Kontain, the Flash-based blogging and media sharing site from agency powerhouse FI launched its alpha version on November 13th. The evolution of FI’s Propod rich media blogging system, Kontain is a promising and beautifully designed site. The clean design is mildly reminscent of Virb, with a pinch of (new) Facebook thrown in for good measure.

FI is one of few firms that can do full Flash sites very well. However, understanding that it is still an alpha, the site really ought to provide alternate content for computers without Flash installed. And while the site does attempt to redirect to a slimmed down version of the site for iPhone/mobile users, on my iPhone sending to http://i.kontain.com/ failed because of “too many redirects”.

It remains to be seen if the lack of alternate content for search engines will be detrimental (although FI may have plans to provide alternate content in a future release), or if Google’s advancements towards Flash content discover-ability will overcome this sticking point.

As a funny side note, the back-end for Kontain appears to be running JBoss/Apache on a ColecoVision (operating at 3.58 MHz).

Adobe has just released Adobe AIR 1.5. Now you can take advantage of great features like Pixel Bender for custom filters and fills, the new 3D effects, dynamic video streaming (based on available bandwidth), and the Speex audio codec, aimed at providing high-quality audio delivery at lower bandwidth.

In addition to the existing Encrypted Local Store functionality in earlier versions of AIR, Adobe has now added encrypted local databases, which will make it easier to encrypt and locally persist large data sets.

Also, as a follow up to an earlier post on the use of SquirrelFish in AIR, Adobe has confirmed that this is indeed the case. Adobe AIR 1.5 has a WebKit update that incorporates SquirrelFish - Adobe claims that HTML-based AIR applications can run as much as 35% faster.

Download version 1.5 of Adobe AIR.

Developer and User release notes are available as PDF.

• Adobe AIR 1.5 developer release notes
• Adobe AIR 1.5 user release notes

On a related note regarding the Flex Builder 3.0.2 update that takes advantage of the new AIR runtime: be sure to change the app.xml XML namespace to use 1.5 instead of 1.0, as noted on this blog - http://www.bobsgear.com/display/ts/Can%27t+Launch+Air+Apps+After+Upgrading+from+Flex+Builder+3.01+to+Flex+Builder+3.02 I had trouble with my application until I found this post.

Adobe has released a new vector graphics specification for Flex called FXG (Flash XML Graphics or FleX Graphics, ostensibly), an XML document format that should make interchange of vector artwork between applications and loading/parsing of vector art at compile-time or run-time more seamless. FXG has provisions for creating various primitives, symbols, and text objects, as well as constructs for transforming and applying bitmap effects to vector data. In a manner similar to Degrafa, FXG documents could conceivably be used for more than simple artwork: they could also be used to define vector-based skin elements for user interfaces. Additionally, vastly improved text handling in Flash Player 10 allows for higher-fidelity skewed and rotated text, along with text on a path, meaning exporting from an application like Adobe Illustrator should produce great looking, highly portable documents.

According to the FXG 1.0 specification, an initial effort was made to use the more standard SVG (Scalable Vector Graphics) specification, but the development team found that mapping SVG to Flex classes was going to be more trouble than it was worth in the long run. Mark Anders has a pretty reasonable explanation on this here: http://www.andersblog.com/archives/2008/09/flash_on_the_be.html

I can’t help but ask, though...really? Seeing as Adobe essentially led the charge to ratify the SVG spec as a standard, could it not have been augmented through its built-in extensibility facilities (see SVG Extensions) to accommodate the additions required for Flex? Mark’s explanation is reasonable, to be sure, but it seems like the team gave up on something that could have helped to further cement and promote the use of SVG. A project I’m working on, in particular, would have benefited massively from the ability to use SVG output from Illustrator natively.

Pushing multiple specs that essentially do the same thing only serves to muddy the water, and reminds me of another large software firm, but I digress. Knowing Adobe’s track record, I’m sure there will be good interchange functionality for FXG between various Creative Suite products and applications like Thermo. However, considering SVG already has acceptance as a standard, with a plethora of third-party tools for transforming and working with it, my excitement on the prospects of FXG are mixed at best.

via The Official Flex Team Blog

Adobe and Zend have announced their collaboration in bringing together the benefits of open source Flex with the reliability and flexibility of the enterprise-grade PHP Zend Platform (official press release). A recent article on Adobe Developer Connection details how to get up and running with Zend Studio and the Eclipse plugin version of Flex Builder 3.

Mark Anders from Adobe gave a preview of Thermo and Flash Player 10 at the 360|Flex conference. It’s a good video for designers interested in Flex-based RIA UI development and for Flex programmers interested in what’s on the horizon for designer/developer collaboration.

Adobe is offering Flex training on their developer site using videos and supplemental PDFs. Check it out here: http://www.adobe.com/devnet/flex/videotraining/

As of this writing, days one through three have been added.

I currently have five four invitations to Aviary (http://a.viary.com/) if anyone is interested.

Adobe Developer Connection has posted a video demonstrating some impressive upcoming skinning features in Flex 4 that should greatly improve designer/developer collaboration and workflow on projects. One thing I’m left wondering though is how Thermo is going to play into this system.

Keep reading to see a video.

Keep reading “Flex 4 to improve designer/developer workflow”...

Source control. We all know we should be using it. The peace of mind benefit alone is enough to aid in speeding development – a programmer who isn’t concerned with self-versioning his files is a more productive one. Then there are the other benefits, like code comparison and streamlining workflow for a team-built project.

Setting up Trac and Subversion can be somewhat painful the first time around, so if you’re looking for a quick and easy hosted system (with a whole mess of other features, too), I suggest taking a look at Assembla.com.

Keep reading “Using Flex Builder 3 with Subversion on Assembla”...