Papervision 3D is a Realtime 3D engine for Flash. With Papervision 3D, developers can create 3D scenes, movement, interactivity, and more all within the environment of the Flash plug-in. Papervision has gone through several major renditions. The last major release was Papervision 3D 1.5. This new release is an alpha version dubbed “Great White” available from the Subversion SVN repository for download through Papervision 3D’s download site.

The documentation has yet to be updated on Papervision 3D’s documentation site with the new classes available from the new release, but there is a great example on RockonFlash.com of how a scene can be constructed and can clarify the basics of “Great White” found here - RockonFlash.com Papervision 3D 2.0 Great White article.

This 2.0 version has been awaited for quite some time, deemed to include features from Away3D basically to create the ultimate Realtime 3D Flash engine. The plan for Papervision 3D 2.0 was to merge Away3D’s features with Papervision code, more can be found here - Papervision 3D and Away3D merge features.

Features included in Papervision 3D 2.0 “Great White” include:

• Shade Materials
• Shaders
• Animation supported ASCollada
• Frustrum Culling
• Multiple Viewports
• Render to Scene
• Increased speed

Comments on “Great White” can be found on Papervision 3D’s post regarding the release.

The release will stay as a download through the SVN repository, so they can update it more easily.

Examples from RockonFlash.com:

Earth Phong Shading Demo SWF

Earth Phong Shading FLA

My spaceship example

Apple Safari 3 Public Beta has just been released and is now available for PC on Windows XP and Windows Vista. It’s a bit to early to tell, but supposedly there are differences between the Mac and PC versions, however this doesn’t mean it isn’t good news for web developers who are cross browser testing. Many web developers run into browser situations frequently, especially with older browsers, and have to do what is called cross browser compatibility testing. Cross browser compatibility is key when developing websites to ensure visitors are seeing what the creators intended. Up until now PC users had to actually either have a Mac on hand, or in my case, have screenshots sent via the internet just to see what visual differences for instance the CSS have created. Developers often have had to use quirks, or hacks to hide or show styles and javascript to each browser, but this was also compounded by Safari being Mac exclusive.

Among the array of Safari features Snapback, Resizable Text Fields, and Inline Find are really nice touches. Snapback will snap a browser back to the top level of a website, or the search results. Resizable Text Feilds are just that, click and drag a text field to resize it. Inline Find is the syntax highlighting of the search term, it’s been done many times before, but usually hard coded within the site being searched.

It’s nice to have another browser to choose from, and with Safari also being the main browser for the Apple iPhone, it’s a great decision to have it released on the PC. There are interesting speed results displayed on the Apple Safari website indicating the differences between browsers, but in all honesty, I personally recommend downloading it for testing (public beta), and of course for Mac users to have the latest version of Safari.

Safari 3 Public Beta Download

The WordPress team has released the latest update to its extremely popular personal publishing system. WordPress 2.2 separates itself from previous installments of WordPress first and foremost by including WordPress Widgets (WPW). WordPress Widgets basically aid users in configuring their sidebar without the hassle of coding. Previously, widgets were implemented through third party plug-ins, whereas now they are built into the core WordPress package.

This major release has followed WordPress 2.1 by only four months, and includes a large amount of bug fixes. WordPress has listened to many of the comments and suggestions, including bug listings, and is continuing its progressive development by slating its next release in September.

Many of the internal functions of WordPress are now using jQuery. jQuery is a Javascript Framework very similar in nature to Prototype, Yahoo! User Interface (YUI), or Dojo. Personally, this shift to a Javascript Framework is exciting since I believe it can greatly, and already has enhanced the WordPress blogging experience both in development and visual aesthetics.

WordPress Download

Google has just released its newest version of Google Analytics on Thursday, May 17, 2007. The previous Google Analytics had a wide array of features to be able to keep track of your website viewers, and this new release has basically beefed up and streamlined how it all comes together. Most of the changes of the new Google Anayltics revolve around the reporting interface.

Upon entering the new Google Analytics it can be a bit overwhelming at first, but the layout is very simplistic and easily picked up. The new Google Analytic Dashboard showcases site usage at the very top, with bold number breakdowns of the most essential site statistics including visits, pageviews, and bounce rates. The actual interface is a Flash Ajax hybrid setup, with graphs, pie charts, and a geo map overlay. One nice feature is the ability to drag and drop the dashboard contents, Google’s Analytic Ajax shines here. The site overlay has changed and now opens in a new window, showing your website contents, and link tracking information very similar to the old site overlay.

All of the features within Google Analytics are broken down into major categories, such as Visitors, Traffic Sources, Content, and Goals. The sub categories hold the majority of the information on site statistics, categories such as referring sites, keywords, browsers, and even statistics on Flash versions or Java support. These sub categories are the main statistic holders, and what make up Google Analytics, so the new ability to add any of these sub categories to the Dashboard is what really sets this incarnation above previous installments of Google Analytics. There is a new Report Finder Tool, basically a sitemap hiearchy of the entire Dashboard contents, but is very easy to navigate. Lastly, the ability to set scheduled e-mails is a really nice touch.

Google Analytics Tour

Google Analytics Blog

Google Analytics FAQ

The latest installation of Adobe’s Flash CS3 Professional is now available. I was one of the many who probably did not choose to pick up the Actionscript 3.0 prior to the release of Flash CS3 Professional and instead are learning it for their first time. I must admit, I was not able to jump in day one and do everything I was able to with prior releases. The Flash environment has changed dramatically, for the better. Many of the functions I used to write now require event listeners, very similar to the MovieClipLoader’s event listeners, or if you’re familiar with AMFPHP, it’s very reminiscent of the return event functions. If you are not familiar with writing classes and actionscript files, Actionscript 3.0 will force you to get up to speed very quickly.

