The FITC Toronto 2009 officially ended yesterday. Congrats to the award winners. My overall experience was pretty good. I’ve attended FITC in the past four years and they are getting better and better. This year, I’ve learned a lot of new things about Flash, particularly the multitouch Flash content and mobile Flash. In this post, I’m going to share my thoughts on some of the presentations that I’ve attended.
Presented by Lee Brimelow (platform evangelist at Adobe), it is one of the presentations that I particularly liked. Lee started the presentation by instroducing the history of multitouch and supported devices such as the iPhone, Microsoft Surface, HP Touchsmart, etc.
Then he demostrated on how to create multitouch in Flash CS5. With just a few lines of coding, he created a photo gallery where you can drag, rotate, and zoom the photo with multitouch gestures as seen on the iPhone (eg. pinch to zoom). He tested the movie with Device Central. With the new Device Central CS5, you can test Flash without the actual mobile device. Basically, it is a simulator that lets you to test Flash as it is appear on the mobile phone. You can even test multitouch gestures. To test multitouch in Device Central: hold Alt / Opt key and click to set the first point, then drag around the mouse to simulate multitouch gesture/movement. Right now, you can only do two touch points, but they are working on it to build more touch points.
Watch the video below to see how multitouch works in Device Central (skip video timeline to 6:30).
Richard Galvan (technical product manager) and Mark Anders (Flash Catalyst) started the keynote by showing off Photoshop’s new features in CS5: puppet warp and content aware fills. Most of the attendees have already seen the puppet warp and content aware feature during the CS5 pre-launch event, so it wasn’t that wowing but if you haven’t seen it before it is a must see. Check out these videos: content aware & puppet warp.
Richard and Mark then demonstrated the new Flash Player 10.1 on various mobile phones such as Palm Pre and Nexus. The new player runs Flash content smoothly as if it is being viewed on desktop computers. It has higher performance and it consumes less device’s battery.
One of the major changes in Flash CS5 is the file format. The source file is no longer saved as a single binary file, instead it is stored in a folder. The new .fla file acts like a zip folder where the codes, images, and assets are stored. You can edit the files within the folder without having to open it in Flash. This is a great feature for team collaboration. You can have the developers work on the coding and the designers work on the image files.
Flash Catalyst is a new product that Adobe introduced to CS5. They’ve been working on this new software for several years. I was on their early pre-release beta program when I was designing a demo template for them back in 2008 (they called it Thermo at that time). Back then, I didn’t see the purpose of it. After I saw Mark Ander’s presentation on Flash Catalyst, I have better understand of it. Catalyst is for designers to build interactive Flash without any Actionscript skills.
Mark did a quick demo on Catalyst. He showed how easy it is to import Illustrator design into Catalyst. All text, graphics, and layers are retained (you don’t have to copy and paste). Then you can convert any graphic element to a button or scrollbar, and assign actions to it. All the actions and options are on the palette. No coding is required.
To the advance Flash developers, you probably won’t find it useful. But to the designers with no coding skills, Catalyst is like a magic tool to build interactive Flash content.
One of the major new features in InDesign CS5 is you can convert the design into an interactive SWF format. You can do simple transitions such as animating objects around and assigning click actions to buttons. I rarely use InDesign, so this feature doesn’t really wow me. But I can see how print designers with no Flash skills can benefit from this new feature. This feature might be good to create interactive presentation slideshows.
I was invited to join the luncheon with the Adobe team (left to right: Mark Anders, Richard Galvan, and Tom Barclay). The Adobe team discussed the benefits of making Flash file as an open format (a zip folder instead of a single binary file). It is very nice to hear that Adobe is working hard with their partners such as RIM, Google, Palm, etc. on the Open Screen Project to make Flash more accessible across all devices.
I would like to thank FITC for the press pass as well as the ticket giveaway on Web Designer Wall. Also, thanks to Chris Clarke and Eric Tang for the lunch invitation with the Adobe team.
Alice
I didn’t get the chance to participate this year, so thanks for these insights.
wearetelescopic
Would be interesting if anyone talked about the apple/adobe war thats going on? Any news about the develop-in-flash-for-the-iphone issue or is that completely dead?
Jordan Walker
Thanks for the review, good to know what is happening in the field.
Derek K
You mean 2010 right? ;)
xinliang
I never have a chance to get such that you had.
Nick La
@Derek – thanks for the correction. Yes, it is 2010.
