• Lots of content, which last a bit longer than the 10 minutes it takes to read the entire contents of the free m-site, cover-to-cover.
• Very pretty, but sadly it’s a bit much for my retro iPhone 3G, which feels like it’s about to die at any moment under the weight of fancy graphics and animations. Indeed this is what I should have come to expect by holding onto this relic.
• The price is right at $2.49 upfront, and $2.49 per month.
• There’s a bit of a glitch (a show-stopper actually) with the subscription extension functionality which no doubt has the development team in post-launch frenzy. We know that stuff can be a bit tricky, especially when the Apple Developer documentation can be a bit lacking, to say the least Pats on the back to the Extro dev team for getting this right first time oniPad & iPhone App Publishing Platform for The Chaser App.

Definitely worth a look, even if you have no intention of paying the ongoing subscription, which probably includes most sticky-beekers, I suspect. It’s worth it just to catch a glimpse of the “future of the news”.

No iPad version, which is a bit surprising because I think the whole world was expecting an iPad version to be unveiled, given their lateness in entering the market, but I’m sure that will be on its way soon. There’s no rush because the number of iPads out there is a drop in the ocean compared to iPhones.

Difficult to compare this iPhone app to The Australian iPad App which, for the record, was a bit of a disappointment in my opinion with its nasty full-page popup ads and limited content. But in fairness, it’s hard to be too critical when you’re trying to re-invent an entire industry while the whole world looks on, waiting and hoping for the pay-walls to collapse spectacularly, paving the way for an eternity of free, high quality, non syndicated journalism.

FlashDevelop is an incredible achievement. In my opinion this is far and away the best AS3/Flex development environment around.

If you’re a Flash Developer and you are still compiling your projects from inside the Flash IDE, it’s time to make the switch!

Now with break-point debugging and support for a whole host of other plugins, you guys have done a fantastic job and really given Adobe a run for their money.

Thanks and Congratulations to Mika and Philippe, the team behind FlashDevelop.

Sure, we all love our shiny new iPads, and iPad is certainly the flavour of the month. Unless you’ve been living under a rock, you would be well aware that iPad does not support Adobe Flash Player. We know that Steve Jobs is pious about open standards, and HTML5 and has said a few nasty things about Flash, but don’t be fooled by this thinly veiled piece of propaganda. This has nothing to do with battery life, processing speed, stability, (or any of those legitimate concerns) it’s about giving the finger to Adobe while the going is good.

(For a quick HTML5 refresher, check out this cute overview)

Don’t get me wrong, I think HTML5 is a great development for the future of the internet, but it’s important to realise it’s promising yet humble place in the technology landscape.

To put HTML5 into perspective, let me try to dispel a few myths…

HTML5 versus Adobe Flash Player Myths

• Myth #1: HTML5 offers the same interactivity, creative freedom and power of Flash Player. HTML5 is at best, a poor cousin to Flash Player for performance and interactivity in any areas outside standard, cookie-cutter, one-size-fits-all purposes like video players, map viewers etc. Sure, by now you have probably watched online video playing nicely in HTML5 players, but how much more does HTML5 offer for creative, unique offerings and experiences? Adobe (actually Macromedia) spent a solid decade optimising and improving flash player and flash authoring. Sure, they only recently implemented a respectable programming language (AS3), built a (reasonably) stable authoring environment, provided command line compilation and other run-of-the-mill features for a programming language, but they got there in the end. The very thought of authoring animations, bitmap effects, and 3D in javascript gives me goosebumps. Not to mention performance. By all accounts, if you try to do anything vaguely graphically intensive in HTML5 you start to run into trouble pretty quickly.
• Myth #2: HTML5 is coming soon. Actually, it may be coming soon to the bleeding edge, but certainly not to the masses. Adobe also spent that decade building saturation for their plugin and the unique payoff for designers and developers is that you know what to expect regardless of operating system. Now, should we really bet the farm on browsers fully, consistently adopting HTML5 standards any time soon? Usually we need to design for the bulk of users, not just the bleeding edge. You should expect to write off a good chunk of your users if you rely on HTML5 as your only delivery platform within the next year or two. On a side note, I dread a future where we need to code HTML5 browser hacks the same way we need to code CSS browser hacks today. Not only should we consider end users, we also need to consider the time required for a strong Developer and Designer community to grow for HTML5. And even before then, we need the time to develop decent HTML5 development tools to rival Flash Professional. That’s a long road.
• Myth #3: HTML5 is so much better because it’s free and open. Flash Player is much more open than you think. Did you know that you can download “Flash Develop” (www.flashdevelop.org, a fantastic free, open source ActionScript IDE) and the free Flex3SDK (http://opensource.adobe.com/wiki/display/flexsdk/Flex+SDK) and compile Adobe Flash projects without even needing to purchase any software at all? As Adobe continues to feel the heat, we might expect this trend towards openness to continue.

