Only Six Months Until Terminator 3 Comes Out!

Check out the official Terminator 3 Website, which has a really cool Flash interface. [Make sure you have a fast connection for best results...]

Broadband Installations Rise

According to an article at Computerworld, U.S. broadband installations have topped 16 million. How long until we can start streaming fullscreen, full motion video on the Net?

Macromedia Best Practices

Macromedia has several articles on their Website concerned with Best Practices related to a specific application or topic. For example, see Best Practices with CSS in Dreamweaver MX for a definition of Best Practices, an overview of CSS, and tips for creating style sheets in such a way that multiple browsers are able to see and format your text correctly.

Slavik Lozben has written an article on Best Practices for Writing Macromedia Flash Communication Server MX Applications. While the article is mainly concerned with using the Flash Communication Server, it also contains general tips for coding in Flash MX.

For ColdFusion Best Practices, see the Building Web Applications with ColdFusion MX article by Brian Takle.

Flash "Badness" Gets Better

In October of 2000, usability guru Jakob Nielson announced that Flash was "99% bad." Earlier this year, Macromedia retained Nielson's services in order to improve Flash's usability. So what does Nielson have to say about Flash now that he's working for Macromedia? Not surprisingly, he no longer thinks Flash is 99% bad. In a report of a recent study on Flash usability, Nielson found that users were able to carry out specific tasks 45% of the time.

Does this mean that Flash is now only 55% bad?

Flash Security Hole

Several news articles have come out discussing a security hole in the Flash player:

globetechnology.com
pcworld.com
Macromedia Press Release

Users are strongly encouraged to upgrade to the latest version (6,0,65,0) of the Flash player.

A Peak Under The Hood Of Director MX

Macromedia has listed the Top Ten Director MX New Features on their Website.

As you will note from reading the list, many of the changes are cosmetic, and have to do with the Director authoring environment. To wit: the new debugging capabilities should empower a lot of developers.

Using Lingo, Director MX authors can control Flash MX objects, and even create new Flash objects.

Director can now use the Flash Communication Server. [Does this mean that the Shockwave Multiuser Server will no longer be supported?]

Director Has Been MX-ified

Macromedia announced today that the latest version of Director--MX--is now available. Among the new features in this latest version of the product are tight integration with Flash MX and the ability to easily create accessible content.

Flash Ads: A Bad Idea Gets Worse

Here's something annoying which I hope doesn't catch on: Flash movies with content that appears in front of the text on the Web page. weather.com seems to be quite fond of these "pop-in ads" (here's the Flash movie by itself, BTW). I have seen this technique--putting content in a layer on an existing HTML page--on several sites. There are even sites which will explain how to do it. [Warning: a popup window will launch if/when you click the previous link.]

The danger I see in this type of advertising is a potential backlash by Web users against Flash. Some users may even become so upset with these Flash movies that they look for software which can block Flash movies.

It seems like every time someone comes up with a new medium, advertisers scramble to use it to send ads. To wit: Last year, Acadia National Mortgage was sued for sending unsolicited text messages (read: Spam) to cellphone users.

Microsoft & XML

In what is being referred to by some as a "risky strategy," Microsoft has announced that Office 11 will support XML. You heard right, Office apps will be able to read existing XML documents, as well as save documents as XML. What will this mean for the future of Office, and what will it do for XML? Only time will tell...

MN Flash User Group Meeting

The December MN Flash User Group meeting will take place this Webnesday at the College of St. Thomas. For details and more info, visit the MN Flash User Group Website.