Unless you are a newbie, you have heard and probably used swfobject, an easy-to-use and standards-friendly method to embed Flash content. Simply add one small JavaScript file and it takes the worries out of everything. Well, it’s hosted at swfobject, but I just noticed they have an AIR “wizard” that literally writes the html for you. Handy when you don’t have the time to learn the differences and new features in swfobject 2.0. I highly recommend this.

I looked over Adobe TV a little bit today and was impressed with the content there so far - especially a couple of the Photoshop related tutorials. Using any recent Adobe product? Worth a look. Of course, the site is completely done in flash which is ok except the SEO side of me screams when I see that.

The Adobe AIR Development Web Server: DARE is a local http server that makes it easy to create, test, and package AIR applications. It allows you to develop and test using your HTML/JS tools of choice and just a web browser. You can even use the “Refresh” button to test and package your application.

Beta now for the MAC. PC version “coming soon”.

SimpleViewer is a free, customizable Flash image viewing application. An alternative to slideshowpro.

Andre Michelle is leading a campaign called Adobe MAKE SOME NOISE that is calling for Adobe to take some action and fix a pretty big problem with the Actionscript Sound API in the latest Flash Player and also to rally together support to show Adobe that alot of people need/want more control over sound with Actionsript in the next version of the Flash Player. [ via FlashGuru ]

The Adobe technology platform ActionScript reference for RIA development is a 50 paged Printable PDF which provides a complete ActionScript 3 API listing for Flash Player, Adobe AIR and Flex 3. [ via Brajeshwar ]

I might be playing with Adobe AIR soon, so I wanted to bookmark some interesting links.

Simple Zip Viewer with JavaScript and AIR (Kevin Hoyt)

AS3 Zip Library Release (nochump.com)

Drag and Drop Multiple File Upload (Merb on AIR)

Samples Updated for AIR Beta 3 (Kevin Hoyt)

This is a link about accessing the file system in AIR, but i’m really wanting to order that Beginning AIR book when it comes out March 17th.

Saw this on Ajaxian - apparently Google has just come out with Javascript API for YouTube that will allow you to develop “the flexibility to customize the YouTube player with their own controls, player ‘chrome’, and even behaviors like custom playlists and menus.”. The YouTube Chromeless Player Reference is certainly interested and it looks like Christian Heilmann has written a video captioning system that lets you annotate as you pause. My spidey sense tells me this has BIG potential and some awesome stuff should be appearing over the next few weeks.

JW FLV Media Player supports playback of any format the Adobe Flash Player can handle (FLV, but also MP3, H264, SWF, JPG, PNG and GIF). It also supports RTMP and HTTP (Lighttpd) streaming, RSS, XSPF and ASX playlists, a wide range of flashvars (variables), an extensive javascript API and accessibility features.

Flash on iPhone Coming?

I never realized how much flash resources and code Yahoo offers. A borrowed the description from Coding Cowboys on what they’ve just come out with, but i’m wondering what happens if and when Microsoft buys Yahoo? Will this all go away or change into Silverlight?

Yahoo! Developer Network releases ASTRA, the ActionScript Toolkit for Rich Applications. A collection of Flash and Flex components, code libraries, toolkits and utilties developed by Yahoo! for ActionScript developers.

ASTRA Flash components comes with the Tree, Menu, TabBar, AutoComplete, Charts, AlertManager, AudioPlayback, and MenuBar components for Flash CS3.

ASTRA Flex components include AutoCompleteManager, ColorPlaneAndSliderPicker, ColorSliderPicker, DropDownColorPicker, IPv4AddressInput, TimeInput, and TimeStepper components for Flex.

FancyUpload looks very cool. Basically a great graphical way to upload multiple files (there’s even a php script for the actual uploading and validation). Not sure if this is currently being maintained, but if you are looking for a decent uploader this might be the answer. Platform and server independent, just needs Flash 8+. Plus you can limit uploads by file count and/or file size.

I stumbled on betriebsraum’s blog lately and I wanted to bookmark his/her flash video tips.

