Ben Silvis

Certainly many of you heard some speculation recently that the iPhone might finally be getting Flash, only to be followed by the disappointing announcement of – No, you wish, keep dreaming. Quite frankly I wasn’t too surprised or therefore disappointed, but still a little bitter. The idea of developing for perhaps the biggest technological craze of my lifetime would be both financially and ‘spiritually‘ intriguing. Since Flash content makes up a huge percentage of the web now and the iPhone is all about that it makes sense right? I mean even some of the clunkiest of phones now have the ability to display Flash content. So why won’t the iPhone get with the freakin’ program already?

Basically it all comes down to the fact that Apple can’t make any money off of browser based games and utilities. It would kill their App Store – Not to mention: Why would anyone still be willing to pay $100 A Year for the SDK if all you needed was some hosting space and a domain name?

It’s ok.. I didn’t think “There’s a Website For That.” was too catchy of a slogan anyways.

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Flash Builder 4

I’ve been using Flash Builder 4 beta for a couple of months now and for the most part have been quite pleased. FB is the follow up to Flex 3. Adobe states that the name change is to help distinguish between the open-source Flex framework and their commercial IDE. Makes sense, but personally I like the name packaged with the initial beta release – ‘Gumbo’!

So anyways, the license on my copy of Flash Builder mysteriously stopped working yesterday. After a brief panic attack I decided to check out the Adobe Labs website and noticed that the beta 2 release was out. Cool! As with beta 1, my Flex 3 license is supposed to provide me with a new working FB copy – however, licensing software is one of my least favorite things to do so I’ll get back to that after the weekend. The renewed 60 day trial will suffice for now.

Flash CS5

Since I was in this ‘update’ state of mind I decided to peruse my usual avenues and came across some info concerning the CS5 Suite. My initial reaction was, “Oh God, not another one already..“. I still haven’t gotten used to the CS4 interface, and at my office I’m still using CS3. I’m also quite afraid of Adobe turning into another Autodesk. I have to admit though – as far as Flash goes, there is A LOT of cool stuff going on.

For starters, Flash CS5 ‘Viper‘:

• natively compiles for iPhone apps and other touch interfaces (update)
• has code snippet libraries for designers
• has a fancy new javascript powered brushes engine
• finally employs code completion for custom classes
• generates PHYSICS animation for designers – Awesome!

and my favorite:

• integrates between Flash Builder and Flash Professional

CS5 is set to release in April of 2010. I didn’t really spend a lot of time looking at the other aspects of the Suite, but one of the best resources for info I found is cs5.org. If there’s anything cool I missed be sure to let me know!

Ben