Friends of ED has been releasing competently compiled web design books made with collaboration from some of the best for quite a few years now and when they offered a few books to the Flash Insider team to read I jumped at the chance. The first book I cracked open was the latest in their Essentials series, Flash 8 Essentials. The Essentials books are meant to grab current and future web designers and give them a quick dip into the latest web design software. This book was written a quick guide to Flash 8 and includes enough tutorial and code to get most designers and developers up to speed. The writing style of this book is similar to a motivational seminar on Flash. This helps the reader become extremely excited about the new version and can make you feel like you can do everything in the book.

Flash 8 Essentials has six authors, but the reader will not notice a definite change from one chapter to the next. Each author has already made a name for himself in the Flash design and development world. Two of the authors have already written a few books on this subject and one helped to create the current Developer Certification Exam.

read the rest of the review after the jump

Though the book doesn't come with a CDROM, all the referenced FLAs and samples can be found quite easily on the Friends of ED website. The screenshots within the book help to bring the content to the reader on an OS independent platform. This is good for designer like me who work with Mac for personal projects but on PC at work. If I have to reference back to the book at anytime in the future, I know it won't matter where I am or what OS I am in.

Flash 8 Essentials is divided into 10 chapters plus an appendix. The chapters take you down the road or all the new and improved features and leave you with the impress that coding will be very important for this version of Flash. The first chapter gives a quick overview of everything in the book. Each chapter after the first gives at least one concise example of a major feature and includes well-explained code and easily understood figures. Then the appendix gets into a few advanced tutorials that touch on dynamic bitmap manipulation, file uploads and more.

At the end of the book I felt ready to tackle a bunch of new projects and pondered ways to improve some old ones (I've been wanting to retackle an old Camera() based project for a while. I think most will find this a good addition to their technical bookshelf, but new Flashers will need to invest in a few other books in addition to this one as they come up to speed, including at least one Flash bible or over reaching glossary type book that explains it all. Experienced Flashers will find this to be an essential part of their library in order to transition easily to Flash 8, if they haven't already.

Now, what am I going to do with this book? If you are in the New Orleans area and come out the NOMMUG Tenth Anniversary of Flash party on Tulane's campus on August 14th, you will have a chance to win the now well-read copy I used for this review. See you there!

About this book:
Flash 8 Essentials
by Paul Barnes-Hoggett, Stephen Downs, Glen Rhodes, Craig Swann, Matt Vierman, and Todd Yard.
ISBN: 1590595327
publisher: friends of ED

Looks like the merger completion brings with it another big (and not unexpected) merge:

What are Adobe's plans for Flash Player and Adobe Reader?
Our long-term plan is to develop a "universal client" by combining PDF, Flash and HTML in a single, integrated runtime. Of course, we will continue delivering the Flash Player as a small, efficient runtime for content and applications on the web, and Adobe Reader for viewing and interacting with PDF documents and forms. The integration of these technologies into a unified framework creates a ubiquitous platform that runs on virtually every device, and dramatically expands the opportunities to create compelling solutions.

I guess Flash Paper is just a vectorized Adobe Reader now. Plus SVG will soon be fully consumed by Flash. The only question I might have is... where is my PDF manipulation ActionScript?

thanks What do i know

The simple answer is yes, but how. Two sites released their versions of file upload via Flash 8 yesterday and after browsing their wonderful code to see how its done I had a brainstorm. It is possible to use this code to create an image file from scratch? Using the new Bitmapping tools in Flash 8 you should be able to capture and image from a user's webcam and cache the image data. Then export the data to a new file using a mix of the file upload PHP and a dynamic PHP image creation page. Now we have a fresh file on the webserver that contains our newly captured image. You don't want to keep the file on the server? Well one of the file upload samples includes an uploaded files in directory limit. Your application can save the file and email it to the user (again via PHP or even via ASP or JSP if you want) then delete the image from the directory. All this could be created using this pre-existing code. Of course if you don't want to start from scratch yourself, you can take a look at Sephiroth.it's sample: Export JPEG with Flash/PHP. If a developer were to use the export code to create an image from a camera feed and then use the file upload example they would have a quick and dirty photograph saved to the server!

Latest Katrina update: why have I been posting these blurbs at the end of my posts?

This really would have helped when I made my full Flash wedding site, but at least now I can start promoting full Flash to synagogues all over. FlashRTL adds right to left language support to all text areas (dynamic or not) in a Flash project and makes it possible to build Flash-based sites for all right to left languages like Hebrew, Arabic, Persian and more. The developer is offering the package of ActionScript classes for free to the public. Because the package was originally developed to display Persian, the classes may require some editing to incorporate into your latest project.

via John Dowdell

Latest Katrina update: Local paper Gambit Weekly has shut down indefinitely.

The Midnight Coders decided on a lark one day to start writing an ASDK. Yes, an ActionScript Development Kit. They have implemented new XML parser (mainly so they could get MXNA easier). Plus the kit comes with a full open source code and is on an open license. Check out their blog in the future for more information on how to use the kit in all of its glory.

via the Ajaxian

FDT was just released as version 1.0 on August 22 and is now available for download and a 30 trial. The Eclipse plug-in allows hardcore coders to jump into Flash via ActionScript 2's object oriented design. The plug-in features live error highlighting, advanced code completion and a great JavaDoc style pop-up plus a lot more. The code completion tool works similar to the code hints in the Flash IDE but pops up possible ActionScript as you type more like the code hints in Dreamweaver's source view. The JavaDoc feature allows a developer to quickly scan large groups of files and read all formal code comments (always comment with stars, /**...*/) while hovering over methods, types and variables throughout the code. I also like the Flash Explorer feature that allows a coder to view their project as a full overview where they can easily change classpaths or even run various organizational actions. If you currently use Eclipse or if you just use a regular external ActionScript editor feel free to test out this new plug-in.

via the FlashCodersNY list

Thank you Oinam Software, you are now one of my top ten loves (just don't tell my wife). You have figured out how to Do file upload and download in Flash 8 combined with all manner of server side programming languages (PHP, C#, and ColdFusion). The code is available on their site via the link below. The only problem I found was trying to upload from behind a proxy server. Though this is probably a good thing. Unfortunately the source has not been released yet, but come 'Flash 8 in the hand day' (yes that is what it should be called) the code will be open to all. For now check out Oinam Software and test out the code yourself, but keep those uploaded images clean some of us are at work dang-it

Today I was trolling the web looking for information about XML and components and came across an interesting list of tutorials not really about the relationship of those two things but covering XML, CSS, and image loading in Flash, plus a couple good Flash 8 how-tos and even a little video. NWebb is a full featured flash blog, portfolio and experimentation site for a European Flash guru whose extended Flash knowledge will help even the newest of the new get into Flash and quickly get up to speed. As you scan through his tutorial list make sure you try out the latest BitmapData how-to and learn a little Flash 8 before it comes out.