Besides the iPhone export feature that has been the epicenter of the hot discussion since Adobe MAX 2009, recently released Adobe Flash Professional CS5 contains many other features to love. Let’s find out what Adobe team prepared for flash devs this time.

Flash CS5 for iPhone – you got it but you can’t touch it

No doubt, support for iPhone applications was the most anticipated feature in this release. Sadly, but what was once a dream opportunity is now a practically useless capability. The matter is that applications made with Flash will be no longer available for iPhone OS4. And it’s doubtful that Apple will distribute such apps. There is nothing left else for us to do but wait and see how the big As’ jostling turns out.

Coding experience improved

For a long time the code editor in Flash didn’t get enough attention from Adobe. Finally FCS5 changes the situation and the coding experience in Flash has been considerably improved with a few new features. For instance, the code editor now allows the auto-completion for any classes you import into the application. It has also full support for code hints (it works for all properties, parameters and methods) which makes the process very similar to that in Flash Builder. We bet, you will especially love the automatic closing of brackets. These nice additions are going to boost your workflow greatly.

Speaking of other enhancement, we can’t pass by the new code snippets panel. This feature is something many developers have been missing for a long time. Now you can insert commonly used ActionScript code into your project with ease. For example, by simply selecting an object on stage and double clicking on “Rotate Contineously” in the code snippets panel, you can add infinite rotation support to that object. You can also add your own code snippets by editing an XML file.

The new file formats

Flash CS5 shows the debut of the FXG2 format. Comparing to its CS4 forerunner FXG 1.0 it’s much more accurate in sharing of content between different Adobe tools.  Adobe Flash Professional now also uses an XML-based file format XFL, which is basically a compressed folder of all the assets and XML metadata describing your Flash project. This feature improves the process of creating content compatible with Flash using the third-party tools.

Text Layout Framework

The new Text Layout Framework engine drastically increases the number of text editing options. Now it’s a native part of the Flash IDE and you can handle and arrange text using the standard Text Tool. Besides the wide range of text layout and formatting options that can be applied to TLF text fields, support for manipulating linked containers is also included. With TLF one you can link two text fields together so that they behave like one text field. This is a great feature for some complicated text layouts. Plus, the new FCS5 also includes an easy to use tool for embedding fonts in your swf.

Mobile Support

Flash Player 10.1 and Adobe AIR 2.0 enable to take advantage of such typical for mobile phones things as accelerometers, gestures and multitouch. To give this an appropriate support Flash CS5 comes with an upgraded version of Device Central that lets you to test these functions without having to upload the application to the mobile phone. This could make the process of basic testing faster and easier.

Video powered up

Flash Professional CS5 shows some improvements in the video experience. Probably the greatest thing about CS5 is that you can play the video right on the stage. Moreover, this video can be manipulated while playing. You can select and change the player skins all while the video is playing. You can also add cue points which will automatically have their time adjust to the current time of the video as it goes.
The aforesaid features are among the major improvements in Flash CS5, but surely they are not exhaustive. No doubt, Flash CS5 is a huge step forward and will make life for flash programmers so much easier. This is a must have for devs using Flash in the daily work. Although CS5 might not bring as many core features as CS4 did (3D and IK), it is still a huge upgrade worth getting.

Although Flash often comes under attack today, it remains a powerful platform for the most effective web design. When it comes to putting accents on interactivity and rich visual experience Flash is indispensable and it’s still a long time until some alternative solutions like HTML 5 or Silverlight are able to compete with it well enough. However, by no means all flash websites are good and it takes a good bunch of creativity and skill to find the right combination of flash files that will make up a usable and impressive website. If you are a flash designer we bet you are always on the lookout for some inspiration and examples of successful flash websites. In this post you can find a showcase of unique and well-designed flash files crucial for a beautiful flash site: these are preloaders, menus and content sliders. Hopefully, the following collection will give you ideas for your own projects.

