Tag: Flash

Flash Lite 3 & Zinc 3.0, new softwares released this weekend

This weekend Adobe announced that is ready new flash lite version developer edition, dowloadable for free from labs.adobe.com.
Remember that you can develop flash lite 3 contents only if you upgrade Flash CS3 and Device Central.
More information about features and files to download you can see at Bill Perry’s blog.
If you test this developer release in your device, remember to write in Flash Lite 3 Forum which device you are using!

You can also see Flash Lite 3 application in action from Biskero’s blog, very cool video!

Finally multidmedia announce Pandora project that is new Zinc version with new big features and optimization.
New features are (from Pandora’s devlab):

. Mac OSX Output will now be in Native Universal Binary and optimized for Mac 10.5 “Leopard”
. Windows Projectors will have been specifically optimized for Vista
. Windows & Mac OSX Projectors almost 500% faster than Zinc 2.5 Projectors
. The entire {mdm}Script API will now be 100% Modularized
. Dynamic Form Creation
. An extensive Custom Command SDK will be available for both Windows and Mac OSX Developers
. {mdm}Script 3.0 – Completely re-written from scratch and now Unicode (UTF8/UTF16) Compliant
. {mdm}Script 3.0 – Greater Similarity between Windows & Mac OSX Classes
. Completely New GUI on Windows & Mac OSX – Screenshots available in December 2007!
. Several other “Industry Firsts” to be revealed in December 2007!

Probably Zinc 3.0 will go out in January 2008 but a public BETA will be release in December.
So take a look at Multidmedia site!

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Touch screen and cd-rom with Multidmedia Zinc

One recent project that I produce is a touch screen software, obviusly I made it with Zinc.

So I’d like to share my experience with my blog readers.

First of all, I must say that Zinc has a too bad documentation, a lots of examples don’t work and there are some big bugs.

ZINC and FTP CONNECTION
In my last project I add a routine to download new files from touch screens.
Zinc FTP API works only in Windows, but for this project, all touch screens had OS Win, so no problem.
In this case, I found 3 problems, first of all I can’t download all files togheter because Zinc had some issues to do this operation, so when I download a file, when onComplete event triggered I launch another one.
Probably Zinc didn’t copy all bytes from FTP server to client and it crashed.
So I put a setTimeOut function to call a new file after 1 second and it works!
Finally, using close method of FTP class, FTP session is still opened…so I delete FTP istance and it works! So crazy!

ZINC and Flex
Recently I produce 3 projects with Flex and Zinc…I found a lots of interesting issues.
When you work with Zinc in Flex, you must add SWC library to use Zinc API, so you bring it from 2 folders(one .swc in for Flash and one for Flex, but you could use both in Flex) and there is different way to implements same API with .swc for Flash or for Flex, so take a look of which .swc you could use to work.
Another problem that I found is when you create a transparent application and you have mx:TextInput, if you have focus in textinput component and you try to use keyboard arrows to move cursor, you’ll receive an unknown error!
In Multidmedia forum Peter suggests to me to use callLater function, but it doesn’t work.

So those are some problems that I would share with you, I hope that they are useful for everyone.

FotB, the second day

Second day at FotB was better than first!
If English people said: “God save the Queen”, I say: “God save Mario Klingemann“… he is a big geek and a showman!
You can find Mario’s preso directly in quasimondo.com (his blog), so Mario show us how to use BitmapData class and create very cool effect. It was an amazing session and it registered SOLD OUT.

Another big preso was Ted Patrick‘s session where he explain us the worst practice to use Flex! Ted is a big speaker, in few slides he show us what we could do to create solid and good projects, very interesting.

So now I’m starting the last day here… talking with Mr. Davey, that organizes FotB, he said me that next year FotB probably starts in the end of September, so take a space in your agenda and come in Brighton!

First day at FOTB

First day at FOTB was fantastic, speakers prepared great session, in particular inspire sessions are crazy!!!
Joshua Davis is an amazing speaker so cool presentation!

But another amazing thing is after the first inspire session where out of Pavillion Theatre the guys of Plug-in Media create a flash installation where you can interact with and when you move yourself starts from some areas one or more fireworks, very crazy!

After this we came to Brighton Casino and we gambled and eat all night!

When I’ll come back in Italy, I’ll create a Flickr account and put in all FOTB and Chicago MAX photos there.

And now I’ll start a new FOTB day! What amazing event!

Flash on the beach, I’m coming!

On saturday I leave Italy to my first Flash on the Beach edition!
I take a look at seminars and there are 3 intensive days, lots of strong speakers and I hope to meet there new friends!

Obviusly in this blog I report my impressions about this event and share ideas or knowledge.
So stay tuned!