Yesterday, Lee Brimelow mentioned Action Message Format (AMF) on The Flash Blog. I’ve read a little about this topic, but know next to nothing about it. Here’s the official word from Adobe:

AMF is a compact binary format that is used to serialize ActionScript object graphs. Once serialized an AMF encoded object graph may be used to persist and retrieve the public state of an application across sessions or allow two endpoints to communicate through the exchange of strongly typed data.

Basically, it’s a way to more efficiently pass large amounts of information between Flash and the server (i.e., an alternative to XML). Brimelow outlined several server-side methods to utilize this format and promised some real-world examples next week. Jump over to The Flash Blog to read up on Action Message Format.

Download the AMF 3 Specification PDF

Update: Brimelow is on the ball; the first AMF/AMFPHP tutorial is already up over at gotoAndLearn(). Happy coding.

The title pretty much says it all. I spent about 10 aggravated minutes today troubleshooting this issue, until I remembered I had updated to the new Flash Player 10 beta last week. As reported:

sIFR 2 uses the same Flash detection that was originally used in its precursor, IFR, back in 2004. Unfortunately this detection script only expected single digit Flash versions, so it fails to detect Flash 10. This has been fixed in sIFR 2.0.6 2.0.7.

Those using sIFR 2 in past or current projects, take this opportunity to update your scripts. Obviously, this isn’t going to be a rampant issue, because sIFR usage is comparatively low. However, I wanted to at least save some of you out there the headache.

In order to help my migration to Flash 9, I went ahead and read the ActionScript 3.0 Cookbook by Joey Lott, Darron Schall and Keith Peters.

Overall, I would say that it was helpful and recommend it, but even though my copy was a first edition, it did seem like the book contained way too may typos (both grammatical and in the ActionScript itself). Typos aside, the chapters on the Display List and XML were both extremely concise and informative. If you’re unfamiliar with either, I’d recommend giving them a look.

Like the other books in O’Reilly’s Cookbook series, the ActionScript 3.0 Cookbook works as a quick reference to commonly encountered problems. Focusing on the end results, their problem/solution approach to education works well when you’re already somewhat familiar with their subject.

Bear with us as we update our layout. Apparently, the theme we were using is incompatible with the Wordpress 2.6 update. Joy!

Update: We’re using the default theme in the interim. We’ll use this time to work out a better look for this blog. Thanks for your patience.

Today, I was implementing the Google Maps API for a site I was developing and noticed that you can now use the Google maps API to embed maps in Flash (take that Yahoo!). This may be old news, but it’s new to me:

This API lets Flex developers embed Google Maps in Flash applications. Similar to the JavaScript version, this ActionScript API provides a number of utilities for manipulating and adding content to maps through a variety of services, enabling you to embed robust, interactive maps applications on your website.

More information can be found here.

An engineer from the Adobe Flash team, Tinic Uro, is reporting that they have found the bottleneck which has plagued the Flash player’s performance on OS X. With the beta release of Flash player 10, speeds are said to be increased by up to three times. Good news for all OS X users.

Flash Player 10 beta can be downloaded from Adobe Labs.

Slowly but surely, Flash is hacking away at the reasons people hate it. Flash has crossed a big bridge with the recent news that both Google and Yahoo! can now search content in SWF files. Yeah, I’m as suprised as you. Here’s a quick breakdown of the news, based on this article from the Flash team.

Q: Why is this news important?
A: Because all SWF files that may have had relevant and informative content were essentially invisible to all search engines before this announcement.

Q: Why is Adobe doing this?
A: To legitimize Flash sites as a viable, search friendly option and to give the Flash haters one less reason to complain.

Q: Which versions of the SWF file format will benefit from this improved indexing and searching?
A: All of them. Yeah, every single one. Yup, that kind too.

Q: What do content owners and developers need to do to their SWF content to benefit from improved search results?
A: Zip, Zilch, Nada. Now go have a margarita and tell your clients how much of a genius you are.

Q: What technology has Adobe contributed to this effort?
A: A custom Flash Player that returns links and text from within the flash file.

Q: How are Google and Yahoo! using the Adobe Flash technology?
A: To deliver improved web search capabilities for SWF applications.

Q: When will the improved SWF searching solutions go live?
A: Google is rolling them out now and Yahoo! is hot on their heels.

(more…)