• Flash Video Tip 1: Calculating an optimal buffer size
• Flash Video Tip 2: Syncing a FLV between two SWFs
• Flash Video Tip 3: Stopping a FLV from downloading

Smallworld is a “massive multiplayer game (really world) that was built entirely in Flex/Flash by the team at Outsmart” and I have to agree it’s one of the best Flex Apps I’ve read about (haven’t played yet though). Not too many Flex games, but this definitely qualifies although i’m not a “virtual world” type of gamer. Bookmarked to show others a cool Flex app. [ via riapedia ]

Brian Deitte points out some great links for those interested in the future of Actionscript 3. Thanks Brian!

I’m bookmarking this good summary on 12 Great Ways to Learn ActionScript 3 in Flash. Also stumbled on JoeFlash’s post on learning Actionscript 3 isn’t harder than learning Actionscript 2, and he also points to the “50 reasons AS3 Kicks Ass” over at gskinner.com. I’ve gotten away from Actionscript since version 2, so I’m bookmarking good “intro” links and tutorials.

Good question raised by Mark Walters on if we’ll see any upgrades or activity with FlashPaper in 2008 (AS3 anyone)? Now that Adobe has taken over, will FlashPaper support disappear in favor of PDF solutions? I don’t think FlashPaper needs much to improve upon, but still I would like to see it officially supported and polished a little.

I’ve always wanted to play with Adobe’s AIR (used to be named Apollo). Bookmarking this from 24 ways: Christmas Is In The AIR, which is a nice intro tutorial. Dummies quick guide. This is also a good summarization of the tutorial and AIR in general. If anyone has any more good newbie AIR tutorials or links, please drop them here.

AMFPHP is a free open-source PHP implementation of the Action Message Format (AMF). AMF allows for binary serialization of Action Script (AS2, AS3) native types and objects to be sent to server side services. Apparently people have adapted it for use with Wordpress, CakePHP, and other frameworks.

Adobe announced plans to release source code for its remoting and messaging technologies under a new open source product named BlazeDS.

This is important for me, so i’m adding to my database. Adobe’s new Flash Player (version 9,0,115,0) does not work with earlier versions of sIFR 2. If you use sIFR 2.0.3 and have a hover color specified for links, you are advised to upgrade immediately. No modifications have been made to the JavaScript, you only need to re-export the Flash movies. I’m also bookmarking this page about sIFR 3, which looks exciting. [ via JD ]

I thought this was pretty cool, and it’s being updated and maintained. FlashTracer is a Firefox extension that allows swf trace output while running any of the swf in a browser window.

Great set of coding examples of getting PHP5 and Flash CS3 (ActionScript 3) to work together.

DRM Demystified: Flash Video And DRM

Flex and Britney Spears… A unique marriage, but it’s related to Rich Internet Applications. Plus, this should get me some interesting hits from some search engine keywords.

Graphing Data with PHP/SWF Charts. No time to investigate now, bookmarking for later.

It looks great, and it’s open source… Interesting, but haven’t seen an impressive demo (yet). [ via Mike Chambers ]

Since I still work in Flash, I decided to bookmark some links and pages related to useful firefox plugins for Flash. Flash Switcher is so far my favorite plugin. If you stumble on this post and can throw me more relevant links, drop a comment.

• Firefox Plugins for Flash Platform Developers
• Flash Switcher for OSX
• Flash Switcher (win)
• User Info for Alessandro Crugnol

Adobe Flash Player 9 Update 3 released

Geek Alert. Flash, AIR, Adobe Wallpaper on flickr. Also can grab the vector files to make your own.

John Dowdell reminds us to target Adobe Reader 8.1 if we are putting flash in PDFs.

SWFAddress is a small, but powerful library that provides deep linking for Flash and Ajax. According to the site it allows “Bookmarking in a browser or social website, Sending links via email or instant messenger, Finding specific content with the major search engines, Utilizing browser history and reload buttons”. [ via ajaxian ]