Adobe is a big, big company with lots and lots of Money
Do you really think Adobe will go down without a fight? After investing literally billions building browser saturation, building a global developer base, out-innovating wannabe competitors such Silverlight, cementing their place as THE dominant rich media advertising platform, I suspect they will find some creative ways of staying at the top of the pile.

The End Game
With Android devices running Flash just fine, pretty soon iPad owners will start to feel like they’re missing out without flash support. With one cheeky OS update, it’s within Apple’s power to grant them the gift of flash.

Assuming Apple does not rule the free world any time soon, don’t write off any hope of Flash support for iPad just yet…

Today, after 10 years, Me and PC have mutually agreed to go our separate ways.

After flirting with an iPhone for a year, it’s time to pledge my committment. So long Microsoft, it’s been real – Hello MacBook Pro!

Since then I’ve received a few messages of brotherly encouragement, although one friend was nice enough to jarringly declare he didn’t believe I could go through with it because “you don’t have the good taste to be a mac person : )” – thanks Stu, I know you’re just saying that to guilt me out of turning back, but there’s no turning back now.

I set about researching where to buy a Mac and the general concensus was that new model Macs never really sell below retail, so you might as well buy it online from the Apple Store of from the usual suspects like Next Byte. Well, I found that a little hard to swallow, so I did a bit of research and it turns out there are a few places where you can pick up a brand new, latest edition Mac for significantly less than retail – I’m not talking a paltry $50 or $100 off, but a sizable discount that would make the effort worthwhile.

And the winner is?

Well, actually there are a few that offer below recommended retail price. but the winner (purely in price terms) was I-Tech Group. Click here for the I-Tech catalogue and see for yourself. For Example, today they’re offering the new model 17″ MacBook Pro for $3042.00, compared to $3299.00 on the Apple store, saving about $250. (The online store may not be as sexy as your new Mac will be, but if you’re after value then you might need to stick it out one last time).

Another notable mention was Mactofront, who was able to offer below retail prices and had pretty good customer service to boot.

If you’re really serious about your haggling, there’s even a few fanatical sites dedicated to telling you where and when to buy a mac to get the best deal like Mac Rumours Buyer’s Guide.

If this is all sounding a bit bargain-basement for your Mac sensibilities, you can always check out Ye Olde Apple Store instead.

Now, if only there was an easy way to buy a Mac in US Dollars instead of Australian Dollars…

I realise that there are lots of fancy ways to embed fonts these days for Flex, AS3, SWC files, etc. But if it all gets a little confusing, you might consider a very simple alternative when working from the Flash IDE. (This works in Flash CS3 but presumably works the same way in CS4).

Using this technique, you can use the font anywhere in your project, including inside other swc components. As for limitations: As I said, this is the “Easy” way to embed fonts, not necessarily the best way for all circumstances. e.g. If you are using many fonts or fonts with very large character sets this will result in very slow compile times and large file sizes. But in the majority of cases, this is a nice light, flexible, simple way to embed your fonts. Click here to download the sample fla for embedding fonts for AS3 in Flash CS3 IDE.

1. In the libary options, choose “New Font”
2. Choose the font you want to use from the dropdown and set the name of the font to be exactly the same as the dropdown value (making these identical just makes things easier). For this example we will use “Arial”
3. Set linkage options: Embed for actionscript = true, Export in first frame = true, Class = Arial, Base Class = flash.text.Font. This ensures the font gets compiled into your swf.
4. Create text field and text format as follows (obviously this is just an example, there’s more than one way to skin a cat)var textField:TextField = new TextField();
   var format:TextFormat = new TextFormat();format.font = ‘Arial’;
   format.color = 0xEDEDED;
   format.size = 60;
   format.align = ‘center’;textField.defaultTextFormat = format;
   textField.alpha = 0.8;
   textField.selectable = false;
   textField.embedFonts = true;
   textField.text = ‘Hello World’;

Font resources online:

Media Temple has rather nice article on the topic of modifying php.ini file and enabling php5 on a per-domain basis but they don’t address this particular issue.

