Air 2 BETA available on Adobe Labs
People who are waiting for BETA of AIR 2 dont have to wait any further as its there in ADOBE LABS for download.
You can download both AIR SDK and Runtime for different OS 's like Windows , MAC and Linux.
Adobe labs says: "Adobe AIR 2 is in the early stages of development which means it contains bugs, and not all features are fully implemented. This software is for evaluation use only, and should not be used for any mission-critical work."
Goahead, download and check it out...
My First APE Experiment
As you all know APE(ActionScript Physics Engine) is an OpenSource free AS3 2D Physics engine that can be used for Flash and Flex.
I just tried APE and made this simple SWF as a beginning into the world of Physics in Flash. You can drag these RectangleParticles which you see in this swf. You can get the SWF here.
Cool Flash Menu’s For Flash Websites
For people who want to create their portfolios or websites in Flash, here are some of the cool Flash Menu's. Check them out and you can get some new ideas for your own Flash Navigational Menus.
Source Files for the menu's can be downloaded from link: Rapishare
Check these cool Flash Menus...
The Rise of Flash Video
As you all know Flash Video is everywhere now on Web. Its the mostly used video across web world.
I really wanted to know how Flash Video has evolved over time. What made web users to shift towards Flash video from existing players like Quicktime, Windows Media and Real players? These were some questions which were lingering my mind for sometime.
I found an interesting article about this topic written by Tom Green. It throughs light on all he factors which made different players like Quicktime, Windows Media and Real to lose ground on Web.
Not only that it talks about history of Flash Video, how the FLV format evolved.
Check it out at http://www.digital-web.com/articles/the_rise_of_flash_video_part_1/.
Physics Engines For Flash
As we all know, there are many Physics Engines for Flash now. Each have their own Pros and Cons, but Actionscript 3.0 provides increase in performance compared to Actionscript2.0. Whatever might be your requirement for Physics in your Flash design, we are going to talk about some useful Physics Engines available now for Flash.
ActionScript Physics Engine (APE)
APE (Actionscript Physics Engine) is a free AS3 open source 2D physics engine for use in Flash and Flex, released under the MIT License. APE is written and maintained by Alec Cove. The latest version available 0.45 alpha. You can get more info on APE at http://www.cove.org/ape/.
GO – New Programming Language from GOOGLE
Its indeed a really BIG NEWS to the developers, as GOOGLE has announced a release of new, opensourced programming language called GO.
Google says that this new programming language has been incorporated with Performance and Security benefits associated with language like C++ with speed of dynamic language like Python.
This is what Google says about GO:
Go attempts to combine the development speed of working in a dynamic language like Python with the performance and safety of a compiled language like C or C++. In our experiments with Go to date, typical builds feel instantaneous; even large binaries compile in just a few seconds. And the compiled code runs close to the speed of C. Go is designed to let you move fast.
"We’re hoping Go turns out to be a great language for systems programming with support for multi-processing and a fresh and lightweight take on object-oriented design, with some cool features like true closures and reflection."
Using Motion Editor in Flash CS4
Motion Editor is one of the new Features of Adobe Flash CS4. This helps us in creating animations of nice quality, accuracy yet with a minimal of effort compared to the conventional way of animation we used to see until Flash Cs3.
Till now, if we had to create any animation, we have to create keyFrames, apply Tween, apply Ease if needed. If we had to remove the tween Undo Tween or Remove Tween. It was all a bit tedious one. But with new Motion Editor, all these tasks are made simple and quite fast with good accuracy.
Tips on Flash Unit Testing
Unit Testing and Test Driven Development are a hot topics in the Flash community.
Recently i came across a nice insightful article on Tips for Flash Unit Testing by Jesse Freeman at InsideRIA.
The articles lists out some nice tips like:
- Test Before you code.
- Test one Assert at a time
- Test the little things
- Unit Tests help when refactoring
- Know when to Unit Test.
To read more elaborately about these tips, check out this article at InsideRIA.
Free Design Textures
Carefully selected textures can make your design more appealing and to achieve more depth in appeal. Its really hard to find good textures. You still have a very good resources for Free Textures.
Creating Web2.0 Logos Using Photoshop
Wondering how Logo'sin Web2.0 are designed??? Its rather simple. Here we will be using Styles in Photoshop as well. Using styles will make our work rather easy and fast. Task depends on how your style going to look or how you want your logo to look.
Difficult part is designing the styles. Once your style is ready, simple apply the style to your logo and there you go.
First you should design your style.