After another fantastic FITC conference (with really unfortunate Internet access), I am back in the land of broadband and can post my deck from my talk “What’s New in Flash CS3 Professional.” I do want to thank everyone that attended. I think that was my biggest audience to date, and I really appreciated the great questions at the end.

The slides themselves may be a good pointer to the new things in Flash CS3, but unfortunately for the online version, most of the meat of the presentation was in the form of demos, so I will see what I can do about doing some Adobe Connect recordings to talk about some of the lesser known (but fun) features in CS3.

I’ve been hearing a few “where did my components go?” questions from people working with Flash CS3 Professional. Just in case anyone is in that boat, don’t worry, they are still there!

If you set an FLA to export for ActionScript 1, or ActionScript 2, the components panel will automatically refresh with the components that you are familiar with from Flash 8 Professional. If you change the file to export for ActionScript 3.0, you will see the new components. Flash will always show you all the components that you are able to use given your export target.

In Flash CS3, the Flash team added a number of light-weight, easily skinnable components that are written in AS 3.0. However, since they are built to use the new ActionScript Virtual Machine (AVM2), they are only going to work in SWFs that are exported for Flash Player 9 or higher and for ActionScript 3.0.

For those that haven’t started working with Flash CS3 Professional yet, these components are hot! I have to admit that I have never liked components. I prefer to build things from the ground up myself and have complete design control. Also, my days of working on advertiser-related projects has left me with an obsession for small file sizes that has never let me use the AS2 components.

When I first started at Adobe and got to see behind the curtain, I was really shocked by the new components. The team had really listened to all of the objections about the components and done something about them.

Now, the components work off shared classes which means incremental growth in SWF size per additional component. The base component class is under 10K and is screaming fast. Grant Skinner showed an example of a data grid with ONE MILLION entries with text and images that scrolled smoothly, efficiently, and without spiking the processor.

Beyond the geek factor though, the components are skinnable in a way that makes sense to designers. Shifting sides of the brain for a moment, the way I edit a symbol in Flash is to double click on it, make my changes, and go back out to the parent of the instance I was editing. It allows me to see the object in the context of what I am creating. This was probably the most valuable feature among some pretty heavy hitting features in Flash 5.

In Flash CS3, the same is now true for components. If you double click on a components, something happens now! You will see all of the states and elements that make up the component as symbols laid out on the stage. They are nicely labeled in their custom layout, and all you have to do to change the styling is to double click again on the state you want to modify, make your changes and….. well, there is no more and. that’s it.

Back on the developer side though, you also have APIs to style the components at runtime if you happen to prefer things that way. You can also target all of the instances of a components, or just a single one. I’m pretty amazed by the many ways the new components keep demonstrating their flexibility.

As I mentioned in a previous post, Express Install on Windows Vista won’t work on Internet Explorer from a pre-Vista Flash Player ActiveX control. As part of the 9,0,45 launch a couple weeks ago, an update was made to the Express Install error message display.

This update will warn affected users that Express Install won’t work in their configuration, but that they can get Flash Player by visiting the Flash Player Dowload Center. At this point if you have implemented any special checks, you should no longer need them as Express Install will recognize configurations where it will not be able to install.

In case you are wondering what this error message looks like (and don’t feel like uninstalling Flash Player), I’ve included a screen shot below taken from an Express Install experience after uninstalling my current Flash Player and installing that last build of Flash Player 8.

As a reminder, the only way that you will have a user in this situation is if they meet all of the following criteria:

1) Had a pre-Vista (<9,0,28) Flash Player installed on XP
2) Upgraded to Vista from XP
3) Use Internet Explorer 7
4) Attempts to upgrade Flash Player through Express Install

The issue is due to the fact that Windows Vista has a different security model from previous versions of their operating systems. This change requires additional code in the Flash Player installer that uses a broker process to finish the installation. This process is however not required in non-IE browsers like FireFox and Express Install should work as expected.

At FITC, during the keynote, we were really pleased to announce the March Flash Player penetration numbers. The full data is now available on on the Adobe website.

The numbers this quarter are excellent! As of mid-March, Flash Player 9 is now at 83.4% worldwide, and 84.5% in the United States! Paired with the launch of Flash CS3 Professional last week, this is very exciting new. This is the first time that on the first day that Flash Professional is available, enough of the web users have the current version of Flash Player that even pretty conservative sites can seriously consider exporting for Flash Player 9.

Flash Player 9 is at 83.4%
penetration World Wide

There are a lot of reasons to use Flash Player 9. ActionScript 3 opens up a whole new level of possibilities for development in Flash. Even when I think that things are pretty amazing, I go to a conference like FITC, and am completely blown away by the level of sophistication of the content and libraries being made in AS3.

Also, I want to thank everyone that came to the Flash Player 10 Feature request session; the requests and feedback were great! Everyone in the Flash Player team really appreciates the involvement from the community and we will try to get in as many features as we can!

Ray and I bought a loft up in San Francisco! Ok, well, we actually bought a loft in October. The late post on the subject is that six months later we are finally moving in!

This morning I left home in Fremont and will be going home to San Francisco. What? Not Alabama as my post title implies? Well, our little slice of the city is on Alabama St. in the Mission district so I thought I’d share the punniness with everyone. It would be getting old already if it weren’t for the fact that we are just so darned pleased to finally be home owners.

The loft is 2000sqft. with two levels, two bedrooms and two bathrooms (pictures to come once the whole process is done. There is also a laundry room (Whee!), and a big loft area. The rest of the space is an open floorplan with the kitchen, dining, and living room combined and leading out onto a big patio. There is a lot of wall space for our art, and TONS of storage. The rooms have pretty good closets, but there is a full closet under the stairs, an enormous walk-in in the loft area, the laundry room has a lot of storage space, and there is also a storage space in the garage. It is a pack rat’s dream come true.

If you are looking for a place up in the city, I would highly recommend our Realtor, Kathryn Williams. Kathryn is very knowledgeable about San Francisco real estate and what is on the market. She gave us lots of information, but didn’t try to sell us on every little detail with flowery adjectives. We told her what we were looking for and she pointed us to great places that really did meet all of the guidelines we set.

So if you are wondering why it took so long for me to give up my 3 hour commute each day, it was because we thought. “This is our first place, let’s make it look the way we want.” Looking the way we want meant paint, carpet, and enough lighting to make our artwork start to smoke. Design consensus 1 month, lighting shipment delay 2 months, Painting (DIY) 1 month, me traveling way to much 1 month, carpet delays 1 month. Since that totals 5, let’s just add one month for Gay Standard Time (GST) conversion.

Things I learned:

• Ray makes a really great general contractor (thanks sweetie!)
• An interior design consultant is better than future couples counseling
• I now have a really great electrician contact
• Fear of heights can be partially overcome to avoid paying insane painter costs in SF
• ActionScript Developers should earn more by moonlighting as painters ($.60-$1/sqft of paint!!!!)
• If in doubt, budget $3,000 for any single budget line item.