This October is rich for good news and announcements anticipated by worldwide creative pursuers. The lion’s share of the ideas that may form the development of modern web technologies in the near future were generated at the Adobe MAX 2009, a huge event that took place in Los Angeles during October 4-7 and brought up thousands of world top designers, developers, art directors and decision makers.
We bet you are eager to know the results of the 200 sessions and 100 labs where MAX attendees discussed the urgent industry problems, shared experience and created future-shaping solutions. Fresh off the heels of a conference, we prepared a brief Adobe MAX 2009 round-up to inform you about the major MAX 2009 achievements, releases and news. Interesting videos and references are included.
Adobe MAX 2009 Highlights
Flash on the iPhone? Yes! That is No… Well, Not Really.
There were a lot of rumors and speculations concerning Flash+iPhone question and Adobe team cleared the situation at MAX 2009. iPhone users won’t be able to view Flash content in the iPhone browser, but native iPhone apps built with Flash Pro CS5 will be available in the Apple App Store. In fact Flash comes to iPhone in the offline mode only. This is probably not a full stop, and we hope the Flash + iPhone Saga will be crowned with the happy end so that users would be able to enjoy the flash videos, games and interactive web pages on their Apple devices. The announcement about iPhone Development was made in a quite amusing format – MythHackers video.
There is a special Adobe Labs section where you can find more details on iPhone applications built with Flash CS 5.
The following video might be interesting to you as well:
Flash Player 10.1
Upcoming Flash Player 10.1 is probably the most exciting announcement made at MAX 2009. Finally Flash comes to the mobile segment and soon it will be available in the web browsers of mobile devices, smartphones, Pocket PCs, netbooks, notebooks and desktop computers.
Among the features of Flash 10.1 are:
- Diverse platform support: Adobe Flash player 10.1 will work on almost all devices that support Microsoft Windows Mobile, Android, Palm webOS, and Symbian S60.
- Better speed on mobiles: Flash is expected to have 87% increase of the software rendering and have lesser memory consumption by 55 percent on mobile platforms vs. desktop platforms.
- Better support for multi-touch input and gestures.
- Video hardware decoding: Flash Player 10.1 will include support for hardware graphics acceleration for H.264 video on chipsets including Qualcomm’s Snapdragon and NVIDIA GeForce, ION, and Tegra.
- Streaming improvements: web video is going to be way faster with the Flash Player upgrade.
There is a informative video about what’s new in Flash Player, check it:
Flash Professional CS5
Another piece of news awaited by world Flash community was unveiled at the conference: the Beta download of Flash Pro CS5 will be available before the end of the year!
As mentioned above, Flash Professional CS5 will enable developers to build application for iPhone and iPod touch using ActionScript 3. (Are you excited as much as we are?) These apps will be delivered to the end users via the App Store. Adobe presented seven iPhone apps built with a prerelease version of Flash CS5, you can find and download these example applications here.
Below you can see some more features coming in Flash Pro CS5:
- Improved work with text: new text layout engine will provide you with new text capabilities enabling really advanced styling and layout.
- XML based FLA files: using source control systems developers will be able to easily manage project assets.
- Code Snippets panel: prebuilt code that can be embedded into projects gives a possibility to reduce project time consumption and increase interaction.
- Flash Builder integration.
- Improved ActionScript editor.
There are neither exact ship dates nor pricing info available yet, you can go to Flash CS5 Adobe Labs page http://labs.adobe.com/technologies/flashcs5/ and sign up to be notified.
Here is an episode from Adobe MAX 2009 covering the aspects of building iPhone applications with Flash Professional CS5:
Adobe AIR 2
On October 5 all MAX 2009 attendees had an opportunity to preview the next major release of Adobe AIR. The upgrade includes new capabilities that remove limitations in the runtime and provide enhanced networking support. Among these improvements are: Native Process API, support for detective mass storage devices, improved support for accessibility, open document API, improved performance, local microphone access API, multi touch and gesture support, faster and more powerful WebKit, improved socket support, etc. The final version of Adobe AIR 2 is expected to be shipped in the first half of 2010. Public beta is going to be launched by the end of 2009.
What’s new coming in Adobe AIR 2
Flash Builder and Flash Catalyst Beta 2 Release
As you know the first beta release of Flash Builder 4 and Flash Catalyst was back in June. The beta 2 release was announced at Adobe MAX 2009. Below you can find some features presented in the second software beta versions.
Flash Builder
- More clarity between the use of Flex 3 and Flex 4 throughout the IDE;
- Improved UI for more common tasks such as configuring data types returned from servers;
- New support for BlazeDS and the LCDS ES2 release;
- Improvements to the configurability of generated code and more.
Flash Catalyst:
- Faster performance;
- Enhanced interface;
- Support for video, sound effects, filters, blend modes, motion easing and AIR;
- Accessible content: you can create an accessible SWF file that can be used by the visually impaired;
- SWF control: play a SWF file from a specific frame.
As always, you can find more details about the launched Flash Builder Beta 2 and Flash Catalyst Beta 2 at Adobe Labs. Plus, watch the videos below to learn more about these beta upgrades.
What’s new in Flash Builder 4
Introducing Flash Catalyst Beta 2
Shibuya
At MAX 2009 Adobe launched beta version of their new service codenamed Shibuya. It is a monetization service for AIR application developers. It allows you to start selling your AIR apps with a try/buy licensing model. Read details and sing up for the pre-release version here.
These were only the basic highlights of the huge Adobe MAX 2009 event. We overviewed major news and releases around Flash software while the overall conference included much, much more interesting sessions, announcements and discussions. Here are some additional resources covering Adobe MAX events:
Adobe TV: MAX 2009 Design show
Adobe TV: MAX 2009 Develop show
Adobe TV: MAX 2009 Envision show
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