Adobe, Flash Development, and Apple? WHUT?

package inspired.flash.adobe
{
Today adobe announced a few exciting things.

First, flash player 10.3 is now in Beta.  This is great for users, and not just developers.  The main key new feature in this version is the much asked for new controls over security.  Instead of being redirected to a special page, and needing to be a flash dev to know how to remove flash cookies, they have integrated it all into the browser and things are just much better for everyone.  There are also some nice dev updates such as Acoustic Cancelation and you can read all about it here.



Adobe also released a program which they debuted at Adobe MAX in October code named "Wallaby."  This great app allows a person to make an animation in the Flash IDE, and then port it over into HTML5.  It's applications are actually very limited, and I imagine only webcomics and advertisements are going to be using the tool for a while.  Ironically, this is what most people think of when they think of flash and flash blockers, so we will see how the Iphone users like the new content.  And in all honesty, it seems like "Wallaby" is only really needed for Apple consumers... which brings me to my next point.

Some people are surprised by all these announcements from Adobe recently.  All these great new innovations being announced at small and large tech conferences.  The twitter response from these events and announcements are very similar to the tweets you see after/during an Apple keynote.  The main difference here is that the audience is not full of reporters, and the audience is not there just for the keynote.  But it does seem to me like Adobe is learning a bit from the Apple hype machine and emulating it.  For the good and the bad.

So, if you have not been keeping up, I suggest you go visit Adobe labs and see all the non-released apps and frameworks that Adobe has been releasing lately which makes the Internet more interesting, and content for said more interesting internet to be more easily made.  (Is that sentence structure akward enough for you?)

For the flash player, it is suggested that you download a plugin for your browser that allows you to quickly and easily change the flash version.  You can also see why adobe changed the publishing settings for flash dev to target a FlashPlayer version and also to target a SwfVersion.   We are now up to Flash Player 11 and Swf Version 13.  Be sure to check out Flash Player "square" for 64 bit systems, the Flash Player incubator, Flash Player 10.3, and to make sure your browsers are up to date with FlashPlayer 10.2.. It's like an over ambitious opensource project now... but the enhancements are awesome.

I almost forgot, they also released Cold Fusion builder 2, which is like Flash Builder 4.5, but for back end systems... but I havn't tried Cold Fusion Builder 1 yet, so I can't say much about it.

Post Post Script... Also, if you are playing with Molehill you are definitely going to want to download PixelBender 3d... Pixel Bender has got to be the coolest thing that ever happened to ActionScript, and now its in 3D!
}