If so, our developer Jamie and Paul Feneht from Google discovered that a folder of extraneous classes must be deleted first before version 2 will compile correctly.

The folder path is:
\Users\[you]\AppData\Local\Adobe\Flash CS5\en_US\Configuration\Classes\com\google

Remove it completely and the new Studio API classes should work. Though this issue isn’t documented yet, the DoubleClick Studio version 2 API documentation is otherwise very thorough, at http://studio.doubleclick.net/docs/sdk/flash/as3/en/.

Lady Gaga fans and Olympic Games enthusiasts alike already know the style of the 1980′s has sleazed its way back to the top. This week Nike and eBay make clever use of the trend by auctioning authentic Back to the Future II Nike Mag shoes, to benefit the the Michael J. Fox Foundation for Parkinson’s Research.

While I don’t have the credits on hand to walk away with such a prize, I have a feeling we’re witnessing only the first trickles of a floodgate breached. So everyone keep an eye on the markets and maybe you too can take home a piece of your own 1980′s re-culturalized movie memorabilia.

For example, those on a tight budget might be able to claim hold to Puma’s new Haphazard E.T. Ghost costume.

And for the moguls and high-rollers, maybe exchange your change chunk for the upcoming 2012 Chrysler 200: ATAT model.

But today it’s true, Flash, we don’t need you. With Adobe Edge rearing to take its place, and thanks to the hipster arms race between Chrome and Safari, modern browsers can run enough script to support Angry Birds and Gmail with impressive responsiveness.

Still, that doesn’t mean we have to cast away the Flash banner like a childhood plaything. Sure, the .swf shows its 10 years of wear. His label fell off when Harry Potter was still cute, he’s covered in patches, and the fur is all worn off the cheek from clicking. But his charm remains strong, for those of us still willing to harbor it.

Without going so far as to say It Takes a Userbase, I think we all need at least some will to maintain the quality of our waning placement. Don’t we all prefer a community not punctured by funky dancing santas selling us life insurance?

The standard banner has still some interesting potential. Consolidated and specific, it is the internet’s answer to the haiku. A 30k, 15-second story told through a mirage of fades and skews that we ought not abandon too hastily.

So here’s to you, .swf, and may you live as long as my Glo Worm did. Sweet Glo Worm, rest his cuddly rubber soul. *Tear*

Observation #1: Mascot Envy

While American company icons petered out after Spot and the Noid, Japanese businesses have kept their mascot coffers full for the last 20 years.

Behold Doala, the Chuunichi Dragon Koala, naturally, the cutest possible animal with the Dragon’s “D” added to the beginning…

And Chidejika, the terrestrial deer responsible for Japan’s digital television switch, because the elderly relate more to a partially mechanized ruminant than a public service announcement.

Until the States’ agencies re-realize the genius of mascot characters, let’s all pour one out for Grimace, Mayor McCheese, and good old Mac Tonight. *Tear*

Dipper!

Photo: Tecmo, Inc.DOAX was not a game. It was a pervy dream where eight similarly proportioned young ladies get tricked into lying around a tropical island for two weeks, buying each other suntan lotion and coordinated bikinis by day, then gambling away their savings at the hotel roulette table by night. It was also by far the most applicable implementation of the original Xbox’s pressure sensitive controller.

Aside from tree-envy, we must remember DOAX taught us an important lesson in our technological coming-of-age. Through fluidity of animation and superb textural graphics, we learned that even the privacy of fictitious characters can be invaded.

Created with dynamic content in mind, these browsers support the HTML5 history.pushState() capability, so after making ajax calls they can actually update the visible page url to the path of the new location. Prior to this, and in IE still (Come On!), sites with ajax navigation had to exploit the hash portion of the url to maintain a representative location to the user, then handle the hash to restore dynamic content if a user clicks the back button or enters the site through a bookmark. A lot of work, but the “How’d he do dats” ate it up.

Some libraries like jQuery BBQ and swfaddress for Flash made dealing with this much easier. But with the new history.pushState() function, it’s safe to add in functionality like this and not worry about getting lettuce on your shoulder.

Check out the Mozilla development site to see the rest of the new capabilities.

