Remember that incredibly impressive interactive WIRED Magazine demo Adobe showed off a few months back? The one that was built using AIR and was intended ultimately for iPad until Apple banned all Flash-related content from their mobile devices? Well against all the odds Adobe announced the release of the WIRED Reader for iPad the other day and it looks every bit as slick as the original AIR demo.

The technology behind it is obviously no longer based on AIR but Adobe’s press release states it was created using InDesign CS5 and additional Adobe publishing technologies. Like everyone else I’m interested to know what the additional publishing technologies are and when the public will get their hands on it.

There was some talk of Apple and the lack of Flash support on iPad/iPhone during last week’s Adobe CS5 Road Show, with the presenter hinting that we might want to keep an eye on Adobe Labs over the next couple of weeks for a special announcement. My guess is he was referring to the WIRED app and the availability of the additional tools used to create it.

Well Friday night was something special. The greatest minds in the Glasgow Flash community met up to discuss all things Flash related and to have a good ol’ iPhone bashing session. But wait a minute, it turns out that even Flash devs are divided by all this Flash v iPhone malarkey. Incredulously some even seem to think that Steve jobs is right to ban Flash from the iPhone! What the frak! The night nearly ended-up in fisty-cuffs I tells ya. Oh and a special guest from Finland turned up too, but let me introduce everyone first.

So who are all these brilliant individuals? Well the group was kinda split into two camps – actual Flash developers (myself, Lindsey, Jamie and Dave), and special hardcore mobile Flash Player developers (Alex, Cameron, and Dave again). You mean to say you had actual C engineers from Adobe at Glasgow Flash Meetup? Well not exactly. You see these clever dudes used to work for a company who built their own Flash player for mobile even before Macromedia released Flash Lite 1. Pretty cool huh?

To be honest, all the individuals I’ve mentioned are so good at what they do it makes me sick, but I’m gonna try and not hold it against them, and actually sing their praises a little. Let me start with Lindsey and Jamie. You see they’re both super special because unlike most people they’re pretty amazing coders and artists. What you don’t believe me? Well take a look at Lindsey’s gallery then, and this photo of an amazing painting Jamie did of a cheeseburger sitting on an Atari ST. If you take a look at the comic strips in this post you’ll realise that Jamie is a bit of a loose cannon but please don’t hold it against him.

Now onto the C engineers. Well Alex still works for the same company that produced the Flash Player and he’s also currently working on an XBox game in his spare time. I honestly think Alex must be the best C coder in the world. In fact I barely understand a word he says, mostly because I think he actually talks in C rather than English. Cameron too is a C guru who loves registering great domain names (his latest is a cracker) and dreams of stealing money from cash machines.

Finally there’s the enigma known as Dave. I could write several pages about Dave (in fact I did just that once) but this quick paragraph should suffice. Dave is an Apple fan boy and can code in almost any language. For several years he worked as a C engineer with Alex and Cameron writing a Flash player. His career took a turn for the worse when he started sniffing glue. Before Dave knew it, his life was out of control and he found himself reduced to coding in ActionScript. Even today he works full-time as an ActionScript 3 developer, but secretly dreams of the day when Steve Jobs successfully purges the planet of Flash.

It was a good night. Jamie and Lindsey had a big argument about Flash on mobile. I tried to stay impartial, as did Dave. Later on Jamie went a little crazy and started talking about killing animals or something!? The whole Flash on mobile/iPhone debate was very interesting. Jamie seemed to think that running Flash on mobile was simply impossible. Others argued that HTML5 and JavaScript on mobile wouldn’t be any faster than Flash. Personally I passionately believe that there is a place for Flash on mobile so it was good to see Lindsey fighting in my corner.

The night was made extra special by the appearance of a guest of Jamie’s who’s currently working for Nokia. I seem to remember loud music, lasers and pyrotechnics going off as he entered the room. But then again that might just be my mind playing tricks – I do like my Nokia phones. It was kinda like being in the same room as a rock star so it took me a while to pluck up the courage to talk to him. Glad I did though coz the dude had some pretty interesting things to say. For liking Nokia so much he installed a secret app on my phone. It turns any photographs you take into comic strips complete with speech bubbles. Pretty sophisticated stuff don’t you think? Sure did come in handy for this post.

Good news folks! If you use Flash and live in an alternate reality where Apple and Adobe get along just fine then you’ll probably find this tutorial quite useful. It details how to get the best performance when writing apps with Flash CS5 Professional’s Packager for iPhone.

I suppose for everybody else there’s nothing stopping you using Flash to quickly prototype your apps before committing to Objective C. What’s written in my tutorial will also benefit those wishing to target the Android platform and shows how to take advantage of a device’s GPU to increase animation performance.

Sure glad I only spent 5 minutes putting the tutorial together. It would have been quite irritating if I’d spent a few weeks on it only to find out Steve Jobs had changed the developers license agreement rendering all my hard work useless.

