Grant Skinner’s posted an update on Flash 10′s useful addition. Read more here.
Google Maps is amazing. Sometimes you just have to hold your hands up and give credit and the Google guys deserve it for their maps application. Now they’ve released an API for Flash! Woo-hoo!
A good post from Aral regarding the state of accessibility within Flex. I hope they concentrate on this side of Flash soon rather than adding more wizzy features; it seems with Flash and AJAX you’re always having to hold your hands up and admit that they don’t bring a lot to the party when it comes to people with specific accessibility issues.
Meant to post this before. Interesting comparison between the performance of Flash within a browser and within the AIR runtime.
The new SWFObject is out. There are two main ways to embed Flash content on a page, with Option 2 sounding like the best fit for the rules/regulations we have to adhere to for work (progressive enhancement, no click-to-activate rubbish in IE, you HAVE to have JS to view the Flash, etc). Option 2 follows a similar method to SWFObject 1.5 as well.
Will have to look into the documentation in detail and try out some examples on a range of browsers if I have the time…
Adobe have posted an article informing those in the Flash community that there’s a security update coming next month, and advised developers to subscribe to their security notification service.
Most of it seems to affect socket behaviour, which I unfortuately haven’t had much experience with so far (except for pottering around with SmartFoxServer at home and multiplayer tile-based game mockups), but looks like some older swfs (Flash 7 and below) played out in the new player may experience issues.
Official version over at Adobe located at http://www.adobe.com/go/playerversion/, and an Aral Balkan (better) alternative at http://playerversion.com/
I’m looking forward to attending the AS3 tour early next month in London and I see Adobe have posted the presentational notes from previous sessions here.
Emmy Huang’s blog reveals the new stats for Flash penetration across the world for December 2007 (also up on Adobe’s site). While the US figures are an even more impressive 95.3%, in Europe having 94.3% of users able to view Flash 9 content is amazing.
Worth taking with a tiny pinch of salt, as our internal stats often shave about 5-8% off usually, but still really really good.