Flash Player 10 is official

Flash Player 10 is now official. Lot's of great stuff in this version and people have been creating content for it for months. Also, some of the player enhancements will just make certain things better, since there are more ways your graphics card can be used to making viewing better.

Update Now.

Google's Browser - Chrome - goes live today

In Google's quest to take over the universe :lol: they have finally released their very own browser. They have named the browser Chrome. ...

I've only been test driving it for a short while but so far it seems pretty quick, even from an Opera user's point of view. Some of this might be because of features such as compiling page javascript or each tab having its own process. Either way, I like quick.

Another nice feature, which really comes from the reason they created Chrome, is application URLs. Since many things people use the internet for are actually applications that stay open all day, they've decided to allow you to create links on your desktop, start menu and quick nav bar that will open up a chrome-less ( pardon the pun ) version of the browser.

As an Opera user, the first thing I did was run it through the acid 3 test. Unfortunately it failed fairly miserably. I find it somewhat suprising, considering it was built off of webkit. Also, there are no mouse gestures and many of my keyboard shortcuts aren't applicable. I've grown too used to those to give them up. Oh well, they are google and as with all their apps it is in beta :)

UPDATE 9/4/08: I tried the acid 3 test again and chrome recieved a 79/100. Perhaps the acidtests.org website was experiencing difficulties on Tuesday.

FSI Navigator Alpha 2 released

I have released the alpha 2 version of my FSI Navigator AIR Application. The only new feature is that it uses the AIR Update Framework to check for an update once a day. At this point the updates are automatic only, with no way to manually update. Manual update checks will be available before the 1.0 release.

It is recommended that all current users update to this version so that they can keep up with the latest news in the pre-release process.

Also, don't forget to report bugs and request features at my issue tracking site:
http://www.ducharme.cc/mantis/

FSI Navigator news update

To make it easier to install, I've added an install badge to my previous post and I am adding one here.

I have also set up the project in my issue tracking system. If people would like to give constructive feedback and help the development of the FSI Navigator project that is the place to go.

Language Lessons 2 - My first decent AIR app

A while ago I wrote a blog post titled "Language Lessons." It was a post designed to showcase some of the 'cheap as free'™ ways to study a language. One of those ways was fsi-language-courses.com, a website dedicated to making the public domain FSI language courses freely available in an electronic format. While it is a great resource, the site isn't extremely usable. Adobe Integrated Runtime(AIR) to the rescue. ...

For all my talk of being a Flash/Flex expert ( Flexpert? ), I have yet to make a decent AIR app. Sure I've made a couple of tools to help me out with some minor tasks( get map lat/lon coordinates, creating a tool to help me learn degrafa ) but nothing very usable for anybody else ( or exciting to make ).

With all that in mind it is with great excitement that I announce my first alpha release of th AIR FSI Navigator. This tool allows you to navigate their different language programs and view the pdfs while you listen to the accompanying audio ( if they are available of course ). As with most alpha software, this has a long way to go before it is considered released ( and I will most likely release it as open source long before that ), but you might find it useful.

FSI_Navigator.air
This application requires Adobe AIR 1.1 be installed on your computer. If it is not you can download it from the Adobe website.UPDATE: It is easier to just use the install badge at the bottom of this post.

Known Issues ( not an exhaustive list )

• Certain courses do not work. Especially if the course contents are located in a zip file.
• PDFs take a while to load and there is no download notification. Be patient, if you have Adobe Acrobat 8.1 and the screen is black,it just means the PDF is loading ( some of them are quite large ).
• Closing the MP3 Playback window shade and then reopening it decreases its height.
• Downloads are not saved to your hard drive for offline work. This feature is planned for the future, in fact it will be the default so that files don't have to be downloaded from the server every time.
• Volume thumb bar isn't visible when the program starts. Just click on the volume adjustment area and it will show up.

Update: I thought I'd do a quick attempt to add an install badge for this:

Republican CNN/YouTube debates

It was suppose to be in September but some people were afraid of the format. Others didn't find snowmen dignified. Many thought CNN to be too liberally biased. Well it is now almost December and we have finally had the CNN/YouTube debates for the Republicans. ...

Last time the full debates we're easily available in .flv format and I was able to set it up so you could view the democratic youTube debate in its entirety. This time CNN has changed format again and only let's you watch edited bits and pieces of the debate in their player.

They do, however, allow you to download the debates in either m4v or wmv format. The debate is split into 2 parts and can be downloaded at http://www.cnn.com/2007/POLITICS/11/28/florida.debate.video/index.html along with links to the edited pieces.

