F·L·A·S·H·I·S·M

Today I got another update notification for Adobe Flash Player 10.1. The first thing I noticed that the notification looked prettier than the last update. I really hated that ugly Adobe Download Manager or ADM in short. Take a look how it was in previous update:

In installation process, ADM was downloaded first which was almost the same download size of the Flash Player itself, so I don’t get why Adobe used it in the first place. If it supports resume-able downloads, then Adobe should only use it for downloading trial versions of Adobe CS products.

Adobe Flash Player 10.1.82.76 Update

This new version features better hardware acceleration, multi-touch and gestures, private browsing support and as always enhanced performance and memory management. Read more here.

I am happy that Adobe now have switched back to better and tiny (only ~2.8MB total) installer. The update notification included summary about what new features it offers and links for more details.

The only thing which I’ve been asking Adobe to put in these update dialogs is complete version numbers of the currently installed Flash Player, and new version. So the user could know what exact version he is upgrading to.

The overall Flash Player update experience was great this time. Excellent job Adobe!

// chall3ng3r //

Well, it seems quite late to ask this…again, but I’d like to know why?

This update of Adobe Flash Player is huge, and is also the first version from Open Screen Project. It’s super fast, it’s mobile optimized, it’s multi-touch enabled, it’s everything Flash Player 10.0 was not.

I don’t see a reason why Adobe don’t want to call it version 11.0? Anyone else want to know or maybe know why?

Update: I already went through Emmy’s post regarding version numbering. I just think this is a major update, so the change in version number should be major?

// chall3ng3r //

It’s not just me who is stuck on really crappy ISP. I know there are millions of users like me around the world

I would like to highlight some biggest mistakes which almost every other popular video sharing service make. Yes, that includes YouTube, Vimeo, Google Video, Yahoo Video, or just think of any major service. Just take a look on above screenshots, and try to notice what’s missing?

I know you’re wondering, what are these mistakes?

• Mistake 1: A simple “Stop” button. Can you believe that? There’s always a Pause / Play button and Scrubber, but no one ever cared about adding a simple Stop button.

  What this button should do? Well, stop the video and break the damn connection!

  If you are on a crappy connection like me, and you clicked to play a video, there’s only one way to stop it sucking all the bandwidth, refresh entire page. Flash Player does offer APIs to close an ongoing stream, but no one uses it.

  Life can be really easy for users on slow connections if there’s one more button to Stop a video in the embedded player.

• Mistake 2: It’s just my guess, but I think it’s correct that developers who program these Flash video players are on company’s corporate high speed networks. So, they click the video and it plays. What about users on slow connections?

  I don’t think they even bother to test the video playback on slow connection. Flash Player offers APIs to set the video buffer, so the video is buffered for few seconds for smooth playback experience. But again, not used. Or if used, not optimized.

  It’s even worst on Adobe own website, where I noticed videos start playing as soon as few bytes are received. The video plays choppy and on homepage intro video, there’s no Pause button… just imagine how bad impression it makes.

• Mistake 3: Tiny player control buttons. As there are more and more touch based devices in hands of users, watching videos on these cool gadgets is increasing. But what I found that designers of Flash video players do not think about if the same player is used on such device.

  For example, on my Nokia N900, a cool Maemo Linux based device which can play videos from most of the popular video services, but the controls are not optimized for touch input which makes them hard to use. And really stupid things happen, and user end up closing the video window.

  Well, the developer can detect the device and render different set of controls. But I think the easiest option would be to make one design which fits the bill for desktop + touch device optimized user controls.

• Mistake 4: I really hate when I try to quickly pause / stop a video by clicking anywhere on video, which opens a new window to service’s website. As the control buttons are already too small, the general sense is to pause the video when clicked on it. Some services do avoid this mistake, but most services just want the user to get to their website, and this seems to be the easiest option for them.

  It’s worst on small screen touch input devices, where user have to do 2-3 tries to actually pause a video. Really bad user experience.

I can just hope and wish my this blog post somehow gets to the actual designers & programmers or decision makers of Flash video players for these video services. And also they try to fix these mistakes.

Do you think there are any more mistakes? Post them in comments.

// chall3ng3r //

Finally, last night I made it. Its kinda quick and dirty, but it works, at least for me as I want it . Here a screenshot:

I made this external help viewer for myself, but I thought if anyone who also finds Help Panel in the way most of the time when working in Flash CS3, might like to use it.

Download: FlashHelp_v01.zip

Note: Requires MS. Net Framework v2 or later. Not needed on Vista

// chall3ng3r //

I have just released a new project on Forum Nokia Wiki. Its a free source set of components for Flash Lite.

See the original post on my FN.Blog

// chall3ng3r //

Yes, thats true. 2GB of free space from Adobe. Plus an online version of Photoshop to fix / enhance your photos.

