Adobe has just released a new spell checker engine for Adobe Flash Player and Adobe Air.

The Squiggly library allows you to easily add spell checking functionality in any Flex 3 based text control. The distribution package consists of a utility for building your own spelling dictionaries, a sample English dictionary, an Action Script package that checks individual words for spelling accuracy, and sample code that demonstrates “check as you type” functionality — see the online demo. While the included UI class requires the Flex SDK, the core spell checking engine can be used in pure Flash applications without any dependency on Flex packages.

Link @ Adobe Labs

Via: blogs.adobe.com

Filed under: Adobe, Air, Flash Player | No Comments »

I thought this was pretty cool: http://www.case-mate.com/iPhone-3G-Cases/Case-Mate-iPhone-3G–3GS-recession-case.asp

They say that they case is designed for the recession, but I think that the customisation potential is quite interesting; you could design different iPhone cases quite easily with only a Sharpie.

via: BBG

Filed under: Apple, iPhone | No Comments »

Adobe has just set up a channel on their Adobe TV site explaining what’s new in CS4. You can view it here: http://tv.adobe.com/channel/whats-new-in-cs4/

Filed under: Adobe | No Comments »

Apple have put out an OS update for Snow Leopard, nothing too exciting. Adobe has reported that they are still working with Apple on outstanding issues with the OS update.

10.6.1 fixes to include:

• compatibility with some Sierra Wireless 3G modems
• an issue that might cause DVD playback to stop unexpectedly
• some printer compatibility drivers not appearing properly in the add printer browser
• an issue that might make it difficult to remove an item from the Dock
• instances where automatic account setup in Mail might not work
• an issue where pressing cmd-opt-t in Mail brings up the special characters menu instead of moving a message
• Motion 4 becoming unresponsive

Detailed overview here: http://support.apple.com/kb/HT3810

Filed under: Apple | No Comments »

I found this interesting http://blogs.adobe.com/jnack/2009/09/why_your_web_content_will_look_darker.html

If you’re a Web designer, expect your CSS colors & your untagged/unmanaged images to look darker on Snow Leopard than on previous versions of the Mac OS. You’ll also seeless of a visible color shift when going from Photoshop to Flash or other unmanaged environments (e.g. Internet Explorer).

Why is that? Apple has switched to a default gamma of 2.2, which is what Windows has used for years. Colors that aren’t color-managed are going to look darker on the whole. Your whole display will now be closer to what Windows users see*.

Apple’s marketing materials (and reviews of Snow Leopard) say only that the change is “to better serve the needs of consumers and digital content producers.” Not really knowing what that means, and wondering why Apple would change the Mac to match Windows after 25 years of using gamma 1.8, I sought out more info.

It shouldn’t make too much of a difference to the general look/feel of your web content. It’s still generally good practice to check your website designs in Windows and Mac as part of your work process.

Filed under: Adobe, Apple, Design | No Comments »

I found this quite amusing:

http://search.twitter.com/search?q=%23songsincode

Kinda nerdy, but kinda cool, song lyrics written out in code.

Here’s a good list of some of the better ones: http://retrocode.blogspot.com/2009/09/songsincode-lyrics-for-programmers.html

Filed under: Uncategorised | No Comments »

Found some pretty cool laptop stickers at etsy.com. The website has lots of other handmade items for sale.

Filed under: Uncategorised | No Comments »

You can see the presentation demo of Adobe Flash CS4 here: http://tv.adobe.com/vi+f1556v1685

But if you’re too lazy, I’ve done a run through of the features.

Features of Flash CS4:

• Object-based animation - Adobe’s new animation model, a.k.a ‘new motion feature’. Basically you can right click something and add motion tween. Not too exciting.
• 3d trasformation – new 3d capabilities in Flash CS4. Can go from a simple tween animation, grab the 3d transform tool and ‘rotate’ the graphic around a y, x and z axis. It just looks like doing fancy skewing on the object and animates in, however I’m sure the code side of things will be a lot more poweful.
• Motion editor – there is a new ‘motion view’ that has individual control for every property that is animated, much the same way that is done in the timeline in programs such as 3d max. This is going to be an awesome feature. It is about time that Flash let you edit the curves of animations and tweening in a simple way, I’m looking forward to this feature.
• Bones tool – actually inverse kinematics, lets you ‘tie together’ differen objects. You create ‘bones’ through simples to link them together, allowing you to animate objects, gives them movement constraits etc. The ‘bones tool’ is supported in runtime, so on the front end of the Flash website the objects with bones will still be able to be manipulated. This is an okay feature, might be hand for frame-by-frame animations; you won’t have to have isolate different objects in groups within groups within groups to create animations anymore. This will probably also have some exciting impacts on Flash games.
• Motion presets – can save and apply different animations to objects. Flash will set up the key frames for the animation on that object. I think this feature could be useful, at least saving time by not having to recreate animation styles manually.
• Deco tool – the ‘deco tool’ allows you to create patterns from Flash objects in a grid or symetrically around an axis. This is going to make so many things so much easier. One of the hardest things to do in Flash as far as illustration goes is create good looking textures. Duplicating symbols and having the manually rotate and position them is very time consuming. I’m looking forward to the deco tool.
• Spray brush tool – lets you select a symbol from the library and apply random scale and rotation to it. Works in the same way as brushes do in photoshop. Once again, this is going to be a valuable addition for illustrators/animators.
• H.264 video support – the import > video has been enhanced. It allows you to add videos that have been compressed in the H.264 into Flash without having to recompress the video as flv files.
• Adobe AIR Authoring – lets you deploy Flash as desktop applications. Lets you take any existing applications from Flash into Adobe AIR. In the Publish Settings you can export as Air 1.0 instead of Flash Player 10. Lets you run Flash as you would for a desktop application, gives you options for other features. I’ve used AIR already, and it’s pretty cool.

If you’re an animator or illustrator, there are loads of new stuff for you to play with, but they haven’t really announced anything for the programming side of Flash yet. There are some nice features, but as it is, I don’t think CS4 is worth the upgrade.

Filed under: Adobe, Air, Flash, News | No Comments »

Check out this neat little feature:

“By keeping each tab in an isolated “sandbox”, we were able to prevent one tab from crashing another and provide improved protection from rogue sites.”

what a great idea:)

Filed under: Uncategorised | No Comments »

Google has released their new web browser (Chrome) out into the wild.

You can download it from here: http://www.google.com/chrome

My impressions so far:

• It ‘feels’ a lot quicker than the other browsers I normally use
• I like the ‘tab’ metaphore it uses for all the browser functions, I think it keeps your display neat and it just makes sense. Things such as your downloads list and history appear in a new tab, rather than a panel that pops over the browser
• Chrome is definately not a finished product. It tends to hang on some pages, and doesn’t load everything

So far I don’t think Google Chrome will replace anything I’m currently using, but it’s definately going to be something to watch.

Filed under: Google | No Comments »