May 16, 2008

Adobe® Flash® Player 10, code-named "Astro," introduces new expressive features and visual performance improvements that allow interactive designers and developers to build the richest and most immersive Web experiences.  These new capabilities also empower the community to extend Flash Player and to take creativity and interactivity to a new level.

This public prerelease is an opportunity for developers and consumers to test and provide early feedback to Adobe on new features, enhancements, and compatibility with previously authored content.  Once you’ve installed Flash Player 10 beta, you can view interactive demos.  You can also help make Flash Player better by visiting all of your favorite sites, making sure they work the same or better than with the current player.

Key New Features Include:

3D Effects - Easily transform and animate any display object through 3D space while retaining full interactivity.  Fast, lightweight, and native 3D effects make motion that was previously reserved for expert users available to everyone.  Complex effects are simple with APIs that extend what you already know.

Custom Filters and Effects - Create your own portable filters, blend modes, and fills using Adobe® Pixel Bender™, the same technology used for many After Effects CS3 filters. Shaders in Flash Player are about 1KB and can be scripted and animated at runtime.

Advanced Text Layout - A new, highly flexible text layout engine, co-existing with TextField, enables innovation in creating new text controls by providing low-level access to text offering right-to-left and vertical text layout, plus support for typographic elements like ligatures.

Enhanced Drawing API - Runtime drawing is easier and more powerful with re-styleable properties, 3D APIs, and a new way of drawing sophisticated shapes without having to code them line by line.

Visual Performance Improvements – Applications and videos will run smoother and faster with expanded use of hardware acceleration.  By moving several visual processing tasks to the video card, the CPU is free to do more.

May 8, 2008

On the Web, usability is a necessary condition for survival. If a website is difficult to use, people leave. If the homepage fails to clearly state what a company offers and what users can do on the site, people leave. If users get lost on a website, they leave. If a website’s information is hard to read or doesn’t answer users’ key questions, they leave. Note a pattern here? There’s no such thing as a user reading a website manual or otherwise spending much time trying to figure out an interface. There are plenty of other websites available; leaving is the first line of defense when users encounter a difficulty.

Although there are lots of elements to consider when designing compelling Web experiences (writing style, look and feel, information organization -to name just a few), there is one "knowable" element that can be used to appraise the rest: audience. A detailed understanding of your target audience provides you with an effective metric by which to evaluate all your design decisions: structure (content and organization), visual presentation (personality and tone), and interaction (functionality and behavior). From cultural dimensions to computer expertise, the more you know about your audience the easier it becomes to design for (and communicate to) them.

If you want to reach the greatest number of users possible, it’s best to write clearly and simply and design your interfaces to be consistent from page to page. For some people, simple usability advice like this is an absolute accessibility need. Many people with cognitive disabilities can fail a task simply because it hasn’t been laid out well enough for them. And anyway, people of all abilities fail tasks that are confusing. Why should we all suffer an interface that proves itself to be unusable?

May 8, 2008

CSS Borders-

Achieving rounded borders using current CSS coding can be tricky – there are numerous methods available, but none are extremely straight forward. Creating individual images for each border is often needed in addition. Using CSS3, creating a rounded border is incredibly easy. It can be applied to each corner or individual corners, and the width/color are easily altered. The CSS code is:

.border_rounded {

background-color: #ddccb5;

-moz-border-radius: 5px;

-webkit-border-radius: 5px;

border: 2px solid #897048;

padding: 10px;

width: 310px;

}

Gradient borders can look effective if used correctly. This code is a little more complex, requiring you to define each colour of the gradient. The CSS code is:

.border_gradient {

border: 8px solid #000;

-moz-border-bottom-colors:#897048 #917953 #a18a66 #b6a488 #c5b59b #d4c5ae #e2d6c4 #eae1d2;

-moz-border-top-colors:  #897048 #917953 #a18a66 #b6a488 #c5b59b #d4c5ae #e2d6c4 #eae1d2;

-moz-border-left-colors: #897048 #917953 #a18a66 #b6a488 #c5b59b #d4c5ae #e2d6c4 #eae1d2;

-moz-border-right-colors:#897048 #917953 #a18a66 #b6a488 #c5b59b #d4c5ae #e2d6c4 #eae1d2;

padding: 5px 5px 5px 15px;

width: 300px;

}

Adding a shadow to an element is difficult at present – it is a good way to differentiate a certain area, but as with any effect, it should be used sparingly. The CSS code is:

.border_shadow {

-webkit-box-shadow: 10px 10px 5px #888;

padding: 5px 5px 5px 15px;

width: 300px;

}

May 1, 2008

Today, Adobe skips all licensing fees for devices and opens up the SWF and FLV specs for anyone to create devices supporting Flash. According to Dave McAllister of Adobe, the goal is to create a consistent experience across all devices and they're not afraid this will cause player fragmentation.

What a change! In just two years, Adobe have opened up a lot of proprietary technology. First the Tamarin virtual machine, then it was the QVM, the AMF specs, BlazeDS and the Flex Framework. Now Adobe makes it easy to create Flash Players for devices by removing all licensing restrictions and publishing the full SWF and FLV/F4V specs. All use will be free and with no limitations. At a later stage, the entire the device porting layer will be published as well as the FlashCast protocol and specs for creating AIR players. Read more about the Open Screen Project on the official page or in the FAQ. Good commentry on Peter Elst's blog as well.