I Was A Registered Alien!

I'm Still Here

I've not posted here for something like 5 weeks, I've been busy writing elsewhere. With articles for Adobe's Developer Center and for Builder AU I've been using my muse elsewhere - Twitter and more recently Pownce have also received some of my attention as well.

After the Apollo, now Adobe AIR, beginners article for Adobe Labs that I wrote for the public alpha release I was asked to contribute an article for the Adobe Developers Center on ActionScript 3 for Flash CS3. I've been impressed with how E4X can easily manipulate XML data so I've written an article on that topic, avoiding the usual RSS parser example by illustrating my ideas with an example application that utilizes a custom XML packet to deliver multi-lingual translations for a video display.

Builder AU asked me to review Adobe's Spry Ajax Framework for them which I did in the form of a "how to".  While Spry is a part of Dreamweaver CS3 I approached my writing through utilizing the Spry download with a text editor to add Ajax to traditional HTML - after having existed in Flex and Flash world for so long it was interesting to have to think about basic HTML again.

I've been enjoying the interaction with peers that Twitter has to offer - while not necessarily as intrusive as IM can tend to be Twitter has offered new opportunities for me that I've enjoyed immensely.

I've also been involved with two user groups this week.  The first was launched on Wednesday, ACUGA - The Adobe Connect User Group Asia Pacific.  While some of you may not necessarily get excited about online meetings and eLearning the ACUGA was well attended for the 10:00am time slot, the guest speaker was Adobe's Connect Evangelist, or Connectionist, Peter Ryce who presented from San Jose.  Peter's presentation was very interesting.  Preaching to the converted Peter gave an insight to the future of Connect with the next version requiring a minimum of Flash Player 8 to deliver dramatic performance increases - particularly in desktop sharing.  The second user group was QMUG who I spoke to on the same day, demonstrating Connect to them via Connect.

For further investigation:

Filtering XML data in Flash applications using ECMAScript for XML

Starting with Spry

ACUGA Archive

Silverlight Error 3010

In trying to be objective this afternoon I came across this amusing installation problem with Microsoft's new browser plug in Silverlight.

First things first.  I thought that I'd attempt to do this as kosher as possible.  On my work XP machine using IE7 I attempted to view some Silverlight content only to be prompted to download the plug in.

One thing that I did do that was irregular was to allow the plug in to install from the prompt rather than save local first. With my third click I allowed the installer to execute only to have it's progress stick at 54% for ages.  At the end of the process that it ran I got an installation error message with a link to find out more, normally I would have assumed that all went wrong and possibly would have shrugged the shoulders and given up - but click on the link I did.

The browser opened, a url was called and the page displayed offered an explanation for the installation error.  It was a classic, so good that I've taken a screen shot to save it for prosperity.

I was informed that I had an error 3010, and it's a good one:

Installation was completed successfully.  However, a restart is required to complete the install.  Please save your work and restart your computer to finish installation.

I wonder if a noob would have bothered to check what had gone wrong...

Click on the thumb below to see the screenshot on Flickr:

Hammer Attack

Get a bit of frustration out right now, you've got yourself a chance to have a go at me and do some major damage with a hammer.

Adobe.com: now with improved usability, Macromedia style

So it's goodbye to Macromedia.com, hello to the Macromediaisation of the Adobe web site with a look and feel that's familiar and now actually usable.  I always found the Adobe site unintuitive - could never find anything in a hurry and the pages were always bogged down, now you can look up Photoshop and actually find out something about it without having to think in Adobese.

I'm in a Flash game!!

This is so cool, Dale Rankine of Monket fame has built a Flashlite 1.1 game for webDU (only two sleeps to go) called "Celebrity Head".

Presented with caricatures of webDU presenters, lovingly done by the folk at Nectarine, you have to guess who the presenter is to earn points.

You can download the Flash Lite game from here: http://www.moket.com/webDU/

If the Riya RIA had a Flash UI, you wouldn't need this

A video piece on Cnet got my interest - a search engine that could recognise faces and text in images.  When I decided to check it out I discovered that because the developers had chosen Ajax for their UI there were issues with cross browser/OS compatibility - Safari users need not apply right now.

Browser detection locked me out of a front page that on face value doesn't contain anything tricky - it's funny really.

If your application is using a lot of graphical trickery, doing nice UI stuff, and you're trying to reach the maximum number of users - why use a technology that'll lock people out?

The Riya Safari welcome message is below:



Associated links:
Riya - Photo Search
Searching for the right face - CNET Video (Flash video)

RIA Links

I was fortunate enough to be asked to speak about Rich Internet Applications yesterday at Digital Media Festival yesterday here in Sydney. The festival continues today with some other great speakers, I saw Les Walkling's Photoshop presentation yesterday and I'm sure that his session today will be equally interesting.

During my presentation I demoed some RIAs, some AJAX, the majority Flash based. Here's the list of links that I promised that I'd post today:

Capturing and Outputting Images with Flash 8

I've built a proof of concept that shows how Flash 8 can both read, store, and write out an image.

The question regarding this possibility was the topic of much discussion during Q&A at the end of a recent Macromedia Australia Breeze seminar.

Apollo - Macromedia's "Universal Client"?

Oops, how did this slip?  After following a link found on MXNA I discover mention of what appears to be a new Macromedia codename for a Central replacement.

Code name "Apollo" it will be "a browser-independent client that supports both HTML (Hypertext Markup Language) and Flash. "

Well done Richard

Affectionately known to some in the Australian Flash fraternity as Richard Turner-Overdrive, Richard Turner-Jones is one of those quiet unsung heroes doing great things for Flash here in Australia.

Spotted in the online edition of today's Sydney Morning Herald, Richard's responsible for the fantastic Flying Around RIA (Rich Internet Application) that won the Government Experiences category in the MAX Awards this year.