Tag Archives: beta
Even though I already have FP10.1 installed on my Nexus One (one of the many perks of working at Adobe ;-)), I’m very happy to see that we will be releasing a public preview of Flash Player 10.1 for Android on my birthday… eh I mean… at Google I/O on May 19th/20th.
There seems to be some confusion around whether or not Flash Player 10.1 for mobile devices (including Android) will ship in the first half of 2010 like we promised. It’s very energizing and refreshing to see the excitement about Flash Player coming to Android! However, I do want to set the record straight.
Aaah… They grow up so fast… Adobe AIR is 2 years old today. With AIR 2 now coming to mobile devices like Android devices and Apple’s phones it’s clear that AIR has a bright future ahead.
In case you haven’t heard: ColdFusion 9 Beta and ColdFusion Builder Beta are now available on Adobe Labs. Some of you may find this surprising (;-)) but I’ve been playing with CF9 for a few months now and actually really love it!
We’ve been talking about Flash Catalyst (the project formerly known as Thermo) and Flash Builder 4 (the updated and renamed Flex Builder) for quite some time now. Today, we’re releasing the first public beta for both products.
We have been talking about Thermo for a while now and here’s the first question everyone I showed it to asked: When can I
get my hands on it? Well… Here’s the answer: MAX 2008.
Android week: AIR for Android prerelease
From the AIR Team Blog: “We are pleased today to announce the public availability of the Adobe AIR for Android Developer Prerelease program. Any designer or developer interested in building Android applications using the Flash Platform is welcome to join this program to get access to our beta SDK. Whether you are already an experienced Flash developer or just interested in learning Flash, we encourage you to join our prerelease program to get started on building Android applications today using AIR.”
Flash Player 10.1 preview release for Android at Google I/O
Even though I already have FP10.1 installed on my Nexus One (one of the many perks of working at Adobe ;-)), I’m very happy to see that we will be releasing a public preview of Flash Player 10.1 for Android on my birthday… eh I mean… at Google I/O on May 19th/20th.
Ever since I switched to the Nexus One as my main phone I’ve been using Flash Player on the Android browser just about every day. I already told you a while ago that I am a news junkie and that I like to keep up with the news wherever I go. When something happens in the world, I usually visit a number of different news sites to see what they have to say. A lot of news outlets use Flash to deliver their videos. With Flash Player 10.1 installed on my device I can just open up a browser window, type in the URL that I am used to browsing to on my desktop machine and then just click on the video which starts playing instantly. No need to (purchase) download and install an app. The same content that I am used to seeing on my desktop machine is just right there.
I can’t wait to see and read your experiences with Flash Player on your mobile device. Google’s Android may be first but RIM, Palm (soon to be HP), Microsoft, Nokia and others will follow soon.
Flash Player 10.1 for Android still on track for H1 release
There seems to be some confusion around whether or not Flash Player 10.1 for mobile devices (including Android) will ship in the first half of 2010 like we promised. It’s very energizing and refreshing to see the excitement about Flash Player coming to Android! However, I do want to set the record straight.
Flash Player 10.1 for mobile devices (including Android) is still on track for an H1 2010 release!
The confusion started when an interview with Adobe’s CEO Shantanu Narayen was misinterpreted. He said that Android devices with Flash Player 10.1 preinstalled will start shipping in H2.
It’s perfectly normal that devices with Flash Player preinstalled ship a little bit later than the actual release. That said, Flash Player 10.1 will also be available in the Android Market, on our website and/or via an OTA update of the OS. If you already own a recent Android device like the Nexus One, you will be able to download and install Flash Player yourself.
Make sure you sign up for the Flash Player 10.1 for Android beta notification and you may also be interested in signing up for the AIR2 for Android beta notification.
Happy 2nd birthday, Adobe AIR!
Aaah… They grow up so fast… Adobe AIR is 2 years old today. With AIR 2 now coming to mobile devices like Android devices and Apple’s phones it’s clear that AIR has a bright future ahead.
The AIR 2 release is just around the corner but you can already start building and testing your apps with the public beta available on Adobe Labs.
If you’re interested in learning about the new features AIR 2 has to offer, check out my presentation slides from FITC and the demo files that go with it. Also check out Tour De Flex for more code samples.
I can’t wait to see what you guys are going to build with AIR 2 and its new capabilities!
Photo by Lee Turner.
Help improve Flash Player 10.1 and AIR 2.0
Adobe engineering is headed into the final stretch of development of Flash Player 10.1 and AIR 2.0. We need community help to identify quality issues with your deployed and in-development content. While both Flash and AIR are tested extensively internally, every beta we receive valuable feedback from the Flash community and beyond.
Here is how you can get involved:
- Download and install Flash Player 10.1 Beta 2 and AIR 2.0 Beta 2
- Test the new beta runtimes with your content and applications.
- Log bugs at bugs.adobe.com. Engineering teams use your bug reports to reproduce errors and improve the runtime quality.
