A Digital Magazine for HTML and JavaScript Developers

A Digital Magazine for HTML and JavaScript Developers « The ADC Blog function clearSearch() {document.search_form.s.value = "";} .recentcomments a{display:inline !important;padding:0 !important;margin:0 !important;}adobe.com      The ADC Blog / A Digital Magazine for HTML and JavaScript Developersby brinaldi  

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More buzz from BUILD – Developers get their devices!

I just got back from the Anaheim Convention Center where I got to see thousands of developers receiving their Samsung prototype PC with Windows 8 Developer Preview.

   

Christian Loredo, John Tobin, Johnny Gabbai where the first 3 people in line for their devices and got a special surprise: Steven Sinofsky stopped by personally to hand them their PCs. Not only that, but Steven also signed their boxes!

  

After the developers picked up their devices, they had an option of picking up a completely custom laptop sleeve made from recycled banners from past Microsoft events that are specifically designed and fitted for these PCs.

I have to say that it was absolutely incredible to see such excitement from everyone as they unboxed their devices.

Speaking of unboxing, Mike Angiulo, Corporate Vice President of Hardware & PC Ecosystem, stopped by Channel 9 earlier to do an unboxing of the device with Larry Larsen. Check out the unboxing video below:

I can’t wait to see the kinds of apps developers make for Windows 8!

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GIMP - Developer Web image editor

GIMP is a program that runs on Windows, Linux and OS X for free image editing systems. It is a set of well designed software which is in competition with major commercial software for manipulation of the image in a web development environment. If you need to create graphics for your web page, GIMP is an attractive and effective option.

GIMP is an acronym for GNU Image Manipulation Program - which essentially means that it is a graphical software open source.

GIMP has received much criticism from people who complain about lack of features in Photoshop, the industry-leading software graphics handling. GIMP lack some CMYK printing support as Photoshop, but for most developers web that works very well - and since it costs nothing, it is a very attractive option for the 699 USD price tag that comes with Photoshop.

If you are ready to look at alternatives to Photoshop, GIMP is an excellent place to watch. It has a very familiar appearance, with two main columns holding many of the features you need when you edit images.

Your basic Toolkit is exposed as soon as you open your image. Here you have a rectangular and circular selection tool. A web developer, you will use these many cultures images and make the selections so that you can edit the sections of an image without bringing it to another section. There is also a free selection tool called the lasso, that you can use to create selections of free-form more. A "magic wand"tool makes selections based on the function of rows already in the image, and there is also a color selection tool to select areas of similar color.

Beyond these basic tools there is much more - you will find the standard lens, the eyedropper tool to select the colours, the paint bucket to fill large areas, a pencil, a Brush tool and one gum among others.

GIMP fully supports the addition of brushes, which can be used with the pencil, Brush tool tool and Eraser tool. I love the brushes that you can easily add effects to the images, the images of the banner. You can find many brushes - waves, plants, the stars, the clocks - the list is long and and. It is easy to add new brushes to GIMP.

GIMP supports gradients. It is loaded with many gradients, and you can easily add custom gradients. If you do much work making buttons and other "web 2.0" you'll love the gradients.

There is a text tool to allow you to create layers of text on your image. As with the brushes and degraded you can quickly and easily add fonts to your GIMP program, and it comes preloaded with many fonts open source.

GIMP is for the serious image manipulation and provides complete support for layers. Native extension of GIMP is the ".xcf" extension, which allows to save your image with full layers intact. It also supports the extension of layers Photoshop ".psd".

GIMP offers many options image and layer, including resizing, rotating and flipping. There is a menu full of color, expanded to its own autonomous menu dans dans recent versions of GIMP.

There are many standard filters included with GIMP - some more famous as shadowed. You could spend weeks playing with each of them, and as with other parts of the GIMP you can add your own filters, including some popular Photoshop filters (such as colouring).

GIMP is a robust and fully equipped. It is perfect for the web developer who is in need of crop and resize images and occasionally wants to create banners and buttons. You will find lots of tutorials online to any effect or graphic you would like to create with GIMP. It is an incredible, versatile program with a perfect price - free.

Kristen is an avid writer, constantly working on new ideas for articles and sites. Visit his site on Nutiva coconut oil and learn more about coconut hair oil.

What Creative Suite 5.5 brings to game developers

Building games for mobile devices with various operating systems is one of the biggest challenges for developers. Creative Suite 5.5 makes it easier and allows you to deploy games that run across Android, BlackBerry Tablet OS, and iOS. You can also test your game with different resolutions and DPIs using device profiles in Flash Builder. In Flash Pro, you can rescale content to any screen-size just by ticking one checkbox and so on…

As a game developer CS5.5 brings to you are not only new export options, but also tooling that is tied to mobile publishing and helps you to do things faster.

Let’s have a look at what CS5.5 brings you and how it makes your life easier.

Deploy to web, desktop and mobile
Mobile porting has never been easier. Choose among iOS, Android and BlackBerry Tablet OS or all of them.

Export as Bitmap for better performance
Next to Cache as Bitmap is an option to convert your vector artwork directly to bitmap format right in Flash CS5.5 IDE during export. The good thing is, that you still work with the artwork as with vector, but once you export the SWF, it’s converted to bitmap. Tweening bitmaps is less CPU demanding than vectors and your app will perform better. Unlike Cache as Bitmap, you can rotate and scale the artwork during runtime without having it re-cached – so that’s why Export as Bitmap might work better you. Cache as Bitmap is good choice, but only if you change positions – if you start rotating and scaling – it will re-cache every change. Although this can be solved with cacheAsBitmapMatrix on mobile platforms, Export as Bitmap is another very useful option to consider.

Sharing assets across FLA files
Once you create a new Flash project, you can share Library assets between different FLA files. This makes life easier, especially when you are porting your game to different screen-sizes and devices. While you link libraries together, you can change a symbol in one of the libraries and it will automatically update it in other FLA files.

In the image below I have edited the star in only one of the libraries and it’s been automatically updated in the second one.

Scale content with stage
While porting your game to different screen-sizes, this feature might come very handy. When changing the stage width and height, you can tick “Scale content with stage”, which will resize the content to fit the different stage size.

Copy/paste assets from Illustrator to Flash
I like this one, it makes my workflow faster. Although it’s a feature from CS5, it’s still good to be reminded of it. As you can see, shapes and gradients done in Illustrator are represented natively in Flash.

On-device USB debugging
Helps you to test and debug your app right on the real device. Access multitouch, accelerometer and other device specific features you are implementing in your app.

Device profiles
There are many device profiles ready for you. If there is a new device on the market, just add it by yourself or update the list.

There are many more features you’ll find useful and I hope you will enjoy building games with CS5.5.

Have a look at Lee Brimelow’s video tutorial showing new Flash CS5.5 features.

Check these links for further information about the tooling:
Flash Professional CS 5.5
Flash Builder 4.5

Visit Adobe Game Technology Center for tutorials.

Finally, look at this mobile and tablet game running on iPad, XOOM, iPhone, HTC and more built with Creative Suite 5.5 and AIR 2.6:

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