Shu-Player Rises Above Adobe's Air and Makes It Better.

This afternoon Steven Sacks sent me the link to the Shu-Player website. At first I was great just another extension or plug-in to use. But I began reading about it and it appears to give developers the ability to actually launch native apps on the system using Air by extending it with features we have been wanting, and it works for both MAC and PC no less. The ability to launch native applications is just one of many gripes developers tend to have when using air as they are often needing to use other apps in conjunction with the one built in Air. This Shu app seems to be giving developers the ability to that and some more. Now, another gut reaction I had was oh nice another ZINC like app that will go away in a few months because Adobe will just do what these guys are doing. Well, that might be true and who knows what Adobe will do. But for now this looks promising and maybe Adobe will take some notes and give developers what they want. We'll just have to see. Anyway's, read below to see what the Shu-Player claims to offer. At the very least Adobe knows that their desktop application framework might be fAIR at best and could do well by adding some addition features in the future. If its anything like they did with Lazlo or Zinc they will do something themselves and then let us use it way off in the unforeseen future. Also you should hear what Steven Sacks has to say about this as well: http://www.stevensacks.net/2008/03/31/a-wrapper-for-adobes-wrapper/

 

 

What Does Shu Do For You?

Shu enables you to increase the power and reach of Adobe AIR. With Shu your AIR applications can quickly be converted into standalone applications to run on PC or Mac machines without the AIR runtime installed! Shu applications can also be run from a CD or network share and do not require installation.

In addition Shu provides you the developer with a toolkit of commands to extend the system capabilities of your AIR application, features include, controlling external applications, opening external files, database connectivity and control, system path retrieval and screen capture functionality. With Shu you can now truly harness the power of your AIR applications from the desktop and beyond!

 

Learn More

Adobe AIR brings the convenience of the browser to the desktop but without any of the limitations. Developers can now rapidly create Rich Internet Applications using the proven web technologies that they are familiar with namely, JavaScript and ActionScript. User experiences can be self contained, controlled and branded.

Desktop integration provides new functionality; local storage, encryption, notification, access to the desktop file system and the ability to operate offline. AIR also supports multiple platform delivery, which means that AIR applications can be installed, and run on multiple operating systems. The RIA has truly come of age.

But AIR does have a number of drawbacks;

• AIR applications must be installed in order to run.
• AIR applications will only run on a machine with the AIR runtime installed
• AIR applications can not be run directly from a CD
• AIR applications can not open files such as word documents or PDFs
• AIR applications can not execute other applications
• AIR application can only make use of the built in SQLite database

With Shu developers can now easily over come these restrictions, taking all the great features of an AIR application and packaging them into a powerful standalone application.

Shu really is the obvious choice for any developers wanting to develop and deploy professional AIR applications.

Quick Links

• Learn More

Buy Shu Now

Start increasing the power of your AIR applications now!

Latest News

SHU site launches - 01.04.08
The long awaited launch of the world's first AIR packager application for extending AIR features. Read more

http://shu-player.com/

Listen To Icon Designer - Bobby Andersen

Note: He is using Cinema 4D for his icon creation. Although I think after one makes hundreds of tweaks to an icon in Photoshop it can make your reasoning for doing it 3D a little debatable if your argument is to save time, since it means a few hundred more changes to make the next render right as he described it. But in the end I too am a fan of using 3D for icon creation as long as it helps produce a nice result and can be updated easily. One thing he did not mention is the use of multi-pass renders for color corrections and edits to simplify client changes upon request. I think he should have mentioned that if he was aware of the process and how it too can be integrated with Photoshop reducing the 30 minute renders he mentioned. Also the fresnel shader is what helps make nice glass renders in C4D. Also beware of the hosts laugh heheheheheh... heheheheheh...

Google Code University - Free Programming Lessons

Quote From Site - "This website provides tutorials and sample course content so CS students and educators can learn more about current computing technologies and paradigms. In particular, this content is Creative Commons licensed which makes it easy for CS educators to use in their own classes.