There are a plethora of really cool new options that users will find soon after jumping into Flash CS3 Professional. The user interface of Flash is very polished and now allows you to collapse the side tool bars while still being available in a small rollover fashion. Importing now extends to Photoshop and Illustrator files and preserves their layering, choosing import in Flash gives you a nice layout of all the layers within the file and the ability to check off what layers are to be imported. Any timeline tween animations can now have their code copied and pasted into the actionscript panel. The result of copying tweens creates an XML formatted tween code with all of the information in the tween such as frame rate, coordinates, geometrical shape information, transform points, duration, and is quite legible for those who aren’t familiar with seeing an XML coded tween.

The actionscript panel in Flash CS3 Professional is much more improved over previous versions of Flash. There are now comment buttons for the three different types of comments which save a little bit of time in rush coding. By far the greatest improvement for handling actionscript is the ability to collapse highlighted sections of code, this and how Flash CS3 Professional handles large amounts of script result in much easier to maintain code. Blocks of code over 2000 lines in Flash 8 Professional would often cramp up on my computers, and would be difficult to deal with unless I split it up into smaller imported files, but with the ability to collapse any portions of code not being concentrated on this hump has been eliminated for me altogether.

XML has been simplified greatly in Flash CS3 Professional with E4X, ECMAScript for XML. The XML becomes much easier to handle in Flash because the XML parsed is turned into something very similar to an associative array. E4X helps eliminate bad XML coding practices that have been found to be very common when people are given the power to create any type of tags they want, now the XML files are run through a validating parser to help remove XML coding errors.

There are many reasons to pick up a copy of Flash CS3 Professional. From the coding improvements, to the user interface changes, all of the new features combine to make this my favorite installation of Flash so far. The learning curve may be a bit steep just at first for new people jumping on the bandwagon, but nonetheless this platform is powerful for creating polished Flash projects.

The update to my favorite Flash remoting tools AMFPHP is now available.

New features of AMFPHP 1.9:

• AMF3 support, including RemoteObject. You can finally use it in Flex 2.
• JSON support. In addition to gateway.php, there is now json.php which allows you to use your services in JSON as well Flash. Two examples here: MochiKit and Spry. XML-RPC also supported. Details below.
• A new Service Browser. Try it live here. Notice that the samples.MochiTest service is the same one used by the JSON sample, so you can verify for yourself that indeed it works both in AMF and in JSON mode.
• The end of $this->methodTable. From now on, $this->methodTable is ignored. All methods are remotely accessible by default.

It’s extremely exciting about the inclusion of Flex support and the additional JSON support. Here is the feature list of AMFPHP with JSON:

• You can use the same service in JavaScript AND Flash.
• You can use the service browser to test your classes.
• Most PHP Ajax libraries mix and match code and presentation in a fashion which makes me sick to the stomach. Amfphp provides a clean way to organize your code and dispatch calls.
• It will use PHP’s json_* functions if it finds them (built-in in PHP 5.2, available as an extension in older versions), or will revert to PEAR JSON if it doesn’t, so you have an easy upgrade path if you need more speed.
• It will serialize recordsets directly.
• It doesn’t have any JavaScript dependencies, so you can use with whatever toolkit you like (prototype, MochiKit, Spry, you name it).

One of my favorite forums Sephiroth.it has a forum based on Flash remoting with AMFPHP.

More information can be found at AMFPHP and 5 1/2.

The Spry framework is used to incorporate XML data with the use of HTML, CSS, and a small bit of Javascript into HTML websites without the need to refresh the page. It’s simple to implement into projects with markup that is very easy to read. Here is an example of markup:

Spry.Effect.AppearFade(’mydiv’, {duration:3000,from:20,to:100,toggle:false});

This script will fade in the div object ‘mydiv’ for a duration of 3 seconds, from the start alpha of 20, to a full alpha of 100.

More information about the Spry Framework can be found at the Adobe Labs Spry framework page.

Here is a link to demos constructed with the Spry framework.

Adobe Photoshop CS3 Beta is now available for download over at Adobe labs Photoshop CS3 Beta. The Photoshop CS3 Beta is available in English, but only to licensed users of either Photoshop CS2, Adobe Creative Suite 2, Adobe Production Studio, Adobe Video Bundle, or Adobe Web Bundle. 

There are a plethora of new features within Photoshop CS3 Beta. Here is a rundown of what to look forward to:

• Non-destructive Smart Filters
• Quick Selection Tool
• Refine Edge
• Automatic layer alignment and blending
• Vanishing Point with multiple, adjustable angle perspective planes
• Black and White conversion
• Enhanced Adobe Camera Raw

Here is a list of the features more in depth Photoshop CS3 Beta New Features, and an in depth look at Bridge (Build 2.0.0.734) Beta.

The final shipping release for Photoshop CS3 is planned for spring 2007.

Of course I can’t leave out the ridiculously cool local system that seems a step above any other mapping system I’ve seen. It includes traffic, driving directions, and my favorite features by far, aerial mode and bird’s eye view. Want to zoom in? Double click! The interface is extremely simple, one click drag, double click zoom. There are a ton of features with local alone I’m extremely suprised how detailed it is.

The actual Microsoft Live logo in the top left hand corner has a submenu with even more features, including a safety center, shopping, and expo - very similar to Craigslist. Windows Live shopping has a very clean and easy to use interface.

Microsoft Windows Live login system works with Windows Live ID, and is compatible with MSN Hotmail, MSN Messenger, or Passport accounts.