flash @ the javaposse

James Ward at Adobe wrote to the JavaPosse (on episode 95, towards the end) to clear up a few things related to the tamarin announcement and it's timing with Java going the GPL route that came up in the previous edition; i called bs on javaposse, btw.

Anyways, Dick and the rest of the guys there generally feel like I do--that there really is a drive to get current versions of the player on linux in time (which gets it into the hands of developers who haven't really cared about it in the past) and that it allows for some really slick stuff to be built.

They mentioned that they might try to get James on there for a chat about flash, as an alternative *thick* client platform; I thought that is interesting; I'm sure hope Adobe will follow up on this... it doesn't get as easy as this to hit some core audience :)

cheers,
-- eokyere :)

Aptana, Your web IDE is here

while doing some research for work, I went off on a tangent wondering what happened to xamlon; hitting the default RHEL/Apache 2 site isn't what I bargained for; what happened to them?

Meanwhile, I found a link to great IDE in Aptana (in beta) on Robin Debreuil's weblog; from the product page:

Aptana is a robust, JavaScript-focused IDE for building dynamic web applications. Highlights include the following features:

* Code Assist on JavaScript, HTML, and CSS languages, including your own JavaScript functions
* Outliner that gives a snapshot view of your JavaScript, HTML, and CSS code structure

I've been using it for a few days now, and it is actually quite solid; it is built on Eclipse (and has a plugin for it) plus it's available on Mac, Linux and PC. If you are doing some coding in the file formats mentioned above, you want to try this product.

cheers,
-- eokyere :)

Links:

Aptana - http://aptana.com

Wiiiiiiiii and flash :)

Dan Wood just pointed on our internal list that the wiiiiiiiiiii will have support for flash. From the Opera press release:

"With support for Flash and AJAX-based content such as Google maps, Wii users will benefit from a feature-rich Internet experience that is uniquely customized for the Wii."

sorry, ps3, but for geek points I know which console I'm getting :)

Cheers,
-- eokyere :)

Links:

Opera Wii Press Release -- http://www.opera.com/pressreleases/en/2006/09/26/

tamarin

in flash circles, this is probably old news, and will likely be the nail in the coffin of the flash/ajax debate.

From the mozilla page:

The Tamarin virtual machine currently implements the ECMAScript 3rd edition language standard that is the basis for JavaScript, Adobe ActionScript, and Microsoft Jscript, plus some of the new language features proposed in the ECMAScript 4th edition specification. By working on an open source implementation of ES4 with the community, Adobe and Mozilla hope to accelerate the adoption of a standard language for creating engaging Web applications. We hope the Tamarin project accelerates the ability of developers to create and deliver richer, more interactive experiences that work across multiple platforms.

go over to jd's blogpost for a roundup on the conversation on this so far.

if you know flash-related stuff, your skill set just got cemented for a lot more years to come (more on this later)


cheers,
-- eokyere :)

Links:

Project Tamarin - http://www.mozilla.org/projects/tamarin/

emmanuel.okyere@akqa.com

i'll be joining the ranks at AKQA, in the crd dept, from next week; the guys at itoworld have been such a positive influence on me... from one great group of guys to another great group of guys... it's been a lot of blessings; and i really appreciate all those experiences. wish me well :)

cheers,
-- eokyere :)

Rob Savoye on Gnash - The GNU/Flash Player

John Dowdell provides a link to a video on Rob Savoye/Gnash in a comment to Ryan Stewart's blogpost on the Enhanced Flash Player... that was quite long :)

Now if you see the video, it's interesting, to me at least, how over half of it is 'wasted' on Flash 'security' (specifically, harvesting of data/cookies), which I feel is a moot point, btw.

Towards the end, however, Rob talks about what could be the actual utility of the free (as in speech and beer) flash player. Gnash uses gstreamer/ffmpeg to support all the audio and video formats of the gnash player, so rather than being able to play only proprietary formats like mp3 and flv, the gnash team plans to increase the adoption of the free codecs as well.

He also mentions that the player is embeddable, and for a lot of content providers/consumer electronics people, java is too big; the interviewer mentions that embedded Java hasn't been easy to use and solutions she's found haven't been as wora as they should be... which is something I've heard from Richard Leggett before--he's the in-house Flashlite guru at AKQA, has a book coming out on-topic btw, and is well respected in the community on the subject.

imho, this is the most important point Rob should have made, and that is sadly buried towards the end. Gnash is an embeddable audio/video streaming client, with support for proprietary and open codecs alike, that happens to be flash programmable.

cheers,
-- eokyere :)

Links:

Gnash - http://www.gnu.org/software/gnash/