Update: New screenshot

So far it feels like a great service. On some blogs I read an impression maybe its too late for such service where there are already number of other services with similar features.

Well, I think coming late in scene have its disadvantages, but the biggest benefit could be, learning all the good things from earlier services. And offer something which users are expecting — Just like Microsoft did by bringing Silverlight, learning everything from Flash.

At this time, beta of service is ready. You can start here.

// chall3ng3r //

Finally its time for some business. AIR, short for Adobe Integrated Runtime is just released as v1.0 final product by Adobe.

Its a runtime to make RIAs for desktop, even one can create just old desktop only applications with it as well. The main hype for this runtime is that it runs on Windows and MAC OS without any change to the code. Linux version will be released later.

While AIR was in beta, we have seen some great applications and examples that will, for sure, inspire developers to create great experiences with AIR in coming days.

Get the final binaries here.

One thing I’m very confused about is, why Adobe call it Adobe AIR, Even in the Logo? making it Adobe Adobe Integrated Runtime :S

I don’t see MS calling .Net as Microsoft MS.Net Framework. Is there a catch that i missed?

Anyway, there’re tons of new and updated resources to check out. I just skimmed through these:

• Adobe Flex Team – Blog
• Adobe – Home
• Adobe – RIA minisite
• AIR – Home
• Adobe Developer Connection

I barely touched AIR while it was in beta, but now I am planning to get my hand dirty with some Flex and AIR.

BTW, the AIR download size is just over 11MB. A bit heavy than I expected. And it might be noticed by many mid– to low-bandwidth users.

Next thing to do, get the AIR SDK, and get your hands dirty!

// chall3ng3r //

Adobe launched on online website for its Open Source projects. The first projects available on the new community website are:

• BlazeDS
• Flex 3 SDK
• Flash Ajax Video Component
• Generic Image Library
• Adobe Media Gallery
• Adobe Source Libraries
• Tamarin
• Webkit
• XMP (eXstensible Metadata Platform)

Adobe Open Source Home: http://opensource.adobe.com

This is very good step forward, as most startup companies are now adays adopting Open Source software. With Adobe’s OS technologies, we will see good change, hopefully

// chall3ng3r //

Microsoft has recently been quite active with big announcements, updates to developer tools and Windows OS.

On Monday, MS announced they will give away VS, Expression and Windows Server absolutely FREE to students worldwide.

Read more here, and here.

Very impressive move to get crowd stick to MS, seems quite workable idea :)

Adobe also recently made available Adobe Flex Builder free to students. MS following the same idea making it head-on competition for RIA development tools.

Microsoft is very good with getting their technology to masses quickly. And they’ve proven record of it. For example, MS .Net Framework. They made it available to public in early beta, released comprehensive SDK with documentation. And did not charged developers to ship .Net runtime with their applications.

Giving away Expression and VS2008 will also boost Silverlight adoption rapidly. More Silverlight applications means, greater number of users downloading Silverlight runtime daily.

Lets see how it goes.

// chall3ng3r //

Wow, it looks so sexy! more contents area, better section management, and eye-catchy JS animations. It simply rocks!!!

I have sent many requests to Macromedia (now Adobe) about changing layout of DevNet. But the wait is over. The new DevNet is also renamed to Adobe Developer Connection, ADC in short

The main sections are expandable, showing main categories links. as soon as you click the section heading, it expands itself with eye catchy JS animation.

The featured section also slides left/right. This is also done via JS animation.

ADC’s layout has utilized the over 950px content area quite well, when you go to reading view of any article, you’ll see big fonts, which makes it easy to read and adds elegance to overall look of the content.

I found a broken link, in the Featured > Mobile section there’s a link for Flash Lite 3 update for Device Central, when you click it, you’ll get the 404 error. maybe Adobe will make the link live on the start of MAX2007

Individual product Developer Centers are also updated with this new layout.

In an introductory article for ADC, Jonathan Wall from Adobe describes that ADC is a portal for developers, and it features introNetwork, a social networking engine to get connected to other designers and developers on ADC. Seems like a brilliant idea.

There will be also AIR based ADC Desktop application to track Flex bugs on your desktop. It will be released in MAX2007.

I would add that this was a much needed overhaul to DevNet, and I must admit that Adobe has done it in great style. Its just my guess that Adobe might be updating the Adobe Home and Design Center as well.

Here I’d like to point Adobe to a very old bug on their feedback / whish form. Couple of days back I tried to post a feature suggestion for content on DevNet, and again got same old error on submit. Its nice time to fix this as well, and I’d suggest using a CF based back-end rather than .CGI

Visit my flickr’s photo stream for a all expanded screenshot of the ADC home page.

For me, its a pleasant surprise from Adobe, and I’m expecting many more as well from MAX2007 :)

// chall3ng3r //