Flash Preloaders

Even though modern flash website load fast, it usually takes up to a minute before a user can access the content on a flash site. By creating a fancy preloader you can not only inform visitors about how much time a website needs to load, but you can also entertain them and thus, make them stay longer on the site. Here are some cool examples:

RVLT

Dalegenser

Erky Perky

Canvas

Martin Anderle

Cloudraker

Ilovedust

Flash Menus

Another category of flash files that requires a good portion of deliberation is menu. Remember that it is the main navigation mechanism on any site, so designing a menu bar it’s important to balance creative approach and usability. If you make menu too tricky and heave on visual effects, a user will get nothing except confusion and as a result, will leave a site immediately. You can see some great examples of menus that are both attractive and easy to use below:

Ma Dame

Wicked Pixels

D10Studio

GREY Group

WebWork

Manak’s online portfolio

Ruy Adorno

Yodabaz

Flash Content sliders

Content slider is another form of navigation flash files which is a perfect way to display practically all sorts of content, such as images, featured sections, portfolios, etc. Sliders are good focal points as they can quickly grab the users’ attention and allow them to browse and sort through information at ease. The following examples can hint you at some creative and clever content slider solutions.

Fat Man Collective

Barrys Tickets

Megan Fredrich

Cloudraker

Vanio Ivanov

Puppetbrain

formag.sk

Of course, a flash website is much more than just a preloader, a menu and a slideshow gallery, but these flash files are definitely the points to take into account while creating a worthy flash website.

On March 22 Adobe officially announced the product versions of Flash Builder 4, Flex 4 and ColdFusion Builder. This is some great news for the flash dev community as Beta versions proved that Flash Builder and the new Flex SDK are powerful tools to enhance developer and designer workflow. The just launched final versions were significantly improved to enable developers to gain the best in development time, integration and building more expressive applications.

Flash Builder 4 comes with over 90 new features, such as event code generations, a new Package Explorer, getter-setter generation, support for ASDoc tooltips right in the IDE, just to name a few. All these are intended to boost your coding speed and therefore, make the workflow more effective.

Among other important upgrades are a full overhaul of the Eclipse based editor, new data services browser and Network monitor that can help you debug network traffic such as AMF services. As you know, Flex Builder has been re-branded Flash Builder which is going to give people a clear idea about the scope of what that product does.

One of the most important things introduced within Flex 4 is a new component and skinning architecture called Spark. It brings an expressiveness of RIA applications to a whole new level in addition to supporting the new Flash Catalyst to Flash Builder workflow.

Adobe’s new release brought some piece of joy to ColdFusion community too as they finally got a decent IDE. It is based on Eclipse and includes a full line by line debugger that supports breakpoints. The new CF IDE is deeply integrated with ColdFusion 9, plus integration between ColdFusion Builder and Flash Builder makes it fast and easy for CF developers to create Flex applications. The best part about it is that purchasing the premium version of Flash Builder, you’ll also get CF Builder and vice versa.

Still doubting whether you should buy new Adobe products? To clear up everything, look at this comparison chart created by Adobe that includes features of Flex Builder 3, Flash Builder Standard, Flash Builder Premium, and the Flex 4 SDK.

You can download the products here.

If you are a 3D game developer/designer or simply enjoy playing web games, the name of Unity 3D is certainly familiar to you. Somehow the guys from Unity managed to create a multiplatform animation and game development application that is intuitive, flexible and deep, all in one. So what exactly makes Unity so popular? Let’s look under the hood and find it out!

One of the best things about Unity is that it’s accessible for both professional and non-expert users. Thus, if you are a decent game designer but you programming skills are your weak point, Unity engine can fill those gaps pretty well. Here are the main features making this possible:

• Integrated development environment with visual editing, drag and drop interface and live game preview.
• Universal web player available both for Mac OS and Windows and works in all browsers.
• All the impressive performance speed and great 3D rendering is built with JavaScript and C# only. In other words, Unity-powered games work on iPhone which is definitely an advantage in terms of Apple-Adobe intrigues of today.

