The Max is Adobe's flagship convention. Albumprinters Klaas, Martijn and I went there last December. This year, it all happened in Milan. The embarrassing pictures are here.
Flash Player 10
Flash Player 10, code-named "Astro," introduces a lot of new features and visual performance improvements, for example:
AIR 1.5
Air is the Adobe Integrated Runtime. It's a wrapper for rich internet applications. As you all know, Albelli boasts an AIR application: the X-editor. So, we were early adopters. At the Max in Milan, Adobe spoke about the new features of AIR 1.5, codename "Cosmo". It will boast Flash Player 10 integration, extended language support and encryption for the embedded local SQL Lite databases.
Next to that, they explained the value of desktop applications, as opposed to browser apps. It's all about trust. Since AIR runs outside the browser, the user has a lot of trust in the application - it means, however, that the application provider is responsible for things going wrong.
Another topic we wanted to know more about is the distribution rate of AIR. Usually, Adobe does a great job distributing stuff. With Flash Player, Adobe can update 99% of the web within 9 months (in contrast to browser versions). The reason is very simple: in 80% of all cases, Flash is used to view video on the internet.
Using the same tricks, Adobe expects to support 100 million AIR installations before the end of 2008.
Flash and mobile
Unfortunately, Flash Lite on mobile devices does not update at the same rate as the Flash browser plug-in. However, Adobe is engineering Flash Player 10 on Smart Phones. Especially Nokia and Symbian are working closely with Adobe, but there is more to come.
Phones that were shown using Flash Player 10:
Pixelbender
The Pixel Bender graph language is an XML-based language to describe pixel-processing operations into more complex filters. For normal people, that means you can do amazing things with images using Pixelbender and Flex - without so much work. Pretty impressive: image editors will benefit greatly!
Adobe Alchemy
In general, one of our worries about AIR is the performance. Some smart guys at Adobe came up with a great idea. They basically compiled C and C++ code, and converted it to Flash ActionScript. This particular kind of ActionScript is completely unreadable, but performs quite well. As a stunning example, they showed us the infamous game Quake, smoothly running inside Flash Player (for you newbies: Quake was a game that was fairly popular in the last decade of the previous century). I got all excited, because I am 34.
Flash Player 10
Flash Player 10, code-named "Astro," introduces a lot of new features and visual performance improvements, for example:
- 3D Effects
- Custom Filters and Effects (see PixelBender)
- Advanced Text Layout
- Enhanced Drawing API
- Local file access
AIR 1.5
Air is the Adobe Integrated Runtime. It's a wrapper for rich internet applications. As you all know, Albelli boasts an AIR application: the X-editor. So, we were early adopters. At the Max in Milan, Adobe spoke about the new features of AIR 1.5, codename "Cosmo". It will boast Flash Player 10 integration, extended language support and encryption for the embedded local SQL Lite databases.
Next to that, they explained the value of desktop applications, as opposed to browser apps. It's all about trust. Since AIR runs outside the browser, the user has a lot of trust in the application - it means, however, that the application provider is responsible for things going wrong.
Another topic we wanted to know more about is the distribution rate of AIR. Usually, Adobe does a great job distributing stuff. With Flash Player, Adobe can update 99% of the web within 9 months (in contrast to browser versions). The reason is very simple: in 80% of all cases, Flash is used to view video on the internet.
Using the same tricks, Adobe expects to support 100 million AIR installations before the end of 2008.
Flash and mobile
Unfortunately, Flash Lite on mobile devices does not update at the same rate as the Flash browser plug-in. However, Adobe is engineering Flash Player 10 on Smart Phones. Especially Nokia and Symbian are working closely with Adobe, but there is more to come.
Phones that were shown using Flash Player 10:
- Android HTC G1
- HTC Windows Mobile
- Samsung Windows Mobile
- Symbian Nokia N85
- Symbian Nokia N95
Pixelbender
The Pixel Bender graph language is an XML-based language to describe pixel-processing operations into more complex filters. For normal people, that means you can do amazing things with images using Pixelbender and Flex - without so much work. Pretty impressive: image editors will benefit greatly!
Adobe Alchemy
In general, one of our worries about AIR is the performance. Some smart guys at Adobe came up with a great idea. They basically compiled C and C++ code, and converted it to Flash ActionScript. This particular kind of ActionScript is completely unreadable, but performs quite well. As a stunning example, they showed us the infamous game Quake, smoothly running inside Flash Player (for you newbies: Quake was a game that was fairly popular in the last decade of the previous century). I got all excited, because I am 34.
Seriously, there are thousands of useful C and C++ programs around, begging to be reused.
Other stuff
Other stuff
- Adobe Flash Catalyst is an interaction design tool for rapidly creating application interfaces and interactive content without coding.
- Meer Meer (Mirror-Mirror) allows for anyone to see what a website looks in any browser and on any OS.
- Nitro is a platform for widgets. You can put widgets in it and they will be available to you, cross-platform (mobile, web, TV).
- Durango is an application mashup tool in AIR.
A session about XMP convinced us that this is something really useful as well. XMP is a standard way of expressing metadata for digital files. Although more generically applicable, it is very similar to EXIF - which can be a subset of XMP.
All in all a very useful trip. Martijn even managed to program a couple of pretty neat features into our AIR X-editor while in the plane/bus/conference/hotel. I didn't - but that's probably a good thing.
