Software

Thank You, Flash, for Showing Us the Way!

Submitted by Leo Klein on Wed, 11/9/11 (6:56pm)

adobe flash logo

So the big news is that Adobe is ending Flash development for mobile devices.

Everyone's assuming, for this reason, that Flash's days are numbered. And well they may be, in which case, there's no better time to extol its virtues -- particularly the contribution it's made to our online world -- than now.

It's important to remember that before the Web, most communication online was largely through command line input. In fact, one of the great 'side' achievements of the WWW was that it liberated us from this tyranny, giving us a 'graphical user interface' instead. In the library world, this was the difference between DIALOG which only a consultant could make head or tail of and current versions of Ebsco or Proquest.

Flash (and its predecessor, Shockwave) took this a step further by introducing a far higher level of interactivity. It allowed us to click on things, enlarge them, drag them across the browser window. It allowed us to better coordinate various types of media -- images, audio and video -- into a unified user experience. In fact, it did this with video so well that many people nowadays think of Flash as primarily a video delivery system.

And maybe it is, or was. Things move on. What we used to do in Flash, we're slowly being able to accomplish using Javascript, CSS and eventually HTML5. That's the path -- but it was Flash that showed us the way.

Topic:

Software

Institution:

Adobe

In a Perfect World (Adobe Acrobat Ed.)

Submitted by Leo Klein on Thu, 12/9/10 (9:04am)

Adobe Acrobat So I'm reading about 'Reembedding Fonts in a PDF':

"In a perfect world, all parties which contribute to a regulatory filing would properly embed fonts. Unfortunately, we don’t live in a perfect world . . . there are times when you may need to embed fonts as a post process."

Topic:

Software

Institution:

Adobe

Xmarks Bites the Dust

Submitted by Leo Klein on Tue, 9/28/10 (10:35am)

Xmarks, an online service for synchronizing bookmarks, announced that it's closing shop. It simply couldn't find a business model that would pay the bills. Along the way it tried a few things, some of which made me a bit wary. As Co-Founder and CTO Todd Agulnick put it:

Topic:

Software

Go to Bed with Adobe, Wake Up with Growl

Submitted by Leo Klein on Fri, 7/23/10 (2:19pm)

Here's something I didn't know until it was too late: If you've got a Mac and download the trial version of Adobe's Creative Suite 5 (CS5), they install without telling you an application called 'Growl' which then starts displaying pop-up messages on your desktop.

To what purpose you might ask? Why -- in their words -- "to invite users to receive complimentary benefits for registering their product..." Or in plain English, for marketing purposes. Totally scandalous

Topic:

Software

Institution:

Adobe

Adobe Creative Suite 5 Coming April 12, 2010

Submitted by Leo Klein on Fri, 3/26/10 (12:31pm)

Adobe Logo For anyone using an Adobe application, this is major: they're introducing the next version, 'CS5' on April 12, 2010. More here: http://cs5launch.adobe.com/

Topic:

Software

Institution:

Adobe

Happy Birthday Photoshop

Submitted by Leo Klein on Thu, 2/18/10 (11:30pm)

The irreplaceable Adobe Photoshop is celebrating its 20th Anniversary today.

I started using it way back in the early to mid 90s -- back before layers were introduced. I distinctly remember it was version 2.5. What I can't remember is how I managed back then since layers which came out with Version 3.0, totally changed how people work with the program.

For quickie things nowadays I use Fireworks but for anything serious, Photoshop is still my main squeeze.

Topic:

Software

Institution:

Adobe

Favorite WebDev App of the Week and Progress Report

Submitted by Leo Klein on Sun, 12/27/09 (12:47pm)

I'm at that stage in the redesign project where I've got to make sure the thing doesn't fall apart on IE6 & IE7. There's a pretty good discussion of the options here. I downloaded the wonderful IETester which allows me to run multiple versions of IE at the same time.

Topic:

Software

Institution:

Microsoft

Ugh, Dreamweaver Upgrade Borks my Site Settings, Gives Me Something to Be Thankful for

Submitted by Leo Klein on Thu, 11/26/09 (11:05am)

Dreamweaver Logo There must have been another copy of the site settings (from like say, 2005) that Dreamweaver grabbed when I upgraded from the admittedly ancient Dreamweaver 8 to a still shamefully retro CS3*.

Topic:

Software

New Things I Learn Every Day

Institution:

Adobe

The Digital Life

Submitted by Leo Klein on Fri, 2/15/08 (3:23pm)

1. Try to install Adobe Captivate on my new Mac Mini. (I've got an important 'sceencast' that's got to be done pronto.)

But Captivate only runs on a PC.

2. Load Captivate on my old Dell Notebook.

But it's too much for my old Dell Notebook. The thing keeps crashing.

3. Load Apple's Boot Camp on my new Mac Mini. With Boot Camp, you can run both Mac and Windows!

But Boot Camp only runs with Windows XP Service Pack 2 ('SP2'). My copy of XP (from my old Dell Notebook) is older than that.

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Institution:

Old News

Submitted by Leo Klein on Sun, 2/10/08 (11:31pm)

MS Office Message

So I just installed MS Office 2008. (It's nice -- nothing special that I've noticed so far.) Anyway, apparently there's some messaging system that comes with the package. Here's the reminder I got. (And yes, I have a legal copy of Office.)

Topic:

Software

Institution:

Microsoft