latin flash tour

Went to the Latin Flash tour last week in Bogotá, and met Lee Brimelow. He went over and demonstrated some of the latest updates to Flash CS5 and the FlashPlayer 10.2.

Features that got my interest:

• code snippets panel(frequently used code - similar to the old flash simple mode in old versions of Flash that people have complained about disappearing for years!)


• code hinting(although I´ll probably keep using FlashDevelop)


• FLA format is now an open format XML based file (with extension XFL) with all media external.


• Font embedding panel - embedded fonts can be managed more easily


• TLF text - a new text layout format which allows columns more easily(with editable text too!)


• Multitouch event handling(if your hardware can handle it of course!)


• Access to microphone data(turn your voice into darth vader apps coming up!)


• Uncaught error event - Finally you don´t have to ensure you are catching every error possible to avoid the user ever getting a Flash uncaugh error message.


• AIR - open a filetype with the default app


• AIR - Filemanager API can now catch volume state change events(i.e. if the user plugs in a hard drive)


• BUT of course! The feature that everyone talking and every question from the audience was about, was that Flash now has a feature to publish apps for the IPhone! No IPhone still doesn´t have a Flash Player, Flash packages for a native IPhone runtime. And the answer to almost every question about ´can the iphone apps do this´and ´can the iphone apps do that´was yes, it can do everything that the Flash player can do!(with the caveat that you just have to consider that performance might be worse on the Iphone)