Flash 10 in a Flash 9 World

Is it just me, or did Flash 10 come out of the oven a little half-baked? I suppose it's not surprising; there must have been enormous pressure on Adobe to ship CS4 before the end of '08. On paper, the new features look pretty cool, but having played around with them a bit, I get the sense that things still have a way to go.

Here are a few annoyances I ran into:
1. Even with the latest update, Flex 3 doesn't let you create Flash 10 projects right out of the box. Fortunately, the workaround was not too difficult.
2. I was under the impression that we'd be able to write scripts to do other performance intensive tasks besides image processing, but it seems that the tools are not quite ready yet.
3. The new syntax for vector arrays

var v:Vector.<MovieClip> = new Vector.<MovieClip>();

...I'm going to have to get used to typing that. And the Flex Code Assistant seemed as confused about it as I was.
4. Overall, there is a lack of online tutorials and examples focusing on Flash 10 features. While I was pleased that new APIs were included in the latest Flex 3 update's new help docs, I had to do a bit of hunting around to find the relevant stuff.
5. The Text Layout Framework, which seems to be the best way to take advantage of the new text rendering engine, is still in Adobe Labs.

Don't get me wrong: I think the new feature set looks incredibly powerful. Indeed, maybe as the tools become more powerful and sophisticated, it takes longer for people to master them. Or maybe I just need to wait for Flash 10 penetration to go up. Or maybe people are simply too distracted by other things. Still, upgrading to CS4 was by no means a bargain...

Revision Control Methodologies

So that things don't look so painfully out of date, I've posted a new article on my Articles page: Revision Control Methodologies. It talks about CVS, SVN, and other tools for tracking changes. This was the last paper I wrote to finish my degree at SFSU.

New Home Page

New home page is up, as well as a new Projects page. As you can see, I've been insanely busy of the last year -- too busy to post anything on this blog.

And speaking of the blog... I haven't decided entirely what to do about the blog. On the minus side, I'm not sure if I will have the time or inclination to contribute useful stuff. And blogs are so 2003. On the plus side, it brings traffic to my site, and for that reason alone it might be worth keeping around in one form or another...

Time will tell.

Oh, and in case you're wondering, the animations on the home page are done with my new favorite JS library, jQuery.