If you need to use a separate php.ini file for a particular domain in Plesk, the easy way is to copy the php.ini file into the current domain’s bin folder, and then restart the server using the below commands. The php executable looks in it’s own directory first for a valid php.ini file before looking in the other locations, and before the default php.ini file is loaded.

In our case, we needed to do this because we needed to specify a unique session.save_path for each domain, but there are certainly countless other reasons why you would want to use a special php.ini file per domain.

Create local version of php.ini for this domain
cp /opt/php51/etc/php5/fastcgi/php.ini /var/www/vhosts/example.com/bin/php.ini

Restart Plesk web server
/usr/local/psa/admin/sbin/websrvmng -a -v

Our flash development team have just setup a fantastic workflow for flash/flex/actionscript projects which I thought I would share.

Flash Designers use Flash CS4 IDE
The flash designers work with Flash CS3/CS4 in a fairly typical way, publishing from the Flash IDE. The IDE makes it very convenient for working with graphical assets, something which is very tedious in a code-focussed environment.
Flash Developers use FlashDevelop and Flex3SDK
The flash developers use FlashDevelop exclusively, and they compile their projects using Adobe Flex3SDK. They only publish SWFs for testing purposes, their real goal is to build the more complicated and powerful components that form the building blocks of the application. (These are code-based, non-visual components – sometimes called base classes or utility classes).

The trick is how all these users can work together.

Create SWC components from AS3 Classes for two way integration
We can export these non-visual components as swc files that can be used in two ways a) Designers can load the swc file into the CS3/CS4 library. From there you can use it just like a normal class, only you don’t need any of the code on hand, and more importantly, you don’t need to compile the code each time. This results in lightning fast compile times (a few seconds) and prevents your designers from screwing up your code. In truth, our designers are generally using flash develop a lot of the time anyway, due to nice things like code completion, a code-editing interface that wasn’t designed by an adobe intern, etc.

Furthermore, it’s not only the developers who can build and distribute their work as swc files – the designers can also export their visual, movieclip based classes in swc format. (Library panel >> Right click on library item >> Export to SWC). This is actually the key to closing the loop – if you want to compile your project from Flex3SDK, you naturally need all your visual components prepared in this way. In truth, we have not found that any of our projects have warranted this step to date – you seem to end up with a very unworkable library system where everything is so darn hard to edit. Furthermore, there is the added bonus that it keeps your developers honest, since they are forced to build self-contained, easily testable units.

Compiling SWC Components using compc.exe
We use the Flex command line tool (compc.exe) for compiling standard code-based classes into SWC. i.e. Classes that are code based and do not extend from Sprite, Movieclip etc. In this case we’re packaging up all the classes for Papervision3D into an swc named pv3d.swc.

Gotcha: Note that due to adobe/flex specialness, we needed to create a separate dummy class called PV3D outside the “include sources” location to avoid strange compiler errors lik “The definition is in circular inheritance” and “Could not find source for class Papervision3D in namespace…” and other fascinating tidbits. It is this dummy class that we tell the compiler is the main class for the component, even thought what we really want is all the other classes packaged up inside.

Compc command line arguments
c:\Flex3SDK\bin\compc -source-path c:\wwwroot\myproject\ -output PV3D.swc -include-sources c:\wwwroot\myproject\org\papervision3d -strict=false -compute-digest=false -namespace http://papervision3d.org c:\wwwroot\myproject\manifest.xml -include-namespaces http://papervision3d.org

Contents of the manifest xml file is as follows:

And Voila! You’ve got an swc file which contains all that papervision goodness. You have two options for using this.

• Flash IDE folk: Copy the swc into your flash components folder, close and open flash to refresh the components panel, then drag your component on the stage or into your library and hey presto.
• FlashDevelop/Flex folk: Put the swc somewhere nice like inside the /lib folder (it doesn’t actually matter where you put it). From the XYZ panel in FlashDevelop, right click on it and “add to library” to ensure that all it’s classes are available by bundling it up into your output swf. Bonus for FlashDevelop users is the ability to browse all the classes included inside the swc file.