Here are the direct links:
M4V - part 1 - part 2
WMV - part 1 - part 2

It would be really nice to have something like this held for 3rd party candidates. Especially if it has enough advertising.

It just works

I'm the type of person who has to do it the hard way. It drives my wife nuts sometimes, but I've got to do it my way even if it's the difficult path. I like to be different. Being different is what led me to trying out linux. So in the beginning I tried out Fedora Core 4 and that experiment failed. When everybody went ga-ga over Ubuntu's Feisty Fawn release (7.04), it inspired me to try Fedora Core 7 which was released a couple of months later. Fedora is a great distro but it takes a bit more work than people less stubborn than me are willing to give. At least it does for things I think should be simple, like playing back certain media files that have patent issues. Fedora is very focused on spreading open source, and I applaud that philosophy. However, it also has them make it difficult to play files that have patent issues. However, I kept on hearing about how easy things are in Ubuntu.

Today, I tried it and Ubuntu just works! ...

The final tipping point for me was the fact that the Flex Builder for Linux Alpha didn't work in Fedora. Even after I did some extra hacking. Of course, the release notes said it didn't but I had to try. Recently, when Gutsy Gibbon( Ubuntu 7.10 ) came out I realized I had to take it for a trial run.

Instead of just overwriting Fedora with Ubuntu I decided to try it on another computer first. I didn't really have a desktop that I could easily load it onto so I turned to my laptop. The laptop is a hand me down Pentium 3, 800MHz that I don't really like running because it is so slow in Windows XP. To improve it's performance I had replaced the shell with Emerge Desktop - which helped a bit but I was still annoyed by its lack of performance when I tried to do any type of multitasking or multimedia. Honestly, I wasn't expecting Ubuntu to fair well with my tests on this machine.

My first test involved the live CD. How would it do on the laptop. I had some display issues with the Feisty Fawn release when I tried it on the same laptop - would this one be any different? When I did the default load, I had problems again - but that's why there is an option on the CD to load in safe graphics mode. Safe graphics mode only partially worked when I tried it before so I wasn't holding my breath that the performance would be any better this time. I was pleasantly suprised when the display came up perfectly in this safe graphics mode. So it passed the first test.

The second test was wireless functionality. When I first tried Fedora Core 4, I tried it on a different laptop( a pentium 2 that I jokingly call a pentium 11 because of the logo ) but with the same wireless card as I am still using today. It didn't work then, and I had no luck getting it to work either. Linux wireless support has been iffy at best, from what I have read, and I wasn't expecting it to work without some delving into config files or the command line. To my suprise the network manager was ready to use my card to log into my office network right away. No config files, no command line, just the password to the network was needed. That was a huge for me.

At this point installing Ubuntu over Windows XP was going to give me at least the same functionality on this laptop so I double clicked the install icon and installed Ubuntu. It was an easy install, especially since I did not need to set up a dual boot situation. It was a bit slow, but this laptop isn't a speed demon by any means. When it was done and I rebooted things were quite a bit snappier than XP ever was. But now I needed to install the programs I wanted. Since many of them are proprietary I thought I was going to have to handle things the same as I would on Fedora - go online and find the files or find a repository that had a build for Ubuntu.

I opened up the Add/Remove Applications program and was again pleasantly suprised. Programs such as Opera, Flash Player and the Sun JRE were easily available. Sure, the repositories weren't enabled by default but I just had to okay using them and I could download the programs as easy as WINE or FileZilla. The only snag I ran into was Eclipse. It was easy to download, but the version that was in the Add/Remove Applications program was 3.2 (Callisto). In order to use the Flex Builder alpha, I would need 3.3(Europa) since it is based on Flex Builder 3(Moxie).

When I tried to get Eclipse 3.3 working in Fedora is took some extra work. I had to manually install the Sun JRE and set up the JAVA_HOME variable properly. With the latest Ubuntu, and the easy install of Sun's Java 5 JRE, I didn't have any problem installing either Eclipse 3.3 or the Flex Builder for Linux plug in. The final test was to compile an MXML application. In Fedora it would start to process and work for a while before crashing FlexBuilder - even with a simple Hello World app on my Pentium4 3.2 GHz desktop. On my Pentium3 800MHz with Ubuntu, I compiled my Hello World app without any problems. It is an alpha release, so I'm expecting bugs, but it is working now and I am very happy.

