Well, Adobe MAX 2006 is almost over - its been quite a conference, and the fact it is in Vegas always seems to help these things along! The Sneak Peek session showcased some very cool looking applications, including:

• SoundBooth, a sound editor for the casual user.
• Acrobat 3D. I’m not totally sure if I want 3D spinning things in my PDF’s, but it was great to see Flash, PDF and 3D all nicely integrated. SWF’s as interactive textures for 3D objects was mega cool.
• PDF integration in Flash (finally), as demonstrated in Breeze Acrobat Connect Pro.

Whilst all of these were really great to see, my personal highlight was the glimpse under the hood of Apollo - Adobe’s new desktop platform, which supports HTML, JavaScript and Flash content.In a nutshell we have the Apollo API’s built upon the native operating system API’s (Support for Windows, OS X and Linux is planned), and on that we have HTML and Flash renderers, scripting and DOM.Apollo applications are distributed as .air files - essentially .zip files with some metadata. They contain content (HTML, JS, SWF, PDF etc.), data (text, XML etc.) and an application.xml file which contains mainly metadata used by the installer. These can either be installed directly, or within the browser using the Flash Player. If the Apollo runtime is not installed, then it will be automagically downloaded and installed. During the install process, the Apollo application is turned into a native executable, meaning that it runs as a separate system process like any other application. Files are stored in the users Documents and Settings or the Linux/Mac equivalent. Apps can be removed using the system’s Add/Remove Programs functionality.So, how do you go about building Apollo applications?

• Content: Can be existing SWF/HTML/JS content, generated in Flash/Flex/Dreamweaver/Notepad…
• Configuration: A text editor.

A debugger is provided in the SDK, called adl, lets the developer test their application. Once everything is perfect, it can be packaged up using adt. In addition, Adobe is planning to integrate these tools within the Flex IDE.So, thats pretty much how it works… but why is it so cool? For a start it provides an OS independent route to create desktop applications, in a similar fashion to a Web application. Rather than doing lots of custom coding for a different OS, the Apollo runtime takes care of that for the developer, meaning that they only code an application once. This is a big plus point - as a developer I don’t need to worry about how users will be able to drag and drop content into (and out of) my application. There are lots more possibilities…As everything is based around Flash there is also an extensive library of visual effects/transformations at my fingertips. Yes, OS X has Core Animation and Vista has Aero - both of which are geared to producing sexy application visuals - but those are not cross platform, and have different feature sets. With windows, HTML Containers and everything else essentially being ActionScript objects, I can apply a wide variety of visual effects without the pain!And, did I mention the HTML support? Now I can render HTML content within Flash using new functionality which should also be making its way into Flex/Flash (the HTMLControl is AS3.0 component). The rendering engine is WebKit, which means that if my page looks good in Safari, it should render fine in Flash. JavaScript and ActionScript are now best friends, with it being possible to run AS functions in JS and vice versa - wow!Is this the next big thing? I think there is certainly a lot of potential for Apollo to make it big - Web Applications can easily be ported to the desktop, with multiplatform support. Once Adobe gets this into the hands of the developers I expect to see much more innovative uses rather than just straight ports - from Widgets to Enterprise Applications.I’ll probably post more on this later as I explore more of Apollo. I have a flight to New York in a few hours so it should keep me busy on the plane. I may also write some Script.aculo.us effects… (more…)

Taking some time out from Adobe MAX 2006 to plug a site for a friend. Expect some thoughts on MAX as soon as I step away from the bar/slot machines!Why Microformats is an excellent series of articles which Andy has been painstakingly writing over the past few weeks, I’ve also been proof reading (”Yeah, it looks good, there are loads of long words.”) without rest! They attempt to peel back the shroud of mystery surrounding Microformats, looking at where they have came from and what value they add to the Web as a whole. It also speculates on ways Microformats can be consumed, making them inherently useful to the end user.Worth a read - it should wet your appetites! (more…)

Well, I’m out in Phoenix at the moment, enjoying the heat and the lovely hotel view of fat people in the hottub! Its been a busy week, though quite rewarding, and a great opportunity to work with (and push pixels for) some excellent people! Off to Denver, land of the mountain people, tomorrow - I knew I should have packed something warm!It randomly dawned on me yesterday, whilst driving, that life is a lot like Grand Theft Auto - and that isn’t just a commentary on the standard of driving in Phoenix. Its weird how when you drive into the ‘ghetto’ part of town, that all the vehicles suddenly change into pick-up trucks… and when you reach Scottsdale they magically morph back into high powered sports cars and family sedans. Its definitely something you don’t get in England - even in the most upper class areas, you can usually find a souped up Nova kicking about. You also have to wonder about a country where you can’t seem to buy beer in the supermarket, but there is an entire aisle dedicated to incontinence aids!Annoyingly, poor hotel internet access however - with support phone calls usually consisting of “Yes, its a problem our end.” and “No, we don’t know when it will be fixed. Have a nice day!” - slightly annoying when you want to do some Typo geekery. At least in somewhere like New York or Denver you can usually hop onto a wireless network, but alas, its not something you find in the desert.Quite excited about a new project which I’m working on at work… for a start it is something AJAX/XHTML/CSS based, instead of Flash. But it also looks like something where I can sneak in some MicroFormats and XML feeds! I had better start brushing up on my hEvent.Expect an update once i arrive up in the mountains, and yes, I’m still working on the article I was talking about a few weeks back… perhaps I shall finish it on the plane… Until next time… Ciao! (more…)