Flashforward@Macworld

They kicked it off with Mike Downey. Who talked about the full production studio that was announced last week. He also touched on Photoshop CS3 and how it’s still in beta on Adobe Labs. The next part was exciting to hear:

“Flash Player Adoption update. Flash Player 9 is projected to reach over 70% penetration in its first six months. In comparison, Flash Player 8 took 9 months to reach over 80% and Flash Player 7 took twelve months to break 70% penetration. Basically, the adoption rate of the Flash Player is accelerating with each player release and continues to do so with Flash Player 9.”

Finally a standard that you know the majority of people have and use. I can’t tell you how frustrating it is to have to check everything in the different browsers on a Mac and on a pc. With flash, I know what it’s going to look like every time.

Mike showed some example sites that use Flash Player 9.
Kuler

Papervision 3D

He also showed us the new UI for Flash CS3. My favorite part was that the toolbar icons match the Photoshop and Illustrator icons. I hope the shortcuts are the same too!

Next up was Chris Georgenes who uses flash to create webisodes for the Cartoon Network. He generously shared his source code. Not something I find most designers doing. However, everyone at the conference was really open to sharing their code. I’m not used to that, it was a refreshing change. Make sure to check out his amazing 2006 holiday card. He drew the image of his daughter and then recorded her making her christmas list.

Robert Reinhardt’s Flash Video seminar gave us another taste of how flash is being used today. He shared his research into which codecs make the most sense under various circumstances. Here are some of his files that they have posted. He was one of the designers for ABC’s episode viewing site. He even won an emmy for his great work.

I don’t want to get into too much detail on each seminar; I know how boring that can be to read. I’ve just touched on my favorite parts. If you want full detail on the seminar check out Aral Balkan’s blog, he took great notes. I think the FlashForward people did an amazing job of getting some of the best in the business to present. They have another conference in Boston (September) that any flash designer should consider going to.

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