Development tidbits, struggles, revelations, and still some Flash

I always enjoy reading ArsTechnica.  Maybe just me, but always find their articles even keeled.   They provide their input on the Oracle Java lawsuit against Google over Android and the Dalvik VM.

Link: http://arstechnica.com/open-source/news/2010/08/oracles-java-lawsuit-undermines-its-open-source-credibility.ars

This could represent a good chance for HP and its newly acquired WebOS technology from Palm.  The Oracle lawsuit will at least in the near term make Android adopters pause and think first.  WebOS could be a good alternative, IF (big IF here), IF… HP can move quickly.  Not something they are known for.

And of course, there is also the ongoing rumor of Apple having a Verizon phone as well.   Should make for an interesting future.

Serious lack of updates to my blog. Â Seems like Twitter & Facebook has become the choice of communication. My blog has fallen way behind. Easier to follow me via the Las Vegas Adobe User Group Facebook page at http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=114846021888894 or via twitter at http://twitter.com/yapiodesign/

Found a bug in Flash CS4 when you stretch the width of the Library panel too wide and the library item preview stops displaying. Â Attached a video to see this in action. I’ve replicated this across 3 different Macs running CS4, so not sure if it affects Flash CS4 on Windows or not.

I’ve seen hundreds of these lists over the last few years, but I was cleaning up my bookmarks today and going through all stuff I bookmarked and tried out over the years. This is a list of Mac utlities that I use all the time and are free. Definitely not a list of all great apps out there, but just a list of what I use regularly.

Adium: The best IM client on Mac. The only downside is that it doesn’t support video, but it supports nearly every IM platform out there.

DropBox : Not really an app in the traditional sense (and available on Win & Linux), but 2 gigs of free storage that is sync’d to the cloud, provides revisioning, sharing between peers, and has proven to irreplaceable for me as I work from both a laptop and desktop, or from an office (contracting) or at home.

Linotype FontExplorer X: Manage your fonts. They’ve kinda hidden away the free version, but its the bottom link on the download page.

MAMP: 1-click solution for running Apache, MySQL & PHP locally for testing.

QuickSilver: More than an app launcher. Not be actively developed anymore. Some have recommended Launchbar (not free though). If QS stops working once Snow Leopard comes out, I may have to pay for Launchbar.

AppFresh: checks all the installed apps, preference panes, plugins, etc on your Mac and checks to see if there are newer versions out there. It will even download and install those updates.

Carbon Copy Cloner: Great utilty for cloning, syncing, and backing up your drives. I just used it recently for cloning my 250 gig startup drive onto a newer 1.5TB drive.

Chmox:Â CHM viewer.

CleanArchiver: On the surface, just another archive utility, but it strips out the .DS_Store and custom icons from your archive file. I use this a lot when sending files to clients who I know are on PC. Opening a Mac .zip file on PC can be confusing when looking at all the extra files.

Name Mangler: Awesome utility for doing batch renaming of files. Has tons of options, and can use RegEx.

The Unarchiver: Far more capable decompression tool that Apples built-in tool and has handled zips in the past that just refuse to decompress under Apples utility . Handles nearly every file format out there.

Xee:Â Â Fast image viewer and browser.

TimeMachineEditor:Â Change the default 1 hour backup interval for Time Machine.

Visibility: App for viewing and hiding invisible files in OSX. Handy when working on files like .htaccess or .profile while using GUI apps.

Mail Unread Menu: I use a lot of rules and folders in Mail. The Mail icon in the dock only shows the unread emails in your Inbox. Mail Unread Menu provides a customizable menu bar icon that can show any collection of folders in your Mail app.

Perian: Gives Quicktime the ability to play nearly ever video format out there.

iStat Menus: Great menu bar item for monitoring all aspects of your system from cpu usage, memory, bandwidth, hard drive usage, and much more.

QuickLook: Not enough people know about or use QuickLook. Its built into the Mac OS 10.5 and is awesome. If you don’t know what it is, find out about it here. Now the reason I mention QuickLook is because it is extensible and people have written a lot of great plugins for it. Two sites that I find great plugins at are: QuickLook Plugins web site & QLplugins web site.

Flash Catalyst isn’t even in public beta yet, but based on the potential I see with the preview release handed out at Adobe MAX, I could see Flash Catalyst replace the Flash IDE eventually.

Now currently, FC is being billed as a tool for interation designers for creating UI mockups to use for wireframing, adding interactivity to your AI, PSD or FW files, getting client sign-off and handing off to your developer. The big goal is that behind the scenes, FC is built on Eclipse and actually is building a Flex Project file (FXP actually) to take into Flex Builder and wire up to live data. Talking this idea over with others, I’ve heard some same that isn’t the focus of Flash Catalyst or its not intended for that, yada yada.  But when FutureSplash hit the market, who thought we’d be building web applications with it eventually?

Looking very briefly at both Flash CS4 and Flash Catalyst while wearing the “designer hat” , in both tools I can draw, import from existing Photoshop, Illustrator, and Fireworks files, animate using the more intuitive After Effects-like timeline , add interactivity via built-in features/behaviours and even go “behind the scenes” and add more advanced interactivity via ActionScript. I can easily see users looking at FC to build what they currently use Flash IDE for. Even Adobe’s own marketing on the FC site states “Flash Catalyst can output a finished Flash SWF or AIR application that’s ready to publish on the web.”

Ok. so Flash Catalyst 1.0 won’t kill off Flash CS4, but given a bit of work and some tools we haven’t seen yet, and the desire by Adobe, I could easily see FC 1.5 or 2.0 replace the Flash IDE and for the record, I see that as a good thing.  Here are the PRO’s for killing off the Flash IDE in favor of Flash Catalyst 2.0

1. The Flash IDE has a horrible ActionScript editor. We complain about it all the time, and I’m not convinced that Adobe wants to fix it. Seems like a lot of Flashers jump into Flex for the code editor first, and then play with the Flex SDK later on.
2. No longer held back by the Flash .FLA file type.  The .FLA blows. Every new version of Flash creates a new FLA that isn’t backwards compatible. Its not efficient when working with a team who uses SVN (can’t be diffed).
3. Finally on a level playing field with the “Flex guys”.  Under the hood, we’d be using the same tool, same code base, same components and would have a shared project file. No longer feeling slighted because one or the other got tools that the other didn’t.

So for this to happen, a lot of work would need to happen to Flash Catalyst to make it compete with the Flash IDE. First off, we’d need more drawing tools. The preview release of Flash Catalyst from Adobe MAX only had the bare minimum of tools, and I would image Adobe is hard at work on a lot more drawing tools.  We’d also need a Motion Editor for Flash Catalyst, along with the 3d and IK tools that the Flash IDE has.  There are more items that would be required but those are the essentials to bring Flash Catalyst on par with the current Flash IDE. Its something that I think is very achievable by Adobe.  And maybe… its something they are planning as well.