Apollo What it shouldnt be and what it could be
Ok, Im back at work and back in the swing of things (groan) again, so blog posts should be a little bit more regular again.
A nice thing about the Xmas break is I got some time to work on my Flabulator (see previous posts) some more. Which leads me to what Apollo could be. Or at least someone migh extend the opensource player Gnash.
Apollo is the Desktop based application which Adobe (wow that still sounds wierd) will be announcing details about next month. Flabulator is my personal flash widgets framework atempt which has been recieving alot of google hits and many emails. I have been through no less than three re-writes after learning and experimenting with what is possible and not possible. Luckly I now have a working framework that is starting to become something I hoped it would. And flash websites and swfs can become widgets with no modifications, and have access to the system if need be. Well poke me with a big stick I might one day finish a personal project.
SUMMARY:
This is first so you dont have to wade through the rest, if you dont want to. Flash has always been a desktop content delivery platform. It has security and limtiations specifcally designed for this purpose. It can be used to develop local computer multimedia but now has restrictions on what it can do in that mode. If Flash wants to break into the evolving area of what I will call "internet aware" dektop apps there are some changes to be made. I hope Apollo answers these.
I have noticed everyone wants to know how to get alpha transparency flash movies. I get countless emails asking how to do this. Mprojector, Zinc, Screenweaver, and my latest favourite FlashPlayerControl all allow this. Flashplayercontrol being the only one approaching it from the windows programmer side as opposed to the flash developer side.
Flash needs wrappers to have access to local resources and perform system tasks. Well its a semi desktop app so yes.
The Player securities cant restrict functionality to much. Note the whole CD project debacle with flash cds not having access to local file system in flash player 8 etc.
Script access please. Ill be the first to admit that the external interface rocks, but I would love access to events inside of flash. Mouseovers, etc.
Finally, when flash makes a request for a file or http request applications have to be able to catch these calls and preprocess them to handel certain conditions. The flashplayercontrol has this. I am adding caching to my widgets for when URLs are relative not absolute, and when the widget is ofline I can fall back on the cached versions. This is really something of real importance for Apollo in my view.
WHAT IS SHOULDNT BE:
A lame a$$ atempt of pushing pdf and swf together, like forcing the hot chick at school to go out with the fat kid. (lol you decide which is which in that reference). Knowing Adobes and Macromedias history I seriouly doubt this will be the case. But knowing Adobe and Macormedias history there might be some questionable pricing models and lack of extendability. (hey Im gonna groan till its free and OpenSource ok!)
OTHER EXPANDING STUFF!
Flash has always been played with as a UI tool for Desktop apps. I remeber making the VB example from macromedia.com and extending it to make a drag and drop image library with slide show etc. It worked (kinda clunky in version 6) way back 3 years ago. But in all reality it was something better suited to a diferent lanuage. Kinda like dressing a poodle up as a Pit-Bull to scare crooks, It worked from a distance but was laughable up close. Now C# and external interface has made life alot better and using Flash as UI has become a real option. I prefer to do alot of the processing behind the scenes in the faster system lanuages but 8.5 might change this.
Hands up all who watched the Mac Keynote speech at work to save bandwidth costs, no? well I did. Next hands up all who watched the Keynote at all?
Ok so I saw IWeb and though…."That should be flash!!" So heres the senario. Iweb is a website creation tool to create blogs, websites, galleries etc and then publish them to the web (or at least .mac). Youy select a template and that appears with pre-populated pictures. You have a window to the side with your local pics that you can drag and drop to replace the images on the template. Easy! you can aslo edit text, positioning etc etc.
So I’m thinking Apollo should allow me as a flash developer to create this swf, put it on my website, allow users to browse to it using Apollo and do this stuff…and include pdf into the workflow (hey adobe has to have something for thier million dollar purchase right?). But this currently can’t happen. Flash cant access a directory on my computer and show me all the images?. I cant drag and drop an image from that window and the swf running from the website load the local file to display right? Flash can now upload those images but not create folders and files through ftp right? (well maybe 8.5 with sockets 
) ).
Why not? I do all these things already with other apps. I think the container should add this sort of thing ie Apollo.
Transparency of flash movies over the desktop (that is the movie background is clear) is one of the most requested features out there for flash on desktops. I get many emails and comments asking how to do it. I have had very limited success with the raw flash.ocx (the activeX from Adobe), Many wrappers can provide this. Is it that hard? I suppose it comes down to Lanuage choice. I have choosen c# for its quick development for prototypes. I will be trying it in c++ but really .Net is really gaining ground and its something I think Flash devs should look at as its an easy transition from AS.
Really im hanging out for the anouncement of Apollo and its features, but Im also really afraid. It could be another Central ( which was cool but didnt answer any real problems). It could answer all the problems facing desktop developers today. Who knows? Not I.
But I will be checking the Labs site regularily for that announcement.
