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for the year 2007.
By scott
Google defines Thermo as “Two bars or wires of dissimilar metals joined at one extremity which Couple develop a current (thermoelectric current) when heated.” I define it as a major accomplishment for Adobe that is reinventing the term “Deseloper“. Aral Balkan has posted videos from the sneak peak at Max, too cool.
This is a very early sneak peak, possibly even some smoke and mirrors, but still, Adobe has hit the nail on the head and may have finally beat the Flex Project workflow issues. Watching these videos do bring up a few questions.
Are Thermo projects bound to the original assets? If the developer are working on a project together and the designer changes something in the design will Thermo automatically update the MXML. Obviously within reason, but say the designer moved the Favorites album list above the top list. Whould Thermo recognize this and make the change without the developer intervention?
All of the styles appear to be inline in the demo, can they be extracted into CSS for runtime styling? For larger applications this is mandatory for projects that are multilingual or are available under multiple brands.
What about working the other way? Open MXML in Photoshop? I don’t know how many times I have had designers take a screengrab of something I am working on, hack it apart in Photoshop just to show me what they want. Obviously they could do some of this in Thermo but I doubt Thermo will have every tool that is available in Photoshop and if it is a quick change a designer doesn’t need to learn Thermo, they can make the change, hit Save and the workflow isn’t interupted. This would also allow designers to skin existing components or even a prototype that a developer whipped together to show a concept.
With other WYSIWYG development tools the code output is usually something I wouldn’t want to hang on my fridge. MXML is pretty clean but there are optimizations that can be applied to ensure quicker compilation and easier access via Actionscript. I hope this will be considered. In the end it is all compiled so the output is usually not an issue but as a developer I have opened many files a designer has created with a WYSIWYG applications and have almost fallen out of my chair.
I am sure I will have more questions as I let this sink in. Coming from a design/creative background developer/designer workflows are something I have worked on at most companies I have worked at. I think this is a huge step in the right direction. As long as Adobe doesn’t create a visual tool for creating business logic my job will be secure when Thermo hits the market 
By scott
Maybe I am the only one out there who didn’t know this feature existed on a Mac but I stumbled upon it tonight. As a Flash Developer I am constantly watching the CPU usage when I am QAing my work. I am also constantly fighting for screen real estate.As developers we have all experienced memory leaks, have accidently forgot to delete intervals or even worse ENTER_FRAMEs, or have tried to implement an animation where the animator went a little crazy with some filters. Prior to Flex 3′s Profiler us Mac users had to open our Activity Monitor and try to jam it in the corner of the screen where we can see the browsers CPU Usage column through all the other windows open. Tonight I figured out how to show the CPU Usage in the dock.
- First open the Activity Monitor
- Right Click (or click and hold, or CTRL click) on the Activity Monitor icon in the dock and select ‘Keep in Dock’ (if it’s not already there)
- Right click on the Activity Monitor icon again and select the ‘dock icons’ menu
- From the ‘dock icons’ menu select the ‘Show CPU Usage’ item
- There you have it, a nice little visual representation of your CPU usage, it is even separated by cores (if applicable)
Like I said at the beginning of this post, a lot of you probably already knew this and stopped reading this post after the first sentence. However I do know there are a lot of developers switching to Mac, so this Bud’s for you…err…post’s for you.
By scott
Congrats to Randy Troppmann and his team at runningmap.com. Their awesome Yahoo Maps mashup was featured on the “The Lab with Leo Laporte” last week.
I got to know Randy while working at Yahoo on the map API. Randy is an excellent example of what can be done with a powerful API. Randy is very active in the Yahoo Maps discussion board where he is always helping other Flash developers with their API question. Great work Randy, from what you said to Leo it sounds like you have some exciting updates coming, were you hinting at a paid subscription service when you said “this level will always be free”? What won’t be free? Can I say I know another future millionaire?
By scott
I am loving the H.264 video capabilities of the latest beta Flash Player however I can not watch any videos on CNN.com anymore? It accuses me of having a Flash blocking plugin, as if…haha. Anyone else run into this? Hopefully this has been reported to Adobe, I’m sure i’m not the first Flash Developer news junky.
By scott
It’s my own fault, it’s what I get for switching jobs a couple weeks before MAX. If I were still at Yahoo I would be polishing up my presentation and sitting in my Chicago hotel room right now. Instead, I am sitting in Burbank in a corporate house. Am i bummed, yes, would I change anything no! Am I jealous of the 4000 attendees, hell ya My first week at Disney was great. We are really working on some cool things Coming soon to a browser near you! Stay tuned!To the folks in Chicago, please blog, and please fill Flickr and You Tube with images and videos from the conference and more importantly the after parties.
