Jesse on Invalidation and Flash Player
Jan 31, 02:48 PM
I have recently been working with, and trying to provide feedback to, Jesse Warden who has had several postings on mobile development in Flash. I feel his pain with trying to find the "sweet spot" for mobile development. I believe it is there, and every day I feel closer to finding it, or maybe I have found it and just don't know it yet. Jesse has a ton of useful thoughts but I don't think he has his conclusion just yet. Check out his post.
Source: Jesse Warden dot Kizz-om
3D Spacial Navigation package + examples
Jan 30, 01:37 AM
Ivan from BLITZ Agency just sent me this. Looks pretty cool!
"Moving flash movieclips in a 3D space has been done many times before, there are a lot of flas or tutorials out there that you can take a look at. But these often lack in structure and most of them are set in good old AS1. So here’s a package of structured and comprehensive classes which can be used and extended easily."
Source: BLITZ Labs » Flash and 3D Spacial Navigation
» Interview with Mike Downey, Sr. Product Manager for Apollo
Jan 29, 11:41 AM
Ryan Stewart from ZDNet has a 15 question interview with Mike Downey posted. He asks questions on the topics of strategy, when and when not to use Apollo, and of course Microsoft.
Source: » Interview with Mike Downey, Sr. Product Manager for Apollo | The Universal Desktop
Write Files on Symbian Phones
Jan 28, 09:39 PM
.byte-sm has created a tool to write files to Symbian v2 & v3 phones. He provides the compiled executable, examples, and the source. I haven't played with it much yet but it seems to work great. He also includes the project source so you can customize it to do whatever you need.
I also ran across this article he wrote last month on our our developer center. It explains how to create a launcher, with personalized icon, on Symbian for your application.
Source: biskero.org
Jesse Warden On Flash Lite Development
Jan 25, 03:25 AM
"How do you optimize ActionScript 2? Same way you optimize ActionScript 1, with the addition that you have to drop the ego" - Jesse Warden
He nailed it. The hardest part of my job is teaching people this. In case you didn't know, I am Architect of Mobile Applications at Adobe so I get to deal with low memory and cpu conditions daily. Every time we get a new, brilliant engineer on the team it takes them a few months to "drop the ego" and understand that if it doesn't run - the design doesn't matter.
I will say that people go overboard. I get annoyed when I see code that has one letter variable names because someone read on the Internet that it would be faster. I always keep a suite of tests handy to test on devices to see different operations in action - it can change per device. Once a day I say "Never make assumptions, show me proof."
Tip: Be careful if using getTimer() to test speed of operations, many platforms will do rounding. This means an operation that is fairly quick may actually appear slow if you are near the rounding point.
Source: Flash Lite 2: Low RAM, Optimizing via Degraded Ego
New Adobe Labs Releases
Jan 24, 04:27 PM
Just noticed on labs that there are two new releases today
Flex Compiler Shell - "A shell environment that you can use to compile Flex applications, modules, and component libraries."
Basically it speeds up compiling for people who do not use Flex Builder but rather the command line. It states flex builder already uses this.
Flex Ant Tasks - "A convenient way to build your Flex projects using an industry-standard build management tool."
It is great that we can now compile projects as a real ant task!
SECOND LIFE: Virtual world's supposed economy is 'a pyramid scheme' - Valleywag
Jan 24, 01:51 PM
A couple months back I was on the edge of starting a side project to investigate building tools to help manage your virtual business. With all the hype around how well people in Second Life were doing I figured many people would be starting in-world businesses, making profits, and therefore spending those profits to better their business. What I quickly found out though, as I expected I might, is that a lot of information that we read is, just that - hype. I particularly enjoyed the article below this morning. The author seems to have done his research and is well informed.
Source: SECOND LIFE: Virtual world's supposed economy is 'a pyramid scheme' - Valleywag