Flash 3D - Animation, Interactivity, and Games" could just be the book that fills the void for you. Check it out- I really enjoyed it and am pretty sure you will as well.
Update: you can also download a sample chapter in PDF format (Chapter 1) from the product page on the Focal Press site, or by clicking here. Good stuff!
Tom Green and Tiago Dias have a new book coming out, focusing on the intersection of After Effects and Flash for creatives. And good news- you can get a chance to read the first two chapters early starting right now on the Community MX website here. Since I've been using these two apps together for quite some time, this is obviously a very interesting subject to me- and knowing Tom well (and just having met Tiago at MAX this last October) it's looking like the two of 'em will rip up the subject quite well. Swing over to Community MX and check out the first excerpt from Chapter 1 - "From Concept to Final Product in After Effects 7". Look forward to reading the rest, guys!
If you're using iTunes and like music as much as I do (even half as much), you should check out iLike, a new music-centric social networking site by the people who brought you Garageband.com.
iLike has used Flash to integrate a 'sidebar' into iTunes (Mac and Windows), and let you share your recently-played tracks with both your direct friends and the larger music community. Implemented in Flash as a direct extension to iTunes (right now that's the only 'jukebox' app supported), the iLike sidebar helps link you to your iLike account, and both see what your friends are listening to as well as other artists similar to your own tastes as you rock out in iTunes on your local machine. Awesome.
But best of all- it helps find similar independent artists on Garageband.com based on your musical preferences. I've been growing more and more dissatisfied with the major labels' choices these days, and have really been getting into the indie scene more- this is a great way to 'music-surf' some great unknown acts and 'local heros' you might not otherwise notice sticking to the corpo-airwaves. ;-)
I've been really enjoying iLike the last month or so of it's private beta, but as it's now opened up to public beta this last week- you can jump in and start music-surfing and discovering new artists and tunes yourselves. Check out their FAQ here, and if you decide to hook up, make sure to ping me at my profile page here and hop on my buddy list. The more the merrier, I say.
(IMHO - since it's such a cool, integrated use of Flash outside the great features, you should just give it a whirl on general principle... ;-)
With great power comes great responsibility... ;-)
I just read Ajaxian's review of the new Gucci website, which is using script.aculo.us to build out a very slick, 'Flash-esque' user experience. Great job, too. I like what they've done with the site, it's very aesthetically pleasing but also easy to navigate and browse.
But I have to chuckle a bit as I read the 'skip intro' barb in the first comment on Ajaxian - a portend of hauntings to come with script.aculo.us and other visual widgets realized in Javascript? Although Flash took many direct punches on the chin over the 'skip intro' sites, back then Flash was also the only real game in town for rich, interactive online experiences (as well as gratuitous animation). Now that Javascript can be abused with equal ease and aplomb for visual experiences, can we finally just agree as a community that it's *designers and engineers* who are responsible the decisions to weigh down an experience with excessive visual flair/cruft/elements, and not the underlying technologies that enable them?
I suspect you won't hear that 'Javascript/Ajax is 99% Bad' anytime soon, alas. Personally I think that any technology, if abused or overused, can become '99% bad'. But that's just me (and my biased opinion)... and given Javascript's recent emergence in this arena, I suspect there's a lot more to be said on the subject in coming months and years.
Welcome to the 'skip intro' club, script.aculo.us! ;-)
Ted Patrick's FXT (Flex Templating) post and sample code also addresses common RIA concerns such as back-button support, RESTful URLs, it's a very flexible way to allow the HTML container of a Flex app to provide the data model for the Flex 2 SWF-based view/controller in a way that allows spiders to easily crawl and index the content - one of the most common complaints I hear about Flex/Flash applications today. Chafic feels that this could be a step towards Flex replacing HTML - and I'd have to agree that although that may be quite a while off, FXT is definitely a HUGE step moving Flex apps in the right direction. Ted gave me a quick laptop demo of FXT yesterday while we were both down in the San Jose offices, and I've been hard-pressed to get it off my mind ever since. I'm really glad Ted announced FXT today, so I can purge my driving need to talk about it postehaste. :)
If you haven't checked out FXT yet, definitely visit Ted's blog, download/check out the source and give it a spin. This could have you thinking entirely differently about Flex applications as replacements or even adjuncts to your current content models. Very cool stuff!
That's right- the preview release of Flash Professional 9 (with Actionscript 3 support) is live on Labs. If you're a Flash 8 loyalist who's been keeping a distant eye on Flex 2 (formerly in beta, but which just released officially today) to see how Actionscript 3 develops, now you can start tweaking with it in Flash, too.
The Flash Professional 9 Actionscript 3 Preview release will be the only preview release before the final version ships in '07, but it's well worth the download if you've been itching to get started with AS3 (and the also-newly-released Flash Player 9). In this release you can set publish targets for AS3/Player 9, as well as assign a class to the master Timeline. There are more cool AS3-specific features planned for the final release, but you'll just have to wait for those surprises, sorry. ;-)
If you haven't started downloading the preview release yet... what are you waiting for?
A quickie for today- this being one very slick 3D-space menu implemented in Flash, the inbound link courtesy of Jacob at Sony Online Entertainment. Very sweet.