As far as beta timelines, beta 3 releases are a few weeks away and release candidates are expected within 60 days. Your involvement and assistance during this critical development window are really important and will only improve Flash Player and AIR quality.
Please also help spread the word about the beta process via Twitter:
Improve Flash 10.1 & AIR 2.0 via Beta 2 http://bit.ly/aN4Qk0 READ & RT #Flash #AIR #QUALITY
Raising the bar… again: FP10.1 & AIR2 betas on Labs
Wohooow… It’s always great to wake up to new toys to play with! Flash Player 10.1 and AIR2.0 are now available on Adobe Labs.
This is a very exciting release for Adobe. Not only is it the first time that we sim-ship Flash Player and AIR for all 3 major operating systems (Mac, Windows & Linux), Flash Player 10.1 is also the first runtime release of the Open Screen Project. While we’re only releasing the beta version of Flash Player 10.1 for the desktop we do plan to roll out additional betas prior to the release with more features, performance improvements, new tooling options and support for mobile platforms. I’ve been lucky enough to play with some smart phones that already have Flash Player 10.1 and I am absolutely amazed to see the performance on these devices. It’s also great to finally have FP10 in the browser on a mobile device. It’s great to see you can now have the full web in your mobile browser!
We’ve already talked about and demoed some of the new features at MAX. Check out the feature page on Labs for a complete list of new features in Flash Player 10.1 and Christian Cantrell’s blog for a comprehensive list of new features in AIR. Christian also has a bunch of code samples on his blog demonstrating the new features. Also check out Adobe TV for more demos and tutorials.
Don’t forget… These are pre-release BETA releases. While the Flash Player and AIR teams do their very best to maintain backward compatibility, things may break. And that is exactly why we do these public betas. If you do come across an application that doesn’t work, make sure you tell us about it!
I can’t wait to see what you guys are going to build with this new set of building blocks… Flash on!
My 9 favorite ColdFusion 9 features
In case you haven’t heard: ColdFusion 9 Beta and ColdFusion Builder Beta are now available on Adobe Labs. Some of you may find this surprising (;-)) but I’ve been playing with CF9 for a few months now and actually really love it!
To give you a bit of an idea on what I like about CF9, I’ve listed my 9 favorite features.
1) Adobe AIR database synchronization
By enabling this feature in your AIR application (both on the server and in the client app), the application syncs the data from a ColdFusion datasource to a local SQLite database. On the server side, it’s as simple as setting the persistent property to true on an ORM component. On the AIR side, it takes a little bit more depending on the features you need. In some cases you may need things like conflict management but even something as complicated as that can be done with just a few lines of code. Read more about this feature.
2) Object Relational Mapping (ORM)
This was a true eye-opener for me. ORM allows you to do complex database calls without writing a single SQL query thus making your code a lot cleaner and more manageable. This is a serious time saver and your apps will even run faster because of the built-in ORM optimizations. Read more about this feature.
3) Flex integration
I’m not just talking about the data centric development features in Flash Builder here. By using the ColdFusion proxy ActionScript classes, you get access to several ColdFusion services without actually writing any ColdFusion code. You just call the ColdFusion service straight from your Flex code. Read more about this feature.
4) ColdFusion Builder
Not really a ColdFusion 9 feature but ok… ColdFusion Builder is an Eclipse based IDE for CF development that is deeply integrated with CF9. So it’s ok to post it in this list ;-) I absolutely love how easy it is to create your ORM code. With just a few clicks, you can create all the necessary CRUD code to use in your CF application or your Flex application. I also really like that it’s extremely easy to extend ColdFusion Builder with your own extensions. You can easily write those extensions using CFML. Read more about ColdFusion Builder.
5) ColdFusion as a service
Ever tried calling an Exchange server from a PHP server (or any other server)? Or read a PPT, DOC or XLS file? Did you have fun? ;-) Next time, you should consider using CF9. ColdFusion 9 has an exposed service layer meaning you have direct access to a bunch of CF9 services from any server language you use. You can even call them using SOAP. Read more about this feature.
6) Server manager
If you work with multiple CF servers, this is surely going to make you very happy. Server Manager is an AIR-based desktop application that allows you to centrally manage multiple ColdFusion servers from one location. Apply hot fixes, change configs, create data sources, etc to all servers at once. Read more about this feature.
7) Office application integration
Ever wanted to create a presentation (PPT) from an bunch of images? Or from an HTML page? The <cfpresentation> tag allows you to do that and more! With just a few lines of code, you can create, convert and read presentation files. The same thing goes for documents and spreadsheets. Read more about this feature.
8) PDF integration
With the enhanced PDF support in CF9, you can extract all the content form a PDF file. You can also update PDFs and even optimize them on the server. Read more about this feature.
