The Evolution of the Flash Platform
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THE EVOLUTION OF THE FLASH PLATFORMPeter Elst | Flash Platform Consultant
What will we be talking about?What is the Flash Platform?
Where did we come from?
Where are we now?
Flash myths
Where are we going?
What is the Flash Platform?The Flash Platform is a set of products and services leveraging the Adobe Flash Player that target the web, desktop, mobile and devices.
- Peter Elst, May 2008
Where did we come from?
Timeline, timeline, timeline
Rich Inter[net|active] Applications
RIA white paper by Jeremy Allaire, Macromedia - 2002
Digital Art & Experimentation
Erik Natzke, Joshua Davis, Rob Hodgin, Jared Tarbell
Where are we now?
Flash Player 9 / ActionScript 3.0API consistency, everything is a classDisplayList APIECMAScript for XML (E4X)DOM3 event modelRuntime errorsNamespacesBinary sockets, ByteArrayReflection API…
Flash CS3
Flex Builder 3
Adobe Integrated Runtime
AIR is a free cross operating system runtime that runs on PC, Mac and Linux and allows developers to build native desktop applications using web technologies such as HTML, JavaScript, Flash and Flex
Applications can be built entirely in HTML and JavaScript
Adds filesystem access, local database support, drag 'n drop, windowing, icons, notifications,…
http://www.adobe.com/products/air/
Flash Lite 3Latest version of the Flash Player for mobile
Comes with all recent S60 and other devices
Supports video streaming, ActionScript 2.0 syntax
http://www.adobe.com/products/flashlite/
Flash Media Server 3Streams live and on demand video content to the Flash Player
Supports streaming to mobile devices
Flash Media Streaming Server vs Flash Media Interactive Server
http://www.adobe.com/products/flashmediastreaming/http://www.adobe.com/products/flashmediainteractive/
DRM?!#Adobe is taking its first steps supporting DRM in the Flash Player and AIR
Flash Media Rights Management Server encrypts streams from the Flash Media Server
SWF verification is a way to verify that the SWF file has not been tampered with
Flash Myths
Flash and search enginesMyth: Flash content can't be indexed by search engines
Google and other search engines implement the Adobe Search Engine SDK which allows indexing static text within an SWF
Let's give that a try!
Adobe is talking to Google and others to bring 'context' into these search results
Flash and deep linkingMyth: Flash can't do any deep linking or support browser button navigation
Flash, Flex support basic implementations of browser button support and deep linking in the latest releases
SWFAdress is a community initiative that takes this a lot further
http://www.asual.com/swfaddress/
Embedding FlashMyth: Flash can't be embedded as valid XHTML
There are a number of solutions available using JavaScript to embed Flash content
The most popular project is SWFObject, a lightweight JavaScript library that you use to write Flash content out to a div in your HTML
SWFObject does Flash Player detection and can display alternative content, making it ideal for SEO
http://code.google.com/p/swfobject/
AIR versus SilverlightMyth: comparing the Adobe Integrated Runtime and Microsoft Silverlight
AIR is a cross operating system runtime that allows developers to create desktop applications using web technologies, Microsoft Silverlight is a browser plugin
It does not make sense to compare the two -- Silverlight versus Flash is a better comparison
Where are we going?
TamarinTamarin is the virtual machine used in Flash Player 9 to render ActionScript 3.0
The code was donated to the Mozilla Foundation on November 7th 2006 and is to be used as the ECMAScript/JavaScript engine in a future release of the Firefox browser
http://www.mozilla.org/projects/tamarin/
Tamarin TracingTamarin Tracing is a virtual machine aimed at constrained environments (read mobile and devices)
Allows a full ECMAScript / ActionScript 3.0 engine to run on devices with limited resources
http://wiki.mozilla.org/Tamarin:Tracing
Flex SDK
The Flex SDK was released as open source on April 26th 2007
There is a public bug base shared with the engineering team, you can vote on bugs and influence priority
http://bugs.adobe.com/flex/
Nightly builds of the Flex SDK are available
BlazeDS / AMFBlazeDS and the AMF format have been open sourced on December 12th 2007
Provides developers with a lightweight version of Livecycle Data Services, providing integration with a Java backend and pushing data to Flash clients
http://opensource.adobe.com/wiki/display/blazeds/BlazeDS
Open Screen ProjectPartnership with various manufacturers and content providers, including: Cisco, Intel, BBC, MTV, Sony Ericsson, Nokia, … announced on May 1st 2008
The goal is to bring the Flash Player and AIR runtime across desktop, mobile and devices in a unified platform with over the air updates
What does that mean?
- No more license restrictions on the Flash Player, FLV- Anyone can develop their own Flash Player- No more license fees for embedding the Flash Player
Flash "Next"The next version of the Flash authoring environment was shown at the MAX conference in Chicago
Focus of this product cycle is expressiveness
XFLFLA files have historically always been in a binary format
XFL is a zip based format that contains all project assets and an XML document that describes the layout
Adobe products will output to XFL and Flash will be able to bring that in and build its project file from that
Pixel BenderPreviously known as project Hydra
Pixel shader language that creates effects for Flash, Photoshop, After Effects, etc.
Everyone will now be able to easily write their own lightweight filters and use them across products
http://labs.adobe.com/technologies/flashplayer10/demos/pixelbender/
PacificaPacifica is a service that allows you to integrate high quality VOIP, messaging and presence in your Flash, Flex and AIR applications
Based on the SIP protocol and allows P2P communication after the connection is set up through their server
http://pac.ifica.net
Buzzword
Photoshop Express
Flash / C++Experimental research project by Scott Petersen
Cross compiles C and C++ code into ActionScript bytecode
Simulates multi-threading in the Flash Player
http://blog.digitalbackcountry.com/?p=1095
ThermoThermo is a product aimed at visual and interaction designer to prototype Flex applications that can then be handed over to a development team while maintaining the integrity of the design
Attempts to solve issues with the designer / developer workflow
http://labs.adobe.com/wiki/index.php/Thermo
Resources
www.peterelst.com
skipintro.blip.tv
labs.adobe.com
opensource.adobe.com
adobe.com/devnet
feeds.adobe.com
Get in touch!
Peter Elst Flash Platform Consultant
Email: [email protected]: peterelstLinkedIn: www.linkedin.com/in/peterelst
Feel free to grab a business card, buy me a beer and/or get in touch with your questions, comments, feedback!