So far I have been very impressed with how easy Ubuntu is to use. I would recommend it to just about anyone. There are some people who have problems running the types of programs they need to on linux, but for the majority this OS is easier to use than Windows was the first time you booted it up and many of the things you need to do are already taken care of by open source software( Web browser, Email, Office Applications and more ) that comes standard

Download the LiveCD of Ubuntu 7.10 today. Or get a computer preinstalled with Ubuntu( 7.4 Feisty Fawn ) from Dell.

[Official]Flex Builder in Linux

A little while back I posted some details about a hack to get Flex Builder working in linux. I've also been watching the Adobe blogs and other Flex Builder associated information sources. The same question always comes up when Adobe asks, "Any questions?". Yes, when is Flex Builder coming out for Linux. ...

In the Penguin.swf blog, an Adobe blog dedicated to Flash related products running in a linux environment, today I saw this post.

Adobe's Flex Builder is coming to Linux. You can download the public alpha of the tool over on the appropriate labs page.

My shock and disbelief led me to the appropriate labs page.

From the looks of things it looks much the same as the hacked version, except that it plays nicer with Eclipse 3.3. I'll be trying this out myself and see how well it does. If it does well with an MXML file, even if design view doesn't currently work, I will be very happy. Less back and forth OS switching at home :)

The AIR in Adobe's sails

Recently I have been doing some research on Adobe's alpha software that was code named Apollo. This is very exciting software that is going to make it much easier for web developers to become desktop application developers. Yesterday, Adobe changed Apollo to its official name AIR, which stands for Adobe Integrated Runtime. They also released the beta version of the AIR SDK and to go with it the beta version of Flex Builder 3 ( which was codenamed Moxie ). ...

This is very exciting because it makes it very easy to use what you already know to make a desktop application. In the first release, Adobe is focusing on helping you create occasionally connected ( to the internet ) desktop applications. I am very excited to have the opportunity to build desktop applications for clients and myself to do some of the tasks I already know how to program on the web.

The Apollo runtime allows file I/O, so you can read and write quite easily to the computer. It is cross platform and version 1.0 will allow you to build stuff that will work on Macs, PCs and shortly after release, Linux as well. The new beta build has also bundled SQLite functionality so you can have a simple database that you can count on being on all systems.

If you want to find out more, check out AIR on Adobe labs.

Joost Review

For the past couple weeks I have been beta testing Joost. For those that don't know, Joost is a new web venture that puts on demand video on the web. The service is free, and paid for by advertising that is interspersed within the shows you watch. The grand plan for Joost seems very cool. On Demand television without paying the cable company. Let's see how well that plan is doing in my short review. ...

Joost is currently in an invitation only beta, though as of this week all users now have unlimited invitations, so take everything I say with the knowledge that things may change.

Joost is pretty nice system. It opens up in full screen mode when you first start it up. It seems more like a media center than a program running on your computer right away. The first thing that loaded up for me was a "Channel" of Joost recommendations so that I could get started. I had read on the Joost website that the "Fight Network" channel had Ring of Honor wrestling so I went to check that out first. Unfortunately, it doesn't seem to have any ROH material up so that was disappointing. Someone had told me about the show "Stella" on Comedy Central so I went to check that out. This was available and I got a chance to watch a whole show.

When I first started watching shows the commercials would jump in at random points, sometimes in the middle of a sentence. Since the latest upgrade it seems that has changed, the commercials now seem to come in at natural points in the shows.

Currently the Joost system is pretty basic. It allows you to watch shows from channels you select and it pretty decent quality as well. They also have a "My Joost" section that has some widgets for you to have up while you watch your shows. The selection of widgets is small right now but I have heard that they will be increasing the number of widgets and allowing others to make widgets. However, when I watch a show I don't need to be doing much else, especially with video on demand.

Once in a while I would run into a glitch or two. Sometimes I would just get disconnected from the network or the show would stop and go to the next in the list. However, these are minor inconveniences as you can easily get right back to what you were watching. The biggest problem I saw with Joost is the current availability of programs. What they have is pretty limited, but this is just beta. They have made deals with CBS and recently on their blog I read that they made a deal with Turner Broadcasting Systems. Content is on their way but will it be any good?

In conclusion I think the system is pretty sound for a beta product and will only get better as they increase the numbers of users. The only downfall for this system might be lack of quality content. At home, I only have very limited cable so that the network stations come in clearly. I don't really need cable because their really isn't that much to watch. That is why a system like Joost could be very good with the right content. I would love to be able to watch wrestling, the only thing I really miss from cable, and would love to be able to watch it on my schedule rather than it's broadcast schedule without having to pay for extra stuff.

By the way, if you'd like an invite just let me know. I am more than happy to let my friends and relations check out this new system.