Fraser Crosbie - Calgary Flash & Flex Developer » Flash General

Mercedes-Benz USA Launches Website Redesign

Fraser Crosbie — Tue, 15 Jul 2008 17:54:02 +0000

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 The new site is a major face lift from the old version, which was beginning to look outdated in comparison to many of its competitors.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.

Adobe CS3 will be announced on March 27th

Fraser Crosbie — Wed, 07 Mar 2007 22:42:36 +0000

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

Rolex.com Redesign Launched Today

Fraser Crosbie — Thu, 01 Feb 2007 16:52:45 +0000

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.

Flash Player 9 for Linux Released

Fraser Crosbie — Wed, 17 Jan 2007 16:19:31 +0000

“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.”

Read the full press release

More news about Flash CS3 (Blaze)

Fraser Crosbie — Sat, 16 Sep 2006 07:06:28 +0000

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.

Flashforward2006 Austin Film Festival Finalists

Fraser Crosbie — Sat, 16 Sep 2006 06:39:20 +0000

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:

Art: 15×15
Want your fifteen minutes of fame? This is the easy way to get it.
http://www.15×15.org/

Cartoon: The YuYu
Excellent art and animation created solely in Flash, but not much of a story.
http://www.biteycastle.com/theYuyu.html

Commerce: Reisenthel Accessories
This is a great way to browse and purchase products. I am sure we will be seeing lots of sites mimicking this design in the near future.
http://www.reisenthel.com/

Experience: Design Your Own Radio
Laimo. My feeling toward this site might be different if I was a 14 year old girl.
http://demo.fb.se/e/sr/design/

Game: Death in Sakkara
I couldn’t even make it through the first chapter. Either the game needs more usability research, or I am retarded.
http://www.deathinsakkara.com/

Instructional: GeeGuides
This seems like a great way to teach kids about art. You will most likely find the voice-overs to be quite annoying if you over the age of 12.
http://www.geeguides.com/demo/

Motion Graphics: M5
Features some great 2D animations used for their transitions between sections.
http://www.them5.com/

Narrative: The Ball of Bastards
This is hilarious! It has a Monty Python feel to it.
http://www.ballofbastards.com/

Navigation: Big Ideas come out of Big Pencils
Great design featuring a very cool 3D rotating zoom effect.
http://www.leoburnett.ca/

Online Application: Orange Phone Wizard
This site never loaded for me. Maybe it is getting way to much traffic right now.
http://shop.orange.co.uk/shop/phonetrainer

Original Sound: Samorost2
Very nice looking game. The third stage would not load for me, so I can’t tell you what the point of it is.
http://www.samorost.net/samorost2/

Technical Merit: Flash Commodore 64 Emulator
I don’t think I was even born when these games were around.
http://codeazur.com.br/stuff/fc64_final/

3D: CuberXtreme
Highly addictive. I have to admit that I had to cheat on the first training level. See if you can figure it out on your own.
http://www.digisonline.com/cuberxtreme/

Typography: iriver – Heart to Heart
Boring, although I can see why it won the typography award.
http://postvisual.com/awards/2006/awards/iriver/

Video: Nike Women Rockstar Workout â€” Hip Hop
This site features great use of flash video to teach hip hop dance moves. I can’t wait to hit the clubs with some of these! Just Kidding.
http://rga.com/award/rockstar.html

Peoplesâ€™ Choice Award: The Fan
This is a great place to get the latest news in video format.
http://labs.comcast.net/providers/fan/

Congratulations to everyone who made the finals!

Adobe Flash CS3?

Fraser Crosbie — Wed, 16 Aug 2006 15:21:39 +0000

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