Our very first contest is ready to start! Every time you submit a tutorial or book review to our new site, you will be entered into a draw to win a copy of Flash MX Components Most Wanted book. Help make our meager site GROW by submitting a thing or two. We're not very picky, so get writing =)
You can enter or get more information here.
The MXDU conference: MX "Down Under" is happening soon. If you are in the Asian Pacific area, this is the conference to be at. It is in Sydney Australia from Feb 19th to 20th - more information at MXDU.com.
More about the conference:
- Keynotes from Mike Chambers, Ben Forta and Sean Corfield!!
- Sean Corfield is talking bout the soon to be released super MX version of MM.com (Dylan65) (more info on MXDU).
- Speakers include Scott Mebberson (SCOTT!), Jesse Warden, Allen Ellison and more!
Amazing news are circulating the Flash blogs. Mike Chambers has posted on his that the FP6 has a 72% penetration as of December. This is up nearly 20% from September!
What does this mean? It means that if you were nervous about switching over from Flash 5 to MX for your development, you have a lot more reason to now! These are the kind of stats which help sell your clients on the latest technology.
You should also think about it in terms of displaying (shorter) videos - as Flash numbers go up, it competes a lot more with WMP. And of course, it already has QT beat out.
The word here.
It has been known for awhile that you can run ColdFusion server on a Mac, but it has not been official. Now, it's official. I wonder if this will actually get adopted, and how it will run? Anyway...
...here is the quote from Macromedia:
" Macromedia announced that the developer edition of Macromedia
ColdFusion MX for J2EE Application Servers now supports Mac OS X. ColdFusion MX for J2EE Application Servers adds ColdFusion scripting capabilities to leading J2EE application servers including JRun 4 for Mac OS X. New Mac OS X support for the developer edition enables Macromedia Studio MX developers to both create and test ColdFusion MX applications on the Mac OS X platform. The developer edition is immediately available for download at www.macromedia.com/go/cfmxosx/. "
I would be interested if anyone tries this out, and what they find.
The full press release can be found here.
Here's a link to the demo of what is on the CD-ROM of the Designers ActionScript Reference book from friends of ED.
Demo.
Most importantly - might be a few useful tidbits of information for you here.
In what could be considered the worst news in awhile, Apple has released its own browser. This should mean yet MORE FUN for the likes of web developers and designers everywhere. The browser is called Safari, and Steve Jobs claims it runs three times faster than IE for the Mac.
Regardless, the news can be found here.
If anyone is visiting this site yet, I would love to hear your feedback in the Comments area! Thanks =)
Happening in San Francisco, Moscone Centre, January 6th to 10th. Macworld is the biggest, "most comprehensive" Mac event. It includes conferences, exhibitions, and also check out all the new Mac gadgets and products coming out.
Find out more at: Macworld Home.
Exhibitors here: Exhibitor List.
Conference program: here.
Presenters: here.
WhatIsFlash is a new, wiki based web site geared towards research and definining exactly what "Flash" is.
Notably, this site is meant to create a manifesto by the Flash community to help define Flash and create a
collection of best practices.
You might want to also enter the Logo Competition. The deadline is midnight (GMT) February 2nd, 2003 -- and you can check out the information here.
This site is run by Aral Balkan. I have had a couple conversations with the guy, and he also contributed an awesome component to the book called Flash MX Most Wanted Components. I was another co-author on that one -- and it is a prize for the competition -- so hurry up and enter!
Director MX was released shortly before Christmas. This caused some excitement in the Web developer community, as the powerful multimedia application has been "MX-ified". Director is primarily used to create high end interactive media for CD-ROM, DVD, and the web.
New features in Director include greater integration with Flash, Accessibility, and integration with both Flash Remoting and the Flash Communication server. As usual, Director continues to be a great way to display video, audio, 3D and vector images.
For more information on new features, visit http://www.macromedia.com/go/dirmxnew.
Macromedia has released a brand new piece of software that will help the "general public" update Web content on sites that have already been built. They are calling it "Contribute".
Contribute is a new application that is used to create new web content easily - whether you are a programmer or not. Contribute allows users to easily "update, add and publish" web content on existing Web sites. It is essentially an economical content manager.
Macromedia has also released an updater for Dreamweaver that allows Web developers to administrate and control those using Contribute to update web sites. You can find the updater here.
What do you think about Contribute? Post your comments here.