So anyway, here it is:

• Packager for iPhone: Animation Render Performance

Several months back I toyed with the idea of porting my audio cassette music player to iPhone using Flash Professional CS5′s iPhone Packager, and as you can see from the video below I’ve done just that. Although Apple are blocking content written in Flash from the App Store I still thought it would be a worth while exercise and would probably be fairly straight forward to do.

Well it turned out to be anything but straight forward. The wisest Jedi of them all once said “You must unlearn what you have learned” and I swear the more that quote floats around my head the more convinced I am that Master Yoda had actually tried porting projects to Apple’s shiny little wonder.

I naively thought that my Flash Lite experience would ensure I was up and running in no time at all. However writing for iPhone brings about a whole new set of interesting problems for the developer to solve. I’ve spent the last two days taking apart my original audio cassette demo and reconstructing it so as best to take advantage of the iPhone’s hardware.

Its GPU loves texture maps, so converting as much of your content as possible to bitmaps and caching them on the GPU seems to get some pretty good results. As is the case with all mobile development, finding the best approach may require you to make compromises and small sacrifices in order to get the best performance.

I think the end result was worth the effort and I now understand considerably more about development for iPhone.

The iPad is a fantastic looking device but with so many manufacturers jumping on the tablet bandwagon it’ll be interesting to see what influence Flash support will have on consumers looking to make a purchase. Unlike the iPad, HP’s Slate will run the full internet, which means full support for Flash Player 10.1 and Adobe AIR.

In the video above, Alan Tan, product marketing manager at Adobe demonstrates Flash and AIR applications running on the Slate. It’s a nice looking device and the performance on the whole seems to be very good. Let’s hope HP get the price point right and that it appears nearer the first half of this year rather than the second.

Imagine if you could somehow take Google and place it inside a man’s brain then have that man spit out the answer to almost any question you put to him. Well such a person does exist. His name is Dave and I had the great pleasure of working with him for four years at WeeWorld right up until his recent departure for pastures new.

Dave’s the kind of guy who masters almost anything he attempts (shhh, let’s not mention his attempts at violin ) and knows more programming languages than I’ve had hot dinners. I’m not exaggerating when I say he could choose to work for any company in the world using whatever programming language he likes.

His career to-date has included all sorts of impressive stuff such as the development of a Flash player for mobile before Macromedia/Adobe even had one available. But it’s where things headed approximately two years into his employment with WeeWorld though that might start to interest you.

After chomping through several Java and Dot Net projects, Dave was asked to help with some Flash work that was in danger of not making its release date.

At first I was a little apprehensive. Flash was still very much frowned upon by more serious developers and I was unsure if someone of Dave’s ability would actually find ActionScript 2 engaging. There was also the issue of the Flash IDE and whether or not he’d be interested in the very designer-centric drawing and animation tools provided by Flash.

The truth is Dave embraced Flash, design tools and all, and after a few months was easily a better Flash developer than I could ever hope to be. He didn’t look back and soon found himself a more-or-less full-time member of the Flash team where he stayed for the remainder of his time at WeeWorld.

I suppose Dave was also WeeWorld’s first cross-skills success story. When we eventually adopted scrum he was in an ideal position to take-on just about any user story that was prioritised for his team. At the time he was the only person who knew both Dot Net and Flash, and his ability to jump onto other developer’s user stories and help them out paved the way for more developers in the company to get vital cross-skills training.

I must admit that I thought Dave would tire of Flash very quickly and seek employment with another company doing something like C, C# or Java. But when he did eventually decide to move on I was astounded to find out that he had chosen to take on another Flash position.

So why was I so surprised by this? Well to be honest I think maybe three or four years ago anyone with a skill set like Dave’s would probably not be the slightest bit interested in Flash. In fact I have met my fair share of talented programmers over the years who have been rather dismissive of Flash and ActionScript. But the last couple of years have seen quite a shift in opinion towards Flash. More and more CVs that land on my desk are from individuals with strong programming backgrounds in Java and C.

So why is this? Well for a start I think Flash has simply grown up. ActionScript 3 is proof of that. The more developer focused work flow provided by Flex/Flash Builder has also probably done quite a lot to encourage programmers to try Flash. Let’s face it, previously most programmers were scared off by the Flash IDE and its design orientated UI. But probably the biggest reason is that these days Flash is everywhere. It’s hugely beneficial to have it on your CV and if you happen to work for a company producing content for the web then it’s almost a certainty you’ll be exposed to it in some shape or form.

Dave’s career path over the last three years and his role within his new company is, to me anyway, proof of Flash’s success to date. His replacement at WeeWorld is, like him, another talented dude who comes from a very heavy Java and C background. He too is excited by the opportunity to learn more about Flash and ActionScript 3 and I’m sure there are many more talented programmers out there like that who are now finding that they can no longer afford to ignore Flash.

