Abode announced yesterday that Flash Player 8.5 Beta, very well known by Flex Developers and Beta testers, will be the official Flash 9.0. The features of this release include the ECMAScript Edition 4-based ActionScript 3.0 language and a new ActionScript Virtual Machine (AVM2), which dramatically exceeds the performance of previous players.

The performance gains are massive... i.e. in a particular example, loading a large dataset in a flash grid took 20 seconds in Flash 7, 15 seconds in Flash 8, and less than 5 seconds in Flash 8.5, or 9 ...

The new authoring tool, code named Blaze, is still no where near the door... but it is expected the Flex 2.0 builder gets its final release by the end of the first half of the year... thus you should expect it sometime in June.

so I came across this link maybe a year ago, sIFR is rich typography for html pages... the idea is to write your regular xhtml compatible code and then run a JavaScript that will replace it with SWFs using nicer fonts is JS and Flash Player are available. It's a nice idea and I'm planning to play with it ... but how many of you are using it? Can you post links to check them out?

I'd like to integrate this with a CMS system ... so I'll write dynamic content pages with a bunch of dynamic classes, set the iSFR using a small back end admin, and then have it replace the headers of the entire site... doable? I hope so, cuz it looks really good.

I noticed that the install comes with two swfs files... why two? sorry, I haven't even read instructions (as a good tech guy), so I'm assuming it will be fully dynamic and I won't have to open Flash, ever. I should be able to embed a bunch of fonts in the flash files and just specify which one I want to use ... anyways, I'll post my experience using it in a few days... I just wanted to get some comments here.

Check out iChameleon Group's latest project: the Fourth Meal, for Taco Bell. Version 1 just got released today and there is still much more to come. This release includes a chat of customizable Avatars that can move around and talk to each other in various rooms, and a few games...

Ok, so the title is a little skewed, I wouldn't take it as far as a masterpiece, but it's a really nice Flash Site with awesome graphics and creative work.

BTW, it is using Adobe's FlashCom and CFMX7. I just can't wait to blog about v2 and the power of ColdFusion gateways.

Comments?

so who said it's Ajax OR Flash? It's been proven lately that they can co-exist and benefit from each other ... Flex released the Flex-Ajax-Bridge, Rob released Apocalypse :) Ajax and XML sockets, and now Google demonstrate to the world how it should be done.

Check out:
http://finance.google.com/finance?q=adbe

It's a really nice mash-up of technologies and data, put together wish Ajax calls combined with Flash to make a unique user experience. I have a feeling that if Yahoo doesn't get up to speed soon Google will make all their products obsolete.

Go jo!

I still can't believe that Flash doesn't have a built-in regEx match or replace engine, but it can still be accomplished by using external classes. After vast research, I found a class that I really liked and I wrote a VERY simple example validating an email string.

This library is extremely useful because now you can apply patterns to validate numbers, dates, emails, urls, phones, etc. Most actionscripters are not hip or even aware that this is possible, and have to write dozens of lines to validate a simple email address.

You can download the class and the Flash test files, enclosed with this post.

Enjoy!

I found these links, and both are very useful
ColdFusion Best Practices
ActionScript Best Practices
I also enclosed a print version of the CF one.

Really useful one-page cheat-sheet for Flash Scripters.  Server and Client side version available. JIC, I made copies in my server, should they one day take them down. [s|c]. Server-side is mostly useful when working with Flash [Communication|Media] Server.

[updated link]

A few months ago I explained how to use the undocumented XPath API for Flash. Macromedia finally released documentation with Flash 8, which can be found here, or enclosed with this post.

I'm researching the world of gaming and thus far I have to candidates: Flash Communication Server (1.5, or 2.0 Media Server), and XML Sockets.

I successfully deployed XML Gateways using a modified version of the default ColdFusion XML Gateway. For my purposes, both are working fine.

I'd like to hear comments on why I should decide on one or another… here're some queue points: price, scalability, reliability, and deployment time just to name a few.

FlashCom is way more expensive; even paying CF enterprise licenses. On the other hand, FlashCom has built in HTTP tunneling, allowing XML sockets to penetrate large corporation's packet filtering.

Both can be easily clustered. I have no benchmarks at all, but I could guess that FlashCom will handle load better.

Please provide your opinions; I'm hiring consultants on this topic, so expect to see more on this topic soon.

"With Flex 2.0 and Flash Player 8.5, we can finally deliver the kinds of rich applications our clients demand without compromise. That's Web 2.0! With these words, a VP at Cynergy Systems today gave his ringing endorsement of the Adobe Flex 2.0 product line and Adobe Flash Player 8.5"

• Flash Player 8.5 -- the latest high-performance client runtime for engaging Web experiences
• Flex Framework 2.0 -- the core programming model and component library for Flex
• Flex Builder 2.0 -- an Eclipse-based IDE for developing rich Internet applications with the Flex Framework
• Flex Enterprise Services 2.0 -- essential data services and an open adapter architecture for delivering data-intensive rich Internet applications and deeply integrating with enterprise service-oriented infrastructure
• Flex Charting Components 2.0 -- extensible components for advanced data visualization