[via PSPWorld.com]

“Sony’s developers are considering adding Macromedia Flash support for PSP’s Web browser in the future, as well as expanding Javascript functions. Kawanishi explained they need to determine Flash’s performances on the PSP before coming to a conclusion. Kawanishi said that his team basically has an open stance toward network-related functions, and Flash playback was not intentionally ignored. On the other hand, Kawanishi explained that security issues prompted the team to leave out some Javascript support, such as allowing scripts to access the UMD.”

http://www.pspworld.com/sony-psp/psp/psp-to-get-mouse-keyboard-gps-flash-001311.php

I can neither confim nor deny that this is actually going to happen. It looks like Sony is just expressing their interest in pursuing this option.

I will be traveling throughout Asia Pacific over the next three weeks delivering seminars on the products in the new Studio 8 with Jen Taylor, DW Sr. Product Manager, and Jim Guerard, VP Tools.

Come see the new Studio tools in person. We will be in the following cities:
- Sydney
- Melbourne
- Kuala Lumpur
- Beijing
- Taipei
- Singapore
- Hong Kong
- Bangalore
- Delhi
- Mumbai

We also have a team presenting in several other cities.

Learn more and sign up to attend here:
http://www.macromedia.com/ap/events/0805_preview_events.html

This is a nicely designed Flash site for premium Vodka maker Grey Goose.

http://www.greygoosevodka.com

Enjoy!

We’ve received a lot of feedback from our users that the Flash Player on the Mac is much slower than the Player on Windows. There are a variety of technical reasons for this that I wouldn’t have the knowledge to explain. However - there is good news for Mac users out there…

As Tinic Uro, Principal Engineer for the Flash Player, explains in a post on his weblog, the new Flash Player 8 for the Mac has added support for OpenGL.

From the post:

“So, in essence it means that the Flash Player will use OpenGL on OS X 10.2 or newer to display its content if the machine meets the requirements. This is the direct result of working with some Apple engineers which were really helpful in getting us to be confident with these changes. In addition almost every core rendering routine now has an AltiVec implementation, you should see that when profiling using Shark. We spend a lot of time on this in this release.”

* Note: There is currently a bug (https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=298961) in Firefox for the Mac that causes very poor performance. The bug has been logged and is being addressed by the Mozilla team. Until then we recommend that Mac users use Safari for browsing Flash content on the Mac.

Tinic Uro, Principal Engineer on the Flash Player team and the brains behind many of the best new features in Flash Player 8, has posted a great summary of Macromedia’s reasoning for selecting On2 VP6 over other video codecs.

Tinic implemented the new codec in the Flash Player (among many other features) and he is also the reason for our breakthrough run-time support for 8-bit alpha channels. Mike Chambers and I still argue over which one of us was first to stop by Tinic’s desk over a year ago to ask him if it would be possible to do alpha channel support in the new Player. I do remember that it took him only a few hours to get it working. The rest is history…

http://www.kaourantin.net/2005/08/quest-for-new-video-codec-in-flash-8.html

Jim Guerard, VP of Tools at Macromedia (and my boss), has a very interesting “Logged In” article on macromedia.com that details the intensive, rigorous process that the Studio 8 product teams went through while planning the new releases of the products.

We followed this process, which we call Synchronous Product Development (SPD - or “SPeeDy” as we called it) on the Flash team and, though we resented all of the hard work and travel at times, we think it was one of the best decisions that Macromedia has ever made.

Read Jim’s article to learn more about this interesting process.

The guys at Sony Pictures and Big Spaceship partnered with Macromedia to provide a teaser site for the upcoming sequal to the movie Underworld. This short teaser uses some of the new effects, performance, and video capabilities of the Flash Player 8 and the public beta Player is required to view the site.

Keep your eyes on the site over the next few weeks as they will soon be releasing the first trailer for the movie. The site itself will also continue to evolve and use more and more of the advanced features in Flash Player 8 as the movie gets closer to its official announce.

http://www.entertheunderworld.com

Nicely done!

*Note - there is currently a bug in Firefox on the Mac platform that causes major performance problems in the public beta of Flash Player 8 so if you are on a Mac, please use Safari to view this site.

If you read my “What’s new in Flash Professional 8” article on the Developer Center, you’ll already know what the big new features of Flash Professional 8 are. Here are a few of the lesser-known features that we’ve been able to work in. This is top-of-mind and by no means a comprehensive list. We’ve done a TON of bug fixes and feature enhancements for this release so I can’t remember them all.

Below you’ll find descriptions and screenshots of several of these features…

Continue Reading »

I’m sure this comes as a surprise to nobody reading this, but Macromedia announced today, 8/8 at 8am, the release of Macromedia Studio 8 which includes Flash Professional 8. I thought it might be good to make some sense of all the madness following the launch and point out a few things that some of you may not have noticed.

First of all, the new Studio 8 includes:
- Dreamweaver 8
- Flash Professional 8
- Fireworks 8
- Contribute 3
- FlashPaper 2

And it sells for US$999 (full) and US$399 (upg). Buy it here.

Flash Professional 8 is US$699 (full) and US$299 (upg).
Flash Basic 8 is US$399 (full) and there is no upgrade available.

WHAT’S NEW IN FLASH PROFESSIONAL 8?
Read my article on the Developer Center.

Continue Reading »