But Apple’s recent HTML5 demo page finally did it for me, proclaiming that they’re the bastions of the “open web” (what ever the hell that is – I’m really not sure any more) then putting a “to view this content please download our propriety platform” just plain sucks!

So in an attempt to show that the future technologies which are going to usurp Flash as the dominant rich experience aren’t actually all that rich, I’m throwing down the gauntlet. Can the animation in the swf below be recreated in HTML5/CSS3/JS/Canvas/SVG? To make it easier, lets say you only have to make it work in 1 browser.

Shape Tween Gauntlet (swf)

I’m genuinely interested to see if there’s an HTML5/CSS3/JS/Canvas/SVG guru out there that can do it.

To clarify, the reason that I’ve chosen a shape tween is that it utilises one of Flash’s core strengths, manipulating vectors. If you go back to Flash’s birth even before it was Future Splash/Flash 1 the core engine was about taking user drawn input, wibbly lines and turning them into recognisable vectors; straight lines, smooth curves, squares and circles. With this strength creative people are able to realise incredible interactive experiences like this: http://soytuaire.labuat.com/

Happy coding!

PS. If this gets some traffic I may start a series

But the thing that concerns me most about Adobe’s announcement (that Flash CS5 can compile to iPhone) is that there were no Apple representatives at MAX. It’s still unclear if what Adobe is doing is sanctioned by Apple.

Flash on the iPhone has been something developers have been asking for since it’s launch, I myself had an email exchange with an Adobe Evangelist who was as excited about the possibilities as I was.

My feeling on the whole thing is more frustration at Apple than respect to Adobe. Frustration because I want to have as close as possible the same web experience on my mobile device as I do on my desktop. Finally the Open Screen Project is coming of age with the release of Flash Player 10.1 and half of it’s focus on Mobile integration.

I have major respect for Flash Player 10.1, there are some awesome features in there that the community have been asking for for ages. I won’t repeat them all here, you can go and read about them on labs.adobe.com

One thing that’s clear is that this latest update will be shipping with devices by the middle of 2010, what’s unclear however is if Adobe have improved the deployment mechanism to update the Flash Player on devices, previously with Flash Lite this has been a major problem. Even if we can’t update past 10.1 we’ve still got a very feature rich Flash Player version on Mobile.

They’re a nice insight into the future of Flash, the Flash Community and Flash Catalyst.

Go and have a look at the demo, the loose rope in example 7 is pretty sweet.

First of all a big thank you to John, Jo, Joey, Hippie all the Lifeguards – you guys rock and continue to put on an amazing conference. Of course a big thank you to John for giving me a slot in the 3 Minute Wonders session.

Which brings me to the source for my session, I’ve uploaded the source.

If it’s the first time you’ve used the Text Layout Framework there are a couple of things that might catch you out.

• You’ll need to download the Flex 4 SDK, greater than 4.0.0.7282, to get the TLF in the main SDK swc
• When you create the project in FlexBuilder or Eclipse make sure it’s targeting Flash Player 10.0.0

Feel free to comment if you have problems

A quick round up of fotb09 for me:

• There were a few nice CS5 sneaks in the keynote, the biggest one has to be custom code completion in the IDE, about time
• It’s now somewhat passé to go on and on about how amazing Joa Ebert’s session was, but, it was truly mind bending and worth the standing ovation
• Joel Gethin-Lewis’ inspired session was inspirational, touched on some interesting spiritual influences (Wales) and technological ones (OpenFrameworks)
• Craig Swann’s inspired session certainly started some debate, I was somewhat disappointed, but talking to other, they felt the polar opposite.
• Joshua Davis was in good form for the closing keynote, a few new pieces and talk of his collaboration with Branden Hall on their new framework HYPE
• The 3 Minute Wonders rocked, another innovation that all the other conferences will be copying I’m sure

Roll on Flash on the Beach 2010

Hopefully this year I’ll get to see some of the people I’ve mistakenly missed the past 2 years, on that list are: Rob Chiu, Dr WooHoo, Joa Ebert.

As ever there are a couple of sessions where I really can’t decide who to see, specifically the 9 am slot on Wednesday; Andre, Serge or Koen? It’s a really tough call. For a start I hope I’ll be up by then, experience tells me Wednesday morning is going to be carnage.

I’d like to take this opportunity to thank John Davey for a couple of things:

• Putting on such an awesome conference
• Choosing me to be one of the 20 Elevator Pitchers
• Dutifully dropping out of the last PokerCoder tournament, I went on to finish 3rd, btw

I will attempt to post my session slides and source promply, please hassle me if I’m tardy.

See you in the Old Ship!