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Google Video switched to Flash video. Check the help-site here. Currently only the FLV 1 is used with progressive download. It would be nice if Google would switch to Flash 8 FLV using the better VP6 codec from O2 which would also force a faster penetration of the Flash Player 8.
Tinic Uro wrote a nice article about Google Video and Flash.
I already uploaded a video to test the service but currently no playback is available.
The Flash Media Server 2 public beta is available for download. The beta version will expire on November 18, 2005.
Check the press release here.
I use the GNU utilities for Win32 for counting the lines of my sourcecode. You need the unix commands “find”, “wc” and “grep” if you want to filter the files to count in.
After downloading the utilities put it in your path-variable e.g. “C:\tools\UnxUtils\usr\local\wbin”. Open the commandline, change to the directory containing your sourcecode and enter the following command (*.as filters for ActionScript files):
[code]find . -name “*.as” | xargs wc -l[/code]
If you want to exclude directories / packages it would look like this:
[code]find . -name “*.as” | grep -v “regexp for your dir” | xargs wc -l[/code]
Macromedia updated the remoting classes and additional stuff to Flash 8.
The installer includes:
- Flash Remoting Component
- Support files for Flash 8
- NetConnection Debugger
- HTML content that can be viewed within the Help panel in Flash
- ActionScript 2.0 API class source code
Microsoft anounced their new software Microsoft Expression codename Sparkle. The demo only runs in IE.
Be sure to check the article by cybergrain and swfoo.
Now we’ve got “Experience Matters” vs. UX “User Experience” or Adobe (formerly known as Macromedia) vs. Microsoft 
Check the 1h Sparkle demovideo which is very impressive.
On2, the creator of the new Flash 8 video codec VP6, released there standalone-encoders.
The encoder comes in three versions Standard, Exporter and Pro. The price for the Pro version which has quite increase in value is $249.
Today Google starts with their new blogsearch.
While google also owns blogger.com the the search engine seems equal to http://search.blogger.com.
I tried the search engine with my name and all my postings where found.
Today is not only Studio release date but also a new version of the Flash Open Source compiler MTASC 1.10.
I grabbed the following changes from the CHANGES.TXT:
- fixed small problem with class case and import wildcards
- added exclude wildcards and exclude without file
- changed TRACE in “trace”
- added AS keywords as real keywords (including deprecated ones)
- fixed parsing of objects and array declarations and parameters lists
- fixed escape sequences in strings and added unicode escape sequences.
- fixed && and || precedence.
- fixed duplicate public/static/private qualifiers.
- fixed for…in variable forced as String
- no more private and static fields in interfaces
- implemented field cannot be private
- better error when same file referenced several times.
- delete now returns Boolean
- fixed getVersion() in TopLevel
- fixed problem in class replace when not -keep and -mx
- changed -main : now in DoAction and not InitAction
- fixed stack corruption in new var(expr).
- fixed break with several stacked for..in
- disabled variables in interfaces
- added error message when several classes in same file
- changed switch implementation
- fixed typing of ?:
- fixed stack problem with “for”
- separate directory and “add” keyword hack for Flash8
I ran into the bold one. Later extending or implenting of classes was not possible after you compiled once with MTASC. Thanks to Nicolas for all the fixes!
The new Macromedia Studio 8 (should be the last named Macromedia) including Flash Professional 8, Dreamweaver 8, Fireworks 8, Contribute 3 and FlashPaper 2.
What I miss in the new Studio is a new version of Freehand or at least the old one and a the latest version of Captivate.
Download
Download the Studio 8 trial here and get the new Flash Player 8 here.
Docs
The new livedocs are online.
Pricing
An update in the U.S.A. will cost US $399 and it Europe we have to pay around 449 Euros (520 Euro including value added tax) which are currently about US $552. This makes it US $153 more expensive than in the U.S.A.
Anyway there are several non-MM-stores who have better prices. If you are from Germany take a look here. Currently only the german version is available but the english version shall ship in October. In english it is also available on amazon.com and cheaper than the Macromedia store.
If you are new to Flash be sure to check the DevNet.
Macromedia yesterday announced the new version of the Flash Communication Server which is now called Flash Media Server.
The pricing targets enterprise customers because it starts with $4.500 for a 2CPU server. But as now with FCS there will of course be many shared hosting services.
