CS5 Early News

2009-11-11

Whether you are surprised or not, the release of Creative Suite 5 is approaching. Rumors are even suggesting that the package will be ready to ship as early as April 2010! (http://cs5.org/?p=136). Adobe however, are playing their cards close to their chest and refuse to give an official release date.

One element that seems to be at the forefront of CS5 however is Flash CS5 in which Adobe are boasting some interesting new features. None more so than the support to build and compile native iPhone apps within Flash. 'Flash Professional CS5 will enable you to build applications for iPhone and iPod touch using ActionScript 3. These applications can be delivered to iPhone and iPod touch users through the Apple App Store.' Adobe (2009). Other new features include; advanced text styling, XML based FLA's, code hinting (finally!!!), code snippets and Flash builder integration.

Developers will be able to download a public beta version of Flash CS5 before the end of this year. 'The next major release of Adobe® Flash® Professional was unveiled at Adobe MAX 2009. The beta download will be available before the end of the year.' Adobe (2009).

References

Adobe Labs (2009) Flash Professional CS5 [online] http://labs.adobe.com/technologies/flashcs5/

Virtual Communities - The Psychology and the Technology - Part 1 of Many

2009-10-11

Over the next few weeks, I'll be conducting a study into the psychology and technology behind Virtual Communities (VC.)

So what is a VC? Well, A virtual community uses Internet technology to share information, ideas and resources among a group of like-minded participants located anywhere in the world.* We all knew that but just to clear things up.....

Anyway, this week (for the purposes of my university group discussion) I did a short review of the not so "main stream" Ning.com. Here's the review:

General

Ning was founded and is privately owned by partnership Gina Bianchini and Marc Andreessen (2004.) It takes a different spin to most social networks with its USP allowing users to create their own community. This I found to be strange as you essentially have two different types of user account. One as the admin of your own VC and another as a member of another VC..... a little pointless but its the way it works.

UI Very simple in design (perhaps in some cases too simple.) Most cases only 1 colour is used on a white background.

Features

Everything you'd expect from a VC really. Puclic messages, private messages, pictures, videos, live chat (ning offers both public and personal live chat.)

The Nitty Gritty The site does degrade gracefully. The UI is not at all affected by this, however, we are given a div that spreads the width of the page telling us we need to enable JS. Any asynchronous requests are replaced with a more old fashioned style of browsing. However, the important thing is that the site remains functional.

The whole site is CSS controlled (obviously) and judging by some of the variables passed through the URLs PHP (although there is no clear indication of this.)

My Verdict

Its ok. But thats as far as I'd go. It seems to be too much of a Facebook copy for me. Its only real USP is that you can create your own community. But it aint a great USP. It also lacks some of the killer client side features (which to the average user is subconsciencely ignored) but of course as we all know as web developers, we are living in an age that that the client/user is the most demanding element we'll ever face, and while we have the ability to create richer online applications to meet the demands of these clients/users, Ning simply hasn't taken the opportunity. Any questions on this post feel free to discuss or contact me on info@mikedhart.co.uk

References

* crucible multimedia ltd (2008) Using the Internet as a virtual community [online] http://www.telecomsadvice.org.uk/infosheets/virtual_communities.htm

Flash Builder 4 and Flash Catalyst Beta Now Available

2009-06-01

Ok to coinside with the rebranding of the Flex Builder package (now Flash Builder) we are now able to download a beta version of the all new Flash Builder 4 and Flash Catalyst from Adobe Labs. These are available on 30 day trials however, in the case of the Flash Builder Beta; if you have an official licence for Flex Builder 3, Adobe will issue you with a permanent licence. Flash Builder still uses the Flex SDK so we are still Flex developers, Adobe are just renaming the software package for branding reasons. This will go hand in hand with the release of the all new Flash Catalyst which allows designers and developers to create rich experiences without the need for coding. I'm downloading these Beta's as I write to you so I'll blog my findings as I test! Heres the download link http://labs.adobe.com/