The Courses section contains tutorials, lecture slides, and problem sets for a variety of topic areas:

* AJAX Programming

* Distributed Systems

* Web Security

* Languages

In the Tools 101 section, you will find a set of introductions to some common tools used in Computer Science such as version control systems and databases. The CS Curriculum Search will help you find teaching materials that have been published to the web by faculty from CS departments around the world. You can refine your search to display just lectures, assignments or reference materials for a set of courses."

http://code.google.com/edu/

http://code.google.com/edu/ajax/index.html

Happy Easter from FACEinHOLE

Create your own FACEinHOLE

Try the SearchMe.com Beta

You'll definitely want to check out SearchMe.com. It's still in beta at the time of this posting but Ryan Swanson has been using it and this new application looks really cool so far. Still a few minor bugs with it so be patient but you'll see how cool it is right away or by watching the demo video above. This might be a sign of things to come for searching.

http://www.searchme.com/

Blogged with the Flock Browser

New Layer Find / Search Feature I Would Like To See In Future Versions of Photoshop

I have long been wanting to have the ability to search directly in the layers panel to find a specific layer or set of layers. Some of you might think Photoshop already does everything you need. Well, it does not. There are many things that it could still do or do better in future versions and this is just one of my many ideas I have for Photoshop. Another one is including CSS support for layers and their font properties and styling since it would be very nice to sweep many layers with one or many property changes for text etc... without having to do one offs every time. I will do another mockup of the css support in another post.

In this example we have over 100 layers in our Layer panel and I want to be able to get to this layer. Now traditionally in the past we had the option of using key commands to quick select the layer by using the following:

1. Control > Alt > Right Click
2. Control > Right Click

These methods for searching and finding layers are ok but don’t allow for a set or collection of layers returned all at once. Why is this something that should be in Photoshop you ask? Well for people like me who work with many hundreds of layers all the time I want a very easy and efficient way of finding layers and sets of layers based on a text string entry. I would like to see this added to Photoshop.

If you have any comments on this subject please let me know as I'll be doing these often. This way I have expressed my humble voice and published my new ideas out on the series of tubes better known as the internet.

Blogged with the Flock Browser

Powerful CSS-Techniques For Effective Coding

I found this link the other day and really it's a good compilation of CSS applications and usage. It's good to keep this link on hand for CSS reference at minimum.

Quote - "In this post we present 50 new CSS-techniques, ideas and ready-to-use solutions for effective coding. You definitely know some of them, but definitely not all of them. "

http://www.smashingmagazine.com/2008/02/21/powerful-css-techniques-for-effective-coding/

Blogged with the Flock Browser

Flock Browser == "Amazing"

If you haven't yet tried the new Flock Browser. Then I suggest you do it do it do it. It basically has some of the coolest Social Networking tools all in one place as well as Blogging Capabilities and a sh!t ton more features making this my new favorite browser right now. In fact I made this post in the Flock Browser. It seems to be based of the Firefox platform so there is a bonus right there. I'm telling you. It's sick as f@ck yo. And also read this article on how Firefox is the web's platform - http://www.cnet.com/8301-13505_1-9893479-16.html?part=rss&subj=news&tag=2547-1_3-0-20

A Newbie's Guide to Flock

http://www.webware.com/8301-1_109-9806087-2.html

Blogged with the Flock Browser

On Creativity - by Andy Rutledge

 

 

 

 

I am a creative person and so are you. Are you? Well, this post on List Apart is a good read and I really think it's a good idea to stop and think. Think about what? Well, the act of being creative. What is it? How is it defined? What makes us creative? The topic could go on and on for days or longer even. But we all express creativity in different ways.  It's what makes us very unique and at the same time part of the same big picture.  I often think that creativity it really just the universe extending itself but enough of that for now hehe. Anyway's, this is a good post and thought I'd just share the link that Andy Rutledge posted.

Quote From Post - "If you’re a web designer, do you consider yourself to be “a creative”? When you describe your profession to others, or when you promote yourself or your agency, are references to creativity prominent in your words? If so, how do you characterize creativity’s role or significance in your work? How closely do your references to creativity conform to the popular understanding of creativity…and how much to its actual nature?"

http://www.alistapart.com/articles/oncreativity

Adobe Cards

John Starr sent me this link today: http://adobecards.com/

Who is Using Flex?

I saw this article today and thought it will be a good reference to have on hand for helping a client understand who else is using the Adobe Flex Technology.

Quote - "When considering new tools, decision makers in the software industry often consider the rate of adoption as a key metric in their assessment on whether or not to embrace a given tool. Adobe’s Flex framework seems to be nearing a critical point in this cycle, as a number of large companies are now using Flex to implement new features. So, who is using Flex anyway?"

http://www.infoq.com/news/2007/10/who-is-using-flex

Adobe Photoshop CS4 ( Codename Stonehenge 11.0 )

QUOTE FROM SITE- "The person who sent me the tip wishes to remain anonymous, but they did let me know that they haven’t found anything new in the release thus far. The compilation date of this build is November 1st, 2007 meaning it is a little dated already, and it was likely an early release sent out to key testers. Rumors have it that this build of Photoshop CS4 only contains Vista compatibility fixes, and not really anything else."

I saw this early on a digg today and thought it was interesting. Anyway's read more here >>