I’ve just been informed we have another free full chapter from Foundation Flash for Mobile Devices (FoED) online on Adobe DevNet. This one is on Application Development using Flash Lite. If you are new to Flash or coding with ActionScript, I’d suggest first reading chapters 2 and 3 which cover in depth the nitty gritty of Flash Lite 1.1 – 2.1 and a primer on ActionScript 2.0 to boot. Read the article and download the chapter....

What can I say? I’m blown away by Papervision3D. Don’t get me wrong, we’ve used Sandy (enter via UK/Europe), and although it wasn’t me who tried it personally I can see it is a fantastically full featured engine. However, for me, I wanna see enough polys for a full on game, and that’s the sort of speed you can expect with PV3D as it grows. So here are some pretty basic initial tests I made to see just how fast it is....

There used to be a time when everything tech wasn’t so “meta”, and things (mostly) worked in the way they were designed. Whilst browsing the web just now using Internet Explorer 7 (normally I use Firefox 2), I get the following request for an ActiveX control to be installed: This website wants to run the following add-on: ‘Microsoft HTML Viewer’ from ‘Microsoft Corporation’ (Click pic to enlarge) HTML viewer plug-in… for a Web browser!...

I’m a big fan of Nokia’s smartphones and have stuck to them for my last 3 handsets because I love that I don’t have any compatibility issues with files, programs or syncing to Outlook et al, they just work flawlessly. But I’ve been dissappointed that they just keep getting bigger and bigger (and slower!), so I almost decided to switch to Sony Ericsson as a result, no-one wants a slow chunk of silicon in their pocket....

Well today I had a play at making a Flash game for the Wii using some rudimentary gesture recognition for the wand style of input. You can see a sneak peek of how the gesture recognition works here: http://richardleggett.co.uk/wii/gestureRecogDemo.html So Aral and Mario together have un-earthed some real gems the last couple of days, I think there could be a lot of fun to be had making some Wii games. It’s like Flash Lite, even simple games are much more fun when put on another type of device, and with the “wand” style input, it’s even more fun....

Friends of ED is holding a competition where you could grab the top prize of an Apple Mac Book, 3 FoED books, Camtasia and SnagIT software and a copy of gProject (from gskinner.com). There are also runners up prizes so it’s worth having some fun here. You just need to produce something cool that uses some of the provided assets, it looks pretty open to interpretation, just stick to the rules of coming under 2....

Introduction: I’m going to keep this very factual. I’ve been developing Flash for the last 6 years and intend to carry on doing so, as a result I’ve learned to accept a lot of criticism and be open to review all things new, in effect I’m opening by saying I have not been “bought” as you will no doubt see in this article I aim to give an entirely balanced perspective, the politics interest me not, just the tech....

It’s been a week since I was at Flash on the Beach but whilst I was there Rami Tzabar from the BBC (Digital Planet on Radio 4) asked me a few questions about Flash Lite just after my presentation. You can listen online and download the podcast at: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/4849402.stm Direct link to mp3 Skip to 20 mins 30 seconds for the piece on 10 years of Flash (and Flash on the Beach)....

Now that the site is live for our book on Flash Lite (thanks to Scott) I’d also like to take the chance to point you to one of the chapters I wrote which is online for free download, available immediately: Visit the page (PDF on the right) This chapter contains a variety of concepts involved with game programming on limited devices; including math, physics, collision detection, keypad input, graphics and sound....

Finally got round to uploading my slides, source and the source for the FOTB Flash Lite Pocket Guide, so my apologies for the delay… I had to take a flight straight from Brighton to Seattle on the last day of the conference and it’s been pretty busy since I arrived. I also want to take this chance to thank John, as many others have. It was a fantastic conference and extremely slick, I hope he invites me back next time....