People running Mac should think before upgrading to the next version of the Mac OS X, Snow Leopard, which is going to be released tomorrow. Adobe has confirmed that Adobe CS4 is fully compatible with this new OS and that it will run smoothly on it, however, Adobe has not run a compatibility test for the previous version CS3 and will not be supporting any bugs which could be appear on this OS. That is not to say that CS3 will not run on Snow Leopard, but don’t be surprised if it doesn’t. People still running Adobe CS3 should wait and hear other people’s feedback before making the jump. Others on CS4 have nothing to worry about.

Earlier this month Adobe released its August issue of Adobe Edge, which include a nice tutorial on how to do augment reality in Flash CS4 to show an interactive 3D object on a real image captured live from a camera. The tutorial does not explain every single line of code used, but does provide a general guide on how to create each separate piece and the general function of each code segment. A nice read for someone interested in such a project. View the tutorial here.

Adobe recently released a new product in Labs called Adobe Wave, which is basically a service tied to an AIR application to send updates directly to the desktop of end users. It serves the same function as a desktop based RSS reader, but is proprietary, does not read regular RSS feeds, and has no web based access for users to check the latest updates. The service will probably not have any wide spread due to the effort necessary for publishers to set up their feeds and integrate the Wave API into existing feeds.

Anyway, Flash developers should still check it out because it is a great example of a light-weight AIR application that has a nice simple interface and great web connectivity.

You can learn more about Adobe Wave at Adobe Labs.

Learn how to retrieve time and date information using this simple ActionScript 3.0 class in this tutorial.

Google unveiled in an short FAQ the list of partners working with Google on the Chrome OS and this list includes a some hardware manufacturers and Adobe. Though no explanation of the nature of partnership between Adobe and Google has been provided, it is most likely to be related to the integration of Adobe AIR into the Chrome OS. Adobe AIR is one of the most popular technologies for creating lightweight desktop applications with web functionality and has become the de facto technology for creating desktop based Twitter clients such as TweetDeck and Seesmic Desktop. Its inclusion in the Google OS would ensure the availability of all AIR applications for the users of Chrome.

It is very unlikely for the partnership of Adobe with Google to involve the development of a CS suite or any other professional Adobe product for Chrome as this OS is currently targeted only for netbooks which are unlikely to be able to handle processor intensive programs or 3D graphics.

You can read the Chrome OS FAQ here.

Google announced yesterday it’s intention to release an operating system focused around its browser Chrome and web technologies. The Chrome OS will be built on top of the Linux kernel and will be targeted at netbooks. The OS will enable native use of web applications and will enable developers to create applications for the OS using web technologies. Google announced that the OS will be available to consumers in the second half of 2010.

The Google Chrome OS will probably not be for everyone as it will focus on web based applications which have yet not reached the stage at which they can replace specialist applications such as Photoshop CS4 or Flash CS4. It will be very unlikely for these applications to be ported to this OS, however the OS is clearly targeted at the mass consumer market through netbooks and not professional users.

In terms of project deployment, Flash developers should not worry about having their web based projects run on Chrome OS as the Chrome browser supports Flash, but the same could not be said about Adobe AIR projects which require the installation of the AIR runtime at the OS level. However, AIR is currently available for Windows, Mac, and Linux. As Chrome OS will open source and based on Linux, it is very likely for Adobe to release AIR for the Chrome OS as Adobe has supported other similar Google projects (i.e. Android).

You can learn more about the Chrome OS by checking the announcement at the Google Blog and TechCrunch.

Adobe announced today that the first Android device to be shipped with the Flash plug-in is the HTC Hero. Though not clearly expressed anywhere in the announcement, this device supports Flash Lite 3.1 and not the previously announced full Flash Player 10. This means that ActionScript 3.0 is not supported, and only up to Flash Player 9 movies made in AS2 will be playable. Adobe claims that this means that up to 85% of Flash on the Internet will be supported.

As seen from the announcement video, the integration of Flash in the player is excellent, the user could double click any Flash object to have that object displayed in full screen landscape mode. This makes viewing Flash video nice and makes playing games comparable to standalone applications.

There is no doubt that this is a great development for Flash, however, the fact that Flash Lite 3.1 does not support AS3 will be a barrier for entry for many developers.

There are no updates on whether Flash will ever be seen on the iPhone, but the other recent competitor, the Palm Pre, is expected to have the full Flash Player 10 sometime next year.

You can learn more about Flash on Android at the Flash Mobile Blog and Adobe.

A drawback in using Flash websites instead of HTML websites is that it is hard to track the path in which the user follows in a website in order to analyse and assess the effectiveness of that website. “Use It Better” hopes to solve this problem by introducing an analysis service for tracking events and mouse movement in Flash websites. The service will store the data on the servers of Use It Better to allow developer to view stats or even replay whole sessions as navigated through by end users.

Use It Better seems like a very promising project, implementing it in actual websites is supposed be a process that involves simply including the Use It Better class in a Flash project. The service works with both AS2 and AS3.

It is not clear how much the service could affect the performance of Flash websites using it as it could potentially be used to track and record all sorts of information from mouse movement to caching of SharedObject data and XML files. The service could also potentially have privacy considerations as personal data might be recorded in the process (e.g. XML data containing personal information).

Use It Better is currently in private beta. You can sign up to receive an invitation by using the form here.

[via .swfGeek]

 Electric Rain released today the new version of Swift3D, the 3D modeling and animation tool of choice for Flash designers. The new Swif3d v6 features new boolean operations for merging and punching objects out of each other, enhanced speed and performance, support for Papervision3D 2.0 to create real time 3D Flash graphics, and other new features.

I was personally not impressed at all with the implementation of Papervision3D in the previous version of Swif3D, so I hope the implementation of Papervision3D 2.0 is better.

v6 is instantly available for purchase for both the Mac and Windows at the price of $250. Trial versions are not out yet. You can learn more about Swift3D from the official website of Electric Rain.

 We would like to thank Wix.com for sponsoring Republic of Code a number of times. Wix is a powerful online Flash-based application for creating Flash websites without using any ActionScript. Using this tool you can create simple Flash websites, widgets, and galleries by simply dragging and dropping various elements from a clip art collection or by directly uploading them from your desktop.

If you are interested in quickly putting up a Flash website or gallery make sure you check out Wix.