Keynote Speech - Mike Downey - “Flash and the Adobe Engagement Platform”

The laptop shoulder-bag festooned crowds filed into the dimly lit Brighton Dome Theatre.

By the time it settled down, it looked like maybe 200-300 people were in attendance.

Mike started by covering highlights from 2006:

• Flash Player 9 penetration is growing


• Flash Video is becoming web standard


• Mobile uptake growing

He then went on to talk about things to look forward to in 2007...

• Adobe Device Control
  
  
  
  • Authoring application for mobiles
  
  
  • Release 2007
  
  
  • Based on Flash 8 IDE but will run as a standalone
  
  
  • Hard core emulator
  
  
  • Every device that can host Flash will be available in the emulator
  
  
  • This will be updated dynamically as Adobe's database increases
  
  
  • You can save sets of devices so you can use a common testing rig
  
  
  • Testing individual devices
    
    
    
    • Memory taken up shown
    
    
    • Screen size
    
    
    • Helps optimise the application
    
    
    • Control backlight
    
    
    • Reflections, gamma, colour
    
    
    • Language, timezone, time
    
    
    • Battery level
    
    
    • Network type and speed
    
    
• Mark Anders came on to talk about Flex:
  
  
  
  • Flex itself is free - Flex SDK
  
  
  • Flex Developer costs the cash
  
  
  • Demos were impressive but we go more into that in later sessions
  
  
• Mike Chambers came on to talk about Apollo:
  
  
  
  • Not a general desktop application runtime - specifically designed for RIAs
  
  
  • No worries about platform as Apollo completely abstracts that away
  
  
  • Can work online/offline with syncing
  
  
  • Full HTML integration


• Flash 9 IDE!
  
  
  
  • Import PSDs and Illustrator files
    
    
    
    • Maintains layers
    
    
    • Import process allows you to assign folders, create movieclips and assign instance names
  
  
  • Bezier pen tool is now the same as in Illustrator
  
  
  • New set of components written from scratch in a new component structure.
    
    
    
    • Cuts the component size in half (at least)
    
    
    • Makes them easy to skin
  
  
  • Double-click on a component on the desktop and it goes into “component editing mode”
    
    
    
    • Displays all states as mcs
    
    
    • Go into each mc and edit
    
    
    • Live preview of your changes on the stage
    
    
• All assets for components an library


• Different style needed - just duplicate the assets and change the duplicate


• Can convert animations into AS3 (XML)
  
  
  
  • Put generated XML into a frame, movieclip or into Flex