• Supports many popular 3D modeling applications, including free Blender, low-cost Cheetah3D and expensive Maya and 3ds Max.
• Powerful engine delivering a profound physics, animation and effect performance, as well as streaming video and sound.

This is just a tip of an iceberg. The first version of Unity was released in 2005 and since then over 15 notable games, released and in-development, were built with Unity, including Need For Speed World, My Animal Centre (first Wii game create using Unity), Gooball and others.

Although the engine enables to create games and interactive content that can run on Windows, the software itself is Mac only. It is rumored that the company is working on a PC version of the Unity engine, but in our opinion, such a comfortable and easy workflow Unity provides is worth spending some money and time on Mac, even if you are a devoted Windows fan.

Currently the huge Unity audience is excited about upcoming Unity 3 release. Apparently this is going to be a big-bang update, indeed. Among the main highlights announced so far are:

• Unified editor: allows you to build and preview your game for iPhone, xBox 360 and web inside the same editor.
• Source-level debugging: from now on you can pause your game, do line-by-line single stepping, set breakpoints, and inspect variables. Forget about print-based debugging.
• Project Browser: Unity 3 contains a content browser that shows everything with previews – including tagging and searching – so you always have the assets you need at your fingertips.

More improvements and innovation is expected to come with Unity 3, you can find out more at unity3d.com/.

No doubt, if you are at least slightly interested in creating 3D games, Unity is worth checking. By the way, they have a free version which is limited in features but more than enough for a trial. It’s hard to find an easier way to get 3D out there on the Web. [Don’t agree with this statement? Share your opinion in comments!]

A few days ago Adobe launched a new beta version of its Flash Player 10.1. Including several important improvements and bug fixes, Flash Player 10.1 Beta 3 is definitely a pleasant release both for flash devs and users.

Beta 3 release probably brought the biggest piece of cake to owners of netbooks (at least to those with the Intel GMA 500 and Broadcom Crystal HD Accelerator graphics chipsets). As you might already know, the third beta provides better HD Web video streaming performance.

Early Web video tests conducted by numerous techi observers and enthusiasts, (Cnet test, Engadget test) show great results: both 720p and 1080p streaming videos play back quite smoothly. Of course, experts don’t hurry to call this an outright performance, but the progress is obvious and more is expected to come with the final release of Flash Player 10.1 later this year. If you still haven’t tried Beta 3 on your netbook, catch up and share your impressions in comments! One thing we’d like to caution you about is that you need to install updated drivers for the aforesaid chipsets before attempting playback after the player update.

Another long-awaited feature brought by Flash Player 10.1 Beta 3 is a microphone access. Back in Flash Player 10 Adobe Team added a feature called scripted audio playback, gave developers a possibility to write an AS code and then generate sound of that. In this version of Flash player they added the capability to do the same thing for audio recording, so you could write a script, capture an audio, process it and then output it. Basically, in order to record audio in AS you can now use right the same event you used for playback, just in reverse. The ability to manipulate the audio coming into the microphone/line input enables flash developers to create some really cool audio triggered applications.

The new 10.1 also introduces some clever innovation in the field of RTMFP protocol which now supports groups. The main benefit of this technology is that when you want to broadcast flash files to multiple viewers, FlashPlayer spreads the bandwidth load across different users.

The new version of Flash Player is a step towards mobile integration. It introduces new mobile-ready features that take advantage of native device capabilities, such as support for multi-touch, gestures, mobile text and accelerometer input. No doubt, currently Flash Player runs on devices with a number of limitations, but this is just a beginning and the very fact that it can run on rather limited mobile platforms is impressive.

The list of new features of Flash Player 10.1 is much longer, you can find the full list of improvements and download the third beta on Adobe Labs.