I hope that helps a few of you out there trying to find their way in adobe’s increasingly confusing flash/flex journey.

Lastly, a few helpful references here and there:

SETTING UP FLASH DEVELOPMENT ENVIRONMENT WITH FLASHDEVELOP / FLEX SDK

1. Download latest flash develop (3.0.2) – requires java 1.6. http://www.flashdevelop.org/community/viewforum.php?f=11
2. Download latest Open Source Flex3SDK (v3.3) and extract into c:\Flex3SDK http://www.adobe.com/cfusion/entitlement/index.cfm?e=flex3sdk
3. Configure Flash Develop to use Flex3SDK. Tools => Program Settings => AS3Context, set Flex SDK location to c:\Flex3SDK. Ensure you right click on any swc files that you want to include and choose “Add to Library”

Special thanks to Tim Walling for getting us started: http://www.timwalling.com/2007/10/22/compiling-flash-cs3-compatible-swcs-with-flex/

Official Flex documentation here for compc.exe (beware, it’s typically clunky) http://livedocs.adobe.com/flex/3/build_deploy_flex3.pdf

Apparently there’s an Export SWC plugin for Flash develop floating around, but I think that once you’ve got the hang of it, it’s probably easier to just use the command line version, outlined above. http://www.flashdevelop.org/community/viewtopic.php?t=2987&start=0

When you use the in-built Plesk backup system for your domain or client data, it stores the backup files in a format which is a little difficult to access. ZIP format would have been nice, but it actually stores them as gzipped multi-part mime.

It’s the multi-part mime bit that got me thinking… with all the emails we send in multi-part mime, there must be an easy way to work with these files.

Outlook Express to the rescue! It just so happens that the “.eml” file format for saved outlook express emails is straight multi-part mime. (Fingers crossed this works with the new Windows Mail in Vista and Windows 7, if not you might need to dust off one of your old XP boxes).
Here’s how it works:

Extract your backup file with WinRAR
I hear there are other tools out there (someone said anything that supports .gz will do the trick), but I think WinRAR is the best.

Change the file extension to “.eml’
Rename the extract file by adding a “.eml” file extension. This assocates the file with Outlook Express.
Open the .eml file with Outlook Express
Sometimes I get a nasty warning message on this step, but it still opens just fine. All the individual files are neatly organised as attachments to the email. Drag whichever files you need to your desktop and you’re home free.

Warning: sometimes this .eml files can get very large. I managed to open one that was over 1gb, but please be careful when you do this because Outlook Express isn’t exactly designed to be bullet proof on large files.

To keep disk space usage to a minimum, Extro recommend you switch on your PLESK Log Rotation.

The steps below are directly from the PLESK User’s Guide:

All connections to the Web server and requests for files that were not found on the server are registered in log files. These log files are analyzed by the statistical utilities running on the server, which then present graphical reports on demand. You may want to download these log files to your computer for processing by third-party statistical utilities, or view their contents for web server debugging purposes.

To prevent these log files from growing too large, you should enable automatic cleanup and recycling of log files:

1. Go to Domains > domain name > Log Manager > Log Rotation and click Switch On. If you see only Switch off there, this means that log recycling is already switched on.
2. Specify when to recycle log files and how many instances of each log file to store on the server. Also specify whether they should be compressed and sent to an e-mail address after processing. Click OK.

To view the contents of a log file or download it to your computer:

1. Go to Domains > domain name and click Log Manager in the Hosting group. A list of log files will show.
* To specify the number of lines from the end of the log file that you would like to view, type a number into the input box under the Preferences group.
* To view the contents of a log file, click its file name.
* To download a file to your computer, click an icon corresponding to the file you need.
* To remove a processed log file from the server, select a corresponding check box and click Remove Selected. Confirm removal and click OK.

The website is set to transform the solar industry, with Fortune magazine labelling Sungevity “The Dell of Solar Energy”.

The Sungevity.com launch has caused a stir in the media, with feature articles in Fortune magazine, CNN money, Wired.com, TV News features, plus plenty of chatter on blogs all around the world.

Extro Interactive worked alongside Sydney-based Canned Ham to deliver a website that offers a new take on the residential solar industry. The site revolutionises the process of purchasing a home solar system by leveraging web 2.0 technology.

Sungevity is currently only available in California, but they are quickly expanding across the US. We hope they will be launching in Australia sometime soon!