On a recent project my team encountered a very annoying bug in ActionScript 3.0 when reversing the playback of an Embedded Video on the timeline.
When playing the video forwards everything ran smooth, the processor usage remained low and the memory consumption remained low as well. When playing the video backwards, using mc.gotoAndStop(frame), the processor usage shot way up and the memory consumption went over a GB and in some cases over 2 GB.
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Yesterday MBUSA.com launched their website redesign. The new site is a major face lift from the old version, which was beginning to look outdated in comparison to many of its competitors. Every single element of the site has been upgraded and built completely in Flash, improving the overall user experience throughout.
I worked on the initial stages of this redesign at Critical Mass over two years ago. My involvement at the time was building a working prototype of the site in Flash. Only a few vehicles could be selectable back then, but overall the site’s design has not changed too much. The Mercedes-Benz’ development team has done a great job of finishing it off.
Congratulations to everyone involved in creating this site.
The end of the long anticipated wait for Adobe Creative Suite 3 is almost here. I got my first glimpse of the goodness to come in Las Vegas at Adobe MAX 2006. I expect the differences between Adobe and Macromedia products will finally come to an end as the best of both worlds are merged into one. Of course I’m mainly interested in Flash CS3. I never managed to make it onto the beta testing list and the Flash 9 alpha was Flash 8 with ActionScript 3 support, which was fun to play around with, but boasted no new interface enhancements and other goodies. Friends who did make it onto the beta have told me about some of the new features and I’m pretty stoked to try them out for myself.
The official announcement from the Adobe Creative Solutions PR team.
http://blogs.adobe.com/creativesolutionspr/
Fraser 
I thought this day would never come. The soon to be award winning Rolex.com redesign has finally been launched.
Before leaving Critical Mass I spent around three months on the Rolex team helping out on the development side of this site. Although the site appears to be completly Flash to the common user, it supports deep linking and it is search engine friendly. If the user does not have Flash installed it degrades gracefully to an HTML version.
The design is incredible, featuring stunning photographs of scenery from around the world as well as many very gorgeous models, and of course plenty of beautiful watches that most of us will never be able to afford.
Congratulations to everyone involved in creating this site.
“Adobe Systems Incorporated (Nasdaq:ADBE) today announced the availability of Adobe® Flash® Player 9 for Linux, the next-generation client runtime for engaging with Flash content and applications on Linux open source operating systems. Adobe Flash Player 9 delivers a consistent cross-platform experience and extends unprecedented performance and advanced features to the broadest set of developers and users to date. Additionally, Linux developers can create, test and deploy rich Internet applications (RIAs) on the Linux platform using the free Adobe Flex® 2 Software Developers Kit (SDK), Adobe Flash Player 9 and the free Flex Data Services 2 Express.”
Mike Downey presented a preview of the next version of Flash (codename Blaze) at Flashforward Austin 2006. New features include the ability to import Photoshop files directly into Flash allowing for precise control over every layer. You can make choices about each layer separately and also edit the imported text fields. There will be support for layer modes, drop shadows, blurs, and more. Flash will also be using the the JPEG compression from the next version of Photoshop.
If you have any ideas for Blaze you should submit them to the Flash 9 wishlist.
Be sure to check out this years Flashforward Film Festival Finalists. There were 60 finalists in 15 categories. You can view all of the finalists at http://www.flashforwardconference.com/finalists.
The following sites were selected as the best of their category:
I was just told that the next release of Flash with be titled Adobe Flash CS3. If you are unfamiliar with CS, it stands for Creative Suite. The current release of Adobe’s Creative Suite is CS2, so I think we can expect a whole bundle of software being released at the same time that may include titles such as Flash CS3, Photoshop CS3, IllHand CS3 (Illustrator + Freehand), InDesign CS3, DreamLive CS3 (Dreamweaver + GoLive), Acrobat Paper CS3 (Acrobat + Flash Paper) and more. This is all just speculation on my part, so don’t take my word for it. I am pretty sure about the Flash CS3 part of it though.
The new Flash CS3 will definitely have enhancements to its importing abilities with Photoshop and Illustrator. From what I have heard, you will be able to access bitmaps and vectors right down to a specific layer within the import window. I am sure copy & paste between programs will function a lot smoother than previously.
Fraser