But what’s more noteworthy about a movie this visually spectacular is its relative technical triviality. Twenty years ago Spielberg’s tyrannosaur spawned an in-theater pants-peeing epidemic, but these days an entirely virtual Jeff Bridges goes nearly unnoticed. I guess after three Transformers movies and Cameron’s tribe of 9-foot talking blue tigers, we as a society have become accustomed to an intense level of picture computerization.

Much like 300, the majority of the cinematography in Snyder’s 3/25 release will be digital, but there seems to be more focus on thigh-highs and midriffs than on a garbage truck sized samurai with a minigun. This lack of attention is a encouraging I think, because it proves that creative teams doing an amazing job has become outright commonplace, which means people who spend all day clicking around in Photoshop are likely to keep being paid for it.

For the record, as a Photoshop clicker, I will try to pay equal attention to Babydoll’s peculiarly battle-ready uniform and to the quality of the math used to shade the burning zeppelins.

The plugin makes use of HTML5-enabled browsers’ canvas support (Safari, FF, Chrome) to detect how much whitespace is around the subject of an image, and then cuts it up into rows to allow dynamic text ragging, like you might see in a magazine. Thus, for an example I thought perfect this image of a Dwarf Ranger, with his countless deadly protrusions.

More to come soon, as we complete testing and create some reasonable documentation.

Or, just view the source of this page if you want to see the code as-is.

Photo: Paramount Pictures

Action cop John Spartan witnessed first-hand the stopping power of Securefoam in 1993′s Demolition Man. This technology has since been adapted as window curtain airbags, standard in the Prius. Not quite as advanced, but the premise is basically the same.

Photo: Hollywood PicturesIn fact, we really have to hand it to Stallone for setting the pace of automotive futurization, because if anything Toyota’s FJ Cruiser is a mid-market Judge Dredd city cab.

Photo: Twentieth Century FoxWill Smith’s personal transit in 2004′s I, Robot could spin rapidly in circles while barreling down a highway. The ball-wheeled Audi RSQ concept, sans balls, is practically available today as the Audi A5. Released in a rash of robot thrillers, I, Robot was the tale of a robot named Sunny who learned to wink and could also print dot-matrix images from his finger.

Without getting into Minority Report, with its revamped highways, The Fifth Element, where McDonalds hotties await your sky-car, or the original pimped ride, the Back to the Future DeLorian, auto-engineering has definitely made some great strides towards putting drivers in the seat of our Sci-Fi dreams. Until the flux capacitor is realized, however, we may hang in limbo, staring at our backing-up cameras and playing, “artist, the Strokes,” wondering if in our lifetime we’ll truly, boldly go.

Thanks due in large part to the Internet Movie Car Database for its extensive library of amazing, useless information. You’ve done it again, internet.

Sometimes we get media specs that stipulate Flash Player 8, AS2, and this makes me think there is much work to be done spreading the word about why it is time to switch to AS3. It is time to update the strategy. Since AS3 now has 99.9% penetration and better speed, specs requiring AS2 are more likely hindering performance on old computers. When I view the demo on Adobe’s site comparing AS3 to AS2 the difference in the smoothness of movement is huge!

Behold! Reasons to move on to to AS3

• According to Adobe, Flash Player 9 AS3 is 10 times faster than Flash 8 AS2. This means smoother animations, less chance of lag, and an overall better user experience, especially for people using older systems.
• AS3 provides more comprehensive debugging output when publishing, which greatly decreases the chance that errors will go by unnoticed until after trafficking a banner.
• Flash Player 9 has been around since the Pussycat Dolls. It was released in June 2006.
• 99.9% of users in the US/Canada have Flash Player 9 or higher.
• Users’ browser versions are independant of their Flash Player version. Even users on IE6 have the same capacity to upgrade to the latest.
• Many popular sites such as YouTube already require Flash Player 10, meaning users that use YouTube have already updated.
• Overall, Flash Player 9, Action Script 3 saves time and money because it is a better environment for developers to work in.

Save your company time and money.  Save your developers from coding stresses and functionality roadblocks.  Bring your end user an overall better experience and crank up your media specs to this decade’s standards. In other words…Go AS3!