I think I’ve rambled on enough. But before I go I’d just like to wish Dave all the best in his new job – I know you’re reading this post dude because I suspect you’re the only person who actually bothers reading my blog Thanks to the wonders of Messenger and Twitter I don’t really feel like you’ve actually left WeeWorld, merely transformed into the force like Obi-Wan Kenobi and Qui-Gon Jinn.

May the force be with you.

Although I subscribe to a few Flash and mobile related groups, I tend not to post that often on them for a few reasons. Firstly, most people’s posts get answered before I have a chance to reply. Secondly I tend to talk rubbish quite often so it’s best I keep my mouth shut.

In fact, keeping a blog is quite a big step for me since my thoughts and opinions are now public knowledge and therefore open to serious disagreement or misinterpretation. However I can be a sensitive soul at times and I try my best not to upset or offend people, although I probably fail miserably at it. I guess I just want to be a nice dude that everybody likes

In response to a post of mine I recently made on a Flash Lite group, I received the following from Nokia’s Riku Salminen:

It’s not a perfect world and making Flash work on mobile has been a tremendous effort from Adobe and all handset manufacturers involved. Cross device and –platform compatibility being one of the most challenging tasks.

You see I’d  implied that Flash Lite can be a bit temperamental across devices, and if you take a look at one of my more recent posts you’ll find that I have also been quite critical of Nokia’s attempts at deploying Flash Lite successfully across their handsets.

It was a great response from Riku and thankfully he took my original post in the best of spirits but it got me thinking that I’d perhaps been overly critical of Nokia. After all, anyone who has gotten to know me over the years will know that I’m a bit of a Nokia fan boy. Sure I don’t exactly have every device that’s come to market but I have a decent wee collection of Nokias that I use for my various Flash Lite tinkerings.

So just for the avoidance of doubt I’d just like to set the record straight. On the whole I think the progress made by Nokia (and the many other handset manufacturers) over the years, deploying Flash Lite on their handsets, has been excellent. Sure mistakes have been made along the way, but the fact remains, they’ve done more than most to support and promote the Flash platform on mobile. It’s why I keep buying their phones.

Now for those who still believe I’m a Nokia hater, here’s a photo that might change your mind. It was taken during the summer on a trip to England to see Pearl Jam and was one of only three photographs I had my brother take of me that day (including all my time spent at the Pearl Jam gig).

There’s a great recording of Adobe Platform Evangelist Lee Brimelow on USTREAM answering 50 questions put to him by the Flash community. His answers give an interesting insight into Adobe’s strategy for the Flash platform and also helped confirm things that many suspected.

He confirmed that Adobe are deliberately pushing developers towards Flash Builder and continuing to cater for designers within Flash Professional. It’s why very little effort has gone into improving the coding tools within Flash whereas Flex/Flash Builder’s IDE has gone from strength to strength. The news regarding the tighter integration between the upcoming Flash CS5 and Flash Builder was also very welcome and something I’m really looking forward to.

Also due for release in Flash CS5 is a brand new text engine and much improved font support. Anyone who’s used Flash will know how tricky it can be when dealing with fonts and managing the fonts that are embedded within your SWFs, so I’m sure it’s going to be another great reason for upgrading to CS5.

Also anyone holding their breath for ActionScript 4 should probably stop. Lee confirmed that ActionScript 3 is here for the foreseeable future and that there are no plans internally for a replacement. He does however state that there will probably be improvements to the language over time, so people hoping to see language features such as the inclusion of private constructors might still get their wish.

One thing that really surprised me was Lee’s admission that although a lot of effort had gone into improving the animation system in Flash CS4 most users had not embraced it, and had instead opted to stick with the traditional system. I have to admit that I still use the classic timeline animation model in Flash but I’m a developer who doesn’t have as much need to use the timeline. I would however have expected designers/animators to have gone mad for it. I might make it a priority to find the time to look into the new timeline animation in Flash CS4. After all the guys at Adobe put in a lot of effort and from what I can see, produced a pretty neat piece of work.

Have a great new year, and I’ll hopefully blog again in a few days time.

I suppose I should have noticed this sooner but it looks like it has been impossible to subscribe to this blog’s RSS feed on certain browsers due to a small bug with the theme. Thankfully it was only a small one line fix to the header.php file. It’s working now so there should be no excuse for not clicking on the little orange icon on the top-right.

Welcome to my first ever blog. It’s something I’ve been threatening to do for some time now but never seemed to get round to it. I seem to have a bit more spare time on my hands so hopefully I’ll be able to keep updating it regularly.

It’s mostly going to be a development blog tracking whatever personal project I’m currently working on. Where appropriate I might also talk about the latest goings on at WeeWorld and you’ll also find my latest thoughts on the Adobe Flash platform.

I’ve been tinkering with Flash Lite over the last few years so don’t be surprised if my posts are heavily slanted towards Flash for mobile.