9) <cfscript>
The <cfscript> tag was really confusing to me when I first started playing with CF. Some CFML tags could also be scripted and others couldn’t. With CF9, everything you can do with CFML, you can also do with <cfscript>. Read more about <cfscript>.
Obviously there are a lot more new and cool features in ColdFusion 9 and ColdFusion Builder but I thought 9 was an appropriate number ;-). Go ahead and download the public beta versions available on Labs and start playing with it yourself.
Get your Flash Catalyst & Flash Builder beta now
We’ve been talking about Flash Catalyst (the project formerly known as Thermo) and Flash Builder 4 (the updated and renamed Flex Builder) for quite some time now. Today, we’re releasing the first public beta for both products.
I am really excited (and I’m pretty sure all of us at Adobe are) to see what you guys are going to create with these new tools and how it’s going to improve your workflow. You can get the betas on Adobe Labs. To help you get started, we’ve created a bunch of tutorials and samples to get you going. I’ve just listed a couple of them here. For more tutorials and samples, check out the Adobe Developer Connection. Flash on!
Flash Catalyst:
The purpose of this tutorial is to introduce designers, familiar with Photoshop, to the basic concepts and workflow involved in using the beta version of Flash Catalyst.
This tutorial covers all the skills and techniques needed to take a concept from a static file to a completed interactive, multimedia interface.
[ Read more ]
In this tutorial Andrew Shorten shows you how to build an employee address book application that lets users enter search criteria and view a list of results fetched from a database (via a ColdFusion service), from which they can select an employee to get their full contact information. The completed application could work either as a browser-based application (using Adobe Flash Player) or a desktop application (using Adobe AIR).
[ Read more ]
For more information, tutorials and samples for Flash Catalyst, check out http://labs.adobe.com/technologies/flashcatalyst/tutorials/
Flash Builder 4:
Matt Chotin (product manager for Flex) provides an overview of what you’ll encounter as you play with the new SDK and framework.
The work on the Flex SDK has been focused around three primary themes: “Design in Mind”, “Developer Productivity”, “Framework Evolution”.
[ Read more ]
Tim Buntel (product manager for Flash Builder) provides an overview of what’s new in Flash Builder 4. While the name has changed, this is still the evolution of Flex Builder 3—a professional-grade, Eclipse-based development tool designed to help you rapidly build rich Internet applications (RIAs) and content using the open-source Flex framework—but with an incredible collection of powerful new features.
[ Read more ]
For more information, tutorials and samples for Flash Builder 4, check out http://labs.adobe.com/technologies/flashbuilder4/tutorials/
Can’t wait to get your hands on Thermo? Here’s how to get it early!
We have been talking about Thermo for a while now and here’s the first question everyone I showed it to asked: When can Iget my hands on it? Well… Here’s the answer: MAX 2008.
I don’t think we’ve ever done something like this before but all MAX
attendees will be able to go home with a preview release of Thermo. I’ve been playing with this version for the last few days to get ready for the hands-on sessions and I have to say that the Thermo team has done an amazing job. Thermo rocks!
We’re also going to reveal the new name for Thermo at MAX. People have already started the guessing game over at g-unix.com. You could win a copy of the Flex 3 In Action book if you guess it right.
See you at MAX!
Dreamweaver, Fireworks & Soundbooth in public beta
It’s always nice to wake up to some goodies to play with. This morning (depending on where you are obviously) we released beta versions of the next versions of Dreamweaver, Fireworks and Soundbooth on Adobe Labs. These betas should give you some idea of the direction that CS4 is taking.
Notable new features:
New user interface
You’ll see this one across other components of the next version of Creative Suite and I like it very much!
Photoshop Smart Objects
You could already drag and drop PSD files into a Dreamweaver page in CS3 but now these are actual Smart Objects.
Subversion integration
I’m sure some of you will say: “Finally”.
WebKit preview
Dreamweaver now uses WebKit to preview pages in design view. Hoorah!
More new features on http://labs.adobe.com/technologies/dreamweavercs4/.
Notable new features:
AIR authoring
Make an interactive prototype of your AIR application directly within Fireworks and deploy it as HTML with CSS, Flex or Flash.
Adobe type engine
Fireworks now has the Adobe type engine to produce superior type design in a way that is familiar to Photoshop and Illustrator users.
More new features on http://labs.adobe.com/technologies/fireworkscs4/.
UPDATE: Alan Musselman has an in-depth presentation online where he walks through all the new features Fireworks has to offer.
Notable new features:
Multitrack
This must have been the most requested feature! And yes… Soundbooth is now multitrack!
Matching volume levels
With just one click, Soundbooth analyzes and adjusts the audio levels
More new features on http://labs.adobe.com/technologies/soundboothcs4/.
Go get them at labs.adobe.com! All betas are available for Windows and OSX and will work alongside your CS3 installations. These betas provide you an opportunity to give feedback on the next versions of these applications. If you find a bug or have feedback, make sure you file it on the beta forums.