By scott
This has to be one of the coolest AIR apps I have seen to date. The simplicity of it is what makes it so appealing. Imagine turning anything you see on the web into a desktop widget.
That is what Snippage does, you can crop a web site and keep the cropped “snippet” on your desktop. Once it is cropped you can set a refresh increment and visually watch for changes. When you want to view the whole site again just click on it and the rest of the site is exposed. It’s missing a few features like custom refresh increments, the crop marquee doesn’t scroll with the page when you scroll and no force reload. But hey, it’s only a beta, it will only get better.
Snippet is created by one of the true pioneers of Flash work Gabocorp. Check out the snippet video and download the beta for yourself over at their site.
By scott
Well it says a lot about Silverlight when Microsoft is still rolling out Flash sites (only targeting Flash Player 8, AS3 must be too tough for them 
. I know Silverlight is still in beta and obviously not ready for primetime, but I still find it a some what humorous, maybe you will too, maybe not. I am sure I will get flamed for this post, but isn’t that part of the fun of having a blog? http://www.syncmyride.com
I will admit they have almost implemented a nice SEO (Search Engine Optimized) Flash site. If you view the source you will notice all of the content is written in xhtml, the swf then parses that same xhtml and uses it as its datasource. I said “almost implemented a nice SEO’d Flash site” because if you turn off javascript the content is not displayed. Certain Search Engines will still parse the mark-up but others won’t. They should of made the site fail more gracefully and display the raw XHTML for those Search Engines who ignore javascript like Google.
As a side note, another thing I found interesting is they show an image of an iPod on the site next to their (crappy) Zune player. Understandable I guess since iPod is the number one portable music player. Microsoft isn’t going to deny that.
By scott
A few months ago I blogged about a new Flash Detection JavaScript library that a friend and colleague of mine over at FeatureBlend.com created. Well, Carl has just released a new version with some pretty cool additions. Below are his words to the Flash community. Take a look and let him know what you think by leaving a comment. Hello Flash Community,
I am pleased to announce the latest updates for the JavaScript Flash Detection (Flash Detect) and JavaScript Flash HTML Generator (Flash TML) libraries.
The most notable changes are YUI namespace support (YAHOO.util.FlashDetect), JSMin version, JSLint cleanse, pattern changes and a few other goodies.
Hope you all enjoy! Carl
If you like what you see make sure to Digg these libraries.
Digg the JavaScript Flash Detection Library (Flash Detect)
Digg the JavaScript Flash HTML Generator Library (Flash TML)
By scott
Well this will probably be my last posting that announces something my team (Yahoo! Flash Platform) at Yahoo has launched. From now on it will be my former team as I am leaving to work for Disney on Friday. This week we launched three very exciting things. The new Yahoo! Flash Platform blog (http://www.yswfblog.com), the new and improved Yahoo! Flash Development Center (http://developer.yahoo.com/flash) and our new Astra Flash Components. The Astra Library is our collection of Flash and Flex components, libraries and toolkits. In this inaugural release, ASTRA contains five UI components that complement the existing set provided with Flash CS3. The new UI components are: Tree, Menu, TabBar, AutoComplete, and Charts. ASTRA is open-source under the BSD license, and follows an approach similar to the very popular YUI Library. Keep an eye on the ASTRA library, I know first hand that there are some very cool things to come.
By scott
A short time ago, almost a year now, I blogged about how I was leaving Critical Mass to go and work on the Yahoo! Flash Platform team. Well, believe it or not, I am on the move again. This time I have accepted a job with the Disney Internet Group in North Hollywood. Just like Yahoo! I will be a Senior Flash Engineer working on the core technologies team. I am not sure who is more excited about me working for Disney, my son or me?What excites me the most about this opportunity is the creative environment I will be working in. Those who know me know that I thrive in a creative environment, and it doesn’t get much more creative than Disney. I love to push the envelope and one thing I have learned over the past 10 years is it takes a great creative team and environment to push development teams to the next level.
Yahoo was great, I learned a lot, met some great people, and I worked with some of the smartest people I have ever had the chance to work with. Plus I got to see Taylor Hicks in concert at the Yahoo! campus, oh wait; I am only supposed to be mentioning the good memories.
I would like to thank Yahoo for the great opportunity they gave me and everything I learned. There are some very talented people in Sunnyvale and around the world painting the internet purple. Do you Yahoo? I did and it was spectacular! (obscure Seinfeld reference for you hardcore fans). Now I must replace my Yahoo! hat with a pair of ears.
