Tag Archives: features

6 lesser known features in Flash Player 10.1

by Serge Jespers on 13. Apr, 2010 in Flash Player

I’m sure by now you know about all the new features in Flash Player 10.1 but I’m also sure that there are a few that you don’t know about yet. Some of them are pretty cool and very useful/good to know. That is why I wanted to give you a quick list of 6 lesser known features.

  1. Disabled screen saver in full screen mode
    There’s nothing more annoying than having to press the keyboard or moving your mouse every few minutes to prevent the screensaver from kicking in while watching a video in full screen. Flash Player 10.1 now temporarily disables your screensaver if video is playing and not paused, stopped or buffering. But it also works with audio. So… if you’re running a full screen app that plays audio and it is not paused, stopped or buffering and actually has volume the screensaver will not kick in.
  2. Flash Player throttling
    Before Flash Player 10.1 the runtime would just render out all SWFs at the maximum possible frame rate even when they were not visible. In 10.1 this is now changing as Flash Player can detect whether or not a SWF is visible or not… if the browser actually supports it. Check out Tinic’s blog post on this topic and his follow up on which browsers support it.
  3. Mobile text input
    I’ve been asked this question a couple of times over the last few weeks which is why I wanted to highlight it in this post. Flash Player 10.1 provides support for use of native device virtual keyboards with TextField support if no physical keyboard is detected. A virtual keyboard is automatically raised and lowered in response to focus changes on text fields.
  4. Globalization API
    The new ActionScript globalization APIs allow Flash Player to use the values chosen in the operating system locale preferences to process text and lists and present information based on location context. Locale specific information and processing can include: date, time, currency and number formatting; currency and number parsing; string comparison for sorting or searching for text; and upper/lower case conversions.
  5. Graphics hardware acceleration on mobile
    A GPU-based vector renderer replaces the software renderer on smartphones and other mobile devices, resulting in faster rendering performance for more expressive user experiences while consuming less power. This supports hardware acceleration of all rendering, including vector graphics, bitmaps, 3D effects, filters, color transforms, alpha, device and embedded text, Saffron type, and cacheAsBitmap.
  6. Private browsing mode
    Flash Player 10.1 now automatically respects the host browser’s “private browsing” mode (Supported in Firefox, Chrome, and Internet Explorer), where local data and browsing activity are not persisted locally, providing a consistent private browsing mechanism for SWF and HTML content.

The release of Flash Player 10.1 is just around the corner now but you can already start developing applications that target the new APIs today. The release candidate of Flash Player 10.1 as well as all the information on how to start building apps today is available on Adobe Labs.

Flash on!

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How would you improve Adobe AIR and the Flash Platform?

by Serge Jespers on 25. Mar, 2010 in AIR, Flash Platform

The release of AIR2 is just around the corner and it has a ton of new (community-requested) features. When we first released AIR a lot of people asked if it was possible to launch and communicate with native processes. We also heard requests for things like better printing support, USB volume detection and multi-touch. Despite the fact that it may not alway be very obvious and that we can’t add every single feature request to a next release, we do listen. The same thing goes for all the Flash Platform tools and runtimes.

To make it easier for you to get your ideas to us we launched a new site. Adobe Ideas allows you to submit ideas on how to improve the Flash Platform as well as vote and comment on existing ideas from others in the community.

I already voted for my favorites and have some ideas lined up to post. What are your favorites?

Update: I just posted 2 simple ideas that I’d love to see in a future version of AIR.

  1. First of all I’d like to see us add modal windows that require the user’s interaction before continuing with the app.
    Click to vote.
  2. I’d also love the ability to add icons to the menu bar on OSX.
    Click to vote.
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My 9 favorite ColdFusion 9 features

by Serge Jespers on 13. Jul, 2009 in ColdFusion

coldfusion.jpg (JPEG Image, 253x250 pixels)-1.jpgIn 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.

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