Astro (Flash Player 10)
Big news on the Flash front: As the presentation wrapped up on the public beta of Adobe's Flash Player 9 Update 3 (a.k.a. Moviestar), Adobe was busy unveiling the capabilities of the *next* version of Flash Player at Chicago's MAX 2007 conference. With Flash Player 10, codenamed Astro, Adobe keeps pushing the boundaries of what Flash will be able to do with features like 3D perspective transforms, an advanced multi-column bi-di text layout engine with enhanced html capabilities, and finally custom bitmap filters using a new pixel shading scripting language called Hydra, the latter of which is available today. This is exciting stuff... http://www.adobe.com/go/astro http://www.adobe.com/go/hydra A couple conference goers have already posted video; first up is Aral Balkan's must-see footage of the Astro sneak peek keynote where all these features are smartly demoed, and Adobe Evangelist Lee Brimelow posts a short interview with Senior Product Manger Justin Everett-Church, who speaks to how the new 3D transforms complement rather than compete with the Papervision3D project and how the Adobe Image Foundation toolkit allows us to build Hydra filters and even use them across Adobe applications. Mr. Everett-Church doesn't give away clues as to when Astro will hit; perhaps someone will wear down the Adobe staff before the end of the conference? Aral Balkan's must-see footage http://aralbalkan.com/1048 Lee Brimelow's interview with Justin Everett-Church http://theflashblog.com/?p=287

That sounds really cool, especially for game design... that is IF you know how to do that stuff. I really should learn some Flash programming. Have you a good hint where to start?

Yeah, I'd suggest any ActionScript book that has some tutorials at the end with sample projects... most will walk through building a game of Pong, Breakout, or Space Invaders. Build one or two of those by tutorial, then work through the third on your own. Building games is one of the best ways to learn general programming: they have specific goals that you need to achieve, and they incorporate a nice blend of logic, interactivity, and graphics control. The games mentioned above are good starters since they don't really involve any data handling... just blind interactivity. Once you start building something like an adventure game, you need to figure out ways of structuring a data backbone... which I'll tell you, I still wish I was better at that!

Hah! it was only a year ago when I was scavenging the net looking for these exact features. W2G Adobe!

its nice to see adobe didnt just buy-out their rival and then rest on their laurels, looks like they'r really making an effort to advance technology in the industry

Macro-Dobe Blah.... :cry: I'm sorta torn, I like that they are advancing the media and I'm sure it will all be great. I hate the constant updates. I don't know about you guys but I don't use flash enough to justify the expenditure of constant upgrades just to keep up with technology that it takes me longer to learn than it is the la-*test*-('") thing. I feel like it is already becoming just another microsoft.... maybe we should just start calling it Flash ME & Flash XP :twisted: Eh, maybe I'm way off but as a more casual user, I feel like it is taking Flash out of the realm of usable. Well, there is my rant...

I dunno, I mean the new updates arn't necessarily stopping you from using the old ones are they? Greg might correct me but id say you could still make a perfectly usable website or whatever in Flash 5... or maybe im wrong.

I agree wholeheartedly about the Microsoft direction that Adobe is taking. They're becoming a giant. I just hope that they keep their traditional quality and standards that has always been superior to Microsoft's. Also, don't get me wrong... I think its fantastic the direction that Flash player is moving in with all the cool upgrades and new features. But it IS a lot, and very fast (which I suppose is good!) which makes it very difficult (and expensive) to stay current.

The trouble I have already is I have Flash 8. I've got someone that is working on a game but he is on flash 9. I can't even open the fla file that he sends for finishing. I don't mind the new features, but isn't there a way to do an artist pack addon, and a simple css addon and so on. Then you keep flash whatever for a couple years and you leave it to the designer/ coder what new features they have to have. If they did these at say $20 a pop then you could release them every 3 months and still have a solid cash flow... in fact I would be more likely to purchase in this manner and purchase addons I didn't need. Call me a consumer but I like having the choice... now to take over the world... pardon me