Mike Chambers

We will have some out each day at the Adobe booth at MAX.

fyi, I am going to mail some of these out next week (along with updated AS3 RIA Guides). Ill post more info next week on my twitter account.

We just released Adobe AIR 1.5. While this is a point release, it is a pretty significant update. You can find an overview of new features and updates in this article on the developer center, and in this blog post.

What is my favorite feature of AIR 1.5? Bug fixes! In particular URL clicks are now handled correctly (correct browser is opened, and links open in new tab in Firefox as appropriate).

You can grab the latest version here, or you will be prompted to update it the next time you run an AIR application.

If you are working on an AIR app, and will be attending MAX 2008 this week, make sure to stop by the booth to show us your app. We have a station setup called “Developer Spotlight” where you can come and show your app to AIR Team members and evangelists (as well as ask any questions you might have).

Anyone who comes by and shows us their app will get either a new ColdFusion or AIR tshirt (both created by eboy).

Ill be around Monday afternoon, but the booth will be staffed all of the time (Ben Forta is there on Tuesday afternoon).

See you at MAX.

One of the top feature requests that end users have been asking for from AIR applications (on Mac) is the ability for those applications to leverage the open source Growl notification framework on Mac. However, this was not previously possible due to how applications are required to communicate with Growl.

I am really excited to announce that Adobe has been working with the Growl team to add support to Growl for Adobe AIR and Flash applications. Among other things, this will enable Adobe AIR applications to leverage the Growl notification framework on Mac. The best part, is that it is implemented in a way that is not just limited to use by Flash and AIR.
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I have just posted a new build and zip file of the ActionScript 3 CoreLib Library (as3corelib). This in an open source library that contains a number of classes and utilities for working with ActionScript 3.

This is release .92 and includes a number of bug and performance fixes, as well as some new functionality.
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I am currently working on some code that runs in Adobe AIR where I need to access the File URL (file:/) of a file located in the AIR app’s install directory.

Normally, you could get the URI, by accessing the url property of the File object which will return a well formed, absolute file:/ URL. However, this doesn’t work for files located in the AIR app’s install directory.
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I got a ton of feedback in response to my question about the continued use of ActionScript 1 and 2. One thing that consistently came up was that some felt that it was faster to develop within ActionScript 2 than 3. However, it wasn’t clear from the commenters if this was because they already knew ActionScript 2 and were not as comfortable with AS3, or if there were things that were just harder / more tedious in ActionScript 3.

So, my next question is : do you think ActionScript 2 development is faster than ActionScript 3 development? If yes, do you know ActionScript 3 already? Can you give specific examples of things that you feel are faster / easier in ActionScript 2 (for example, playing a sound, or working with events)?

Post any input in the comments.

I am working on updating the ActionScript RIA Reference Guide. As part of that, I have to figure add all of the new APIs added to Flash Player 10.

Below is a list of such APIs generated and parsed from the APIs docs. I figured I would post it here as a reference, and also a sanity check (if you see anything wrong or missing, please post in the comments).
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If so, why?

In conjunction with the CS4 release, the Adobe Developer Center has just post some new articles on Flash Player 10, and Flash Professional CS4.
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