Ben Forta | Blog

Blog posts made in September 2012

We've posted a beta of AIR 3.5 to Adobe Labs. This release supports creative apps for iOS 6 and Android Jelly Bean, as well as additional features and bug fixes.

Into gaming and game development? Do you want to show off your game coding skills, have fun, and win some cool prizes? Join us at the Adobe Game Jam in San Francisco October 19-20, 2012. You'll meet like-minded people and learn more about game design and development using Adobe Flash technologies. Oh, and if you are not S.F. based, fear not, we hope to take the show on the road in the future.

I posted some details on the PhoneGap Build release over on the Adobe Digital Media Blog.

Lots of news today. In case any of you missed the Create The Web event, here's a summary:

Edge Animate 1.0 has been released.
CSS Filter Lab is now available to play with.
Lots of great new typography options with the totally free Edge Web Fonts and the greatly enhanced TypeKit.
Edge Reflow will be in preview soon.
Edge Inspect is now available to help you preview and inspect web designs on devices.
Edge Code is ready for you to play with.
PhoneGap Build 1.0 released.
Best way to get it all is via the Creative Cloud, and you can get started for free.
We're taking the Create The Web show on the road, and if you'd like us to drop by, you should nominate your location.

I think that about sums it up!

PhoneGap 2.1 has just been released. The change and bug fix list is huge, but the biggest change is iOS 6 support.

As per this article, the BBC has announced the launch of a brand new media player for Android devices. The new player is based on Adobe AIR and was developed in response to Flash not begin supported on Android as of Jelly Bean. It's good to see folks understand that even without Flash for in-browser experiences, it remains valuable and compelling for app experiences via AIR.

My little Sams Teach Yourself SQL in 10 Minutes is my best-selling title, it has sold over 1/4 million copies in English, has been translated into more than a dozen languages, has created spin-off titles focused on specific DBMSs, and has even become a textbook in numerous colleges and universities worldwide. And at just over 200 pages, it was surprisingly one of the most difficult books to write, too. As such, I've been very reluctant to tamper with this title, sometimes you just want to leave a good thing alone.

It took significant prodding from my publisher, but I have indeed updated this book. For starters, we needed to update content to cover newer versions of popular databases like SQL Server, MySQL, and Oracle. I also wanted to add specific coverage for important new options, most notably SQLite.

But, the most important enhancement, and this is what clinched the update for me, is that this new edition is printed in color (as proudly noted on the cover image). Colored titles and headers are pretty cool, but where you really see the value is in long SQL statements that are so much more readable when color-coded.

I'm really excited about this update, and want to publicly thank the folks at Pearson for the push and support.

More to follow!

The GoViral ANE (AIR native extension) for Android, lets you use AS3 to rapidly integrate social networking support for Facebook, Twitter, and email into your mobile AIR application. Milkman Games' Alex Liebert explains in his new ADC article.

Andy Matthews has written a great introduction to Yeoman for ADC.

Remember Christophe Coenraets' PhoneGap API Explorer for iPad that I mentioned a few weeks ago? Well, the Android version is now available, and Christophe tells all in this blog post.