Jon
Congrats on your opportunity to have lunch with the Adobe senior members. Did they talk about the Apple/Adobe war?
Kay
Nick – didn’t know you were there. I’d love to grab a drink with you.
Darcy Clarke
This is an awesome write up Nick. And for everyone who keeps asking about the “Apple vs Adobe” dispute, there was literally only 1 or 2 jokes/comments made through out the entire conference (classy).
I think Lee Brimelow summed it up with something like “there’s an iPhone compiler in Flash whether or not Apple allows for it. We’re moving on.”
eco_bach
Overall, I give it a 7/10 this year. I know it’s a ‘flash’ conference but to make it better I suggest making it less Adobe specific. As well have more well known speakers, who are established artists-designers-filmakers-storytellers. The last session, IMHO was thought provoking but felt more like a commercial for a very specific hardware-software platform. Just my 2 cents…
南京SEO
百度过来的 欢迎回访。
Web Design
thanks for the review
bangoo
well design
Addy
Can’t wait to see what people going to build with the multitouch features in Flash.
Matt M
Great use of flash…
http://www.10downingtweets.co.uk/#/Home
Check it out!
CodeMyConcept
This post was so good I had to read it 3 times. Great compilation.
Tim
“Puppet warp”, not “puppet wrap” under your Adobe Keynote section :)
Although, puppet wrap sounds interesting as well.
Web Designers
Great post, thanks for sharing your thoughts on CS5 mate. ;)
mauricio quiroga
Iphone is not going to support flash period the end.
Daniel Long
Downloaded the trial edition of Flash CS5 and had a go on it this morning. A great feature will be exporting flash as HTML5 canvas, meaning possible compatibility for the iphone?
Response to mauricio quiroga – exporting flash as iphone apps…what more can you say.
Ken
@Daniel Long – Seriously? Can Flash CS5 export to HTML5 which will be supported on iPhone?
Florida web design
Thanks for the post. Love Flash. Hope something gets worked out so it shows up on iPhone & iPad someday though.
Website Design
Flash has a big uphill battle to make it in todays market… first dumped on by Apple, now there’s lots more news about shifting away from Flash to html5.
Competition is good…
rob t
cs5 looks awesome. all of those new features might make it worth the price to upgrade :p
Kyle Keeling
Great summary of your experience at FITC. I’m planning on attending it for the first time next year and I can’t wait. Flash is a fantastic tool that is constantly under abuse and criticism by people that don’t understand it’s abilities. Go Flash!
Ally
great post thank you for sharing
ali
thx for sharing
yohan
nice post, thank you so much :)
ikilobo
nice post..good post
arieff
Great summary of your experience at FITC. I’m planning on attending it for the first time next year and I can’t wait. Flash is a fantastic tool that is constantly under abuse and criticism by people that don’t understand it’s abilities. Go Flash!
ardhan
tx for your sharing, it helping me so much
code pixelz media
Nice article. Thanks for taking time to create this article.
Kojeje
Wow, nice article..
“Teach me Baby…” :)
kai
teach me baby?
nice title….
filesforflash
Great new versions. But what’s with the compatibility issues with older versions ?
Rebekah
Holy Cow was that helpful!
Thanks :]
Rebekah at Web Unlimited
ospop shoes shop
This post was so good I had to read it 3 times. Great compilation.
Melvins
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Los Angeles Web Design
gucci8
Go Flash!
Henry Peise
People can have no interst in Nokia, Moto or other mobile phone brand, but he wiil surely love the apple offical white iphone 4.
Juno Mindoes
As the Apple iphone 4 bumper is taken off the marke, will white iphone 4 available soon?
Ben
I’ve been around for quite a lot of time, but finally decided to show my appreciation of your work!
formula 21
Great new versions. But what’s with the compatibility issues with older versions ?
altın çilek
Go Flash!
hcg damla
This post was so good I had to read it 3 times. Great compilation.
romadur
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moliva
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SubmitArticles
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iphone apps development
Really good article and presentation. Nothing much to say accept thanking you for this information but would for sure share with my iphone apps developers London branch team.
Jared - Stealth Web Designs
I still don’t know all features inside and out of cs3. I’m an old man.
dexx
Different thinking, contains a problem to produce several possible solutions.
complex41
And then he handed you the thirty-five 45
Moliva
Go Flash!
model
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Ibiza yates
Nothing much to say accept thanking you for this information but would for sure share with my iphone apps developers London branch team.
seo
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