Ive been pretty busy last couple of days and I completely missed new public beta released of Flash Player 9 (codenamed “Moviestar”) which is available now on labs. I suspected something like this could happen,when Adobe introduced video hardware acceleration and dual core support in last beta update. Well, together with the bunch of fixes, component caching and full screen improvements, new beta 3 of Flash Player now supports HD capable H.264 video and HE-AAC audio codecs - or in other words very limited sub set of MPEG-4, 3GP and QuickTime movie support. You can load and play .mp4,.m4v,.m4a,.mov and .3gp files using the same NetStream API you use to load FLV files. Anyways Tinic Uro has a great post on his blog covering all the technical details of this new update.

Alright, first watch this:

So my observation and underlying question to this is: if Eric Schmidt now said what he EXPECTS Web 3.0 to be, doesn't that actually tilt the whole development world into that direction? Maybe only a handful of developers are thinking the way he is at this moment (small applications with data in a cloud spreading on viral logic, ...), but now that he said he expects that to be true, entire development world will have to take this into consideration. When developers start making new apps, they will remember what he said, bow down to the mighty Google controlling more and more of our planet, and start thinking like Eric Schmidt does.

And that is bad. The Web should define itself, not be defined by one of the most powerful men on the globe.

Not to mention that his view of Ajax defining Web 2.0 is a bit dull...

This was on the tips of our tongues for the past few months, just somehow no one managed to put it down to coherent words. Until certain Trevor finally said what should have been said few months ago; enough - with - the - friggin' - bubbles!

I will shamelessly copy his image:

update (04-09-07) Bubbles are out, leaves are in! :) Tnx Lekke!

Big up to Deamon for finding out this collection of pure gems - Top 10 WORST Sci-Fi Shows EVER! w/Videos. Ha, I remember Automan being my favorite TV show when I was a kid. Next to the Muppets. :) Be sure to check all videos.

Automan and his trusty sidekick Pixel! :)

Heya boys and girls. If you are using MSN messenger, like i am, then you might have noticed new banner on the bottom of it. Microsoft is advertising an upgrade to Hotmail, now called Windows Live Hotmail. So, i clicked on it, just for the fun of it. And was i amazed, or what?

First you get greeted by a localized version of a landing page, so in my case - Croatian version. I cannot tell you how WRONGLY translated any and all software is that i saw translated to Croatian and i bet similar thing is with most of the localized software. I prefer English versions of software, and landing page does not have an option to switch language. Please keep track for how long will i NOT have a chance to switch language (i mean, the language detector could be wrong!).

(CLICK ON IMAGES TO ENLARGE THEM)

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Alright, so lets say i want to create account and login to this new amazing email.

We are at the first screen: it has two sections, left of the line, and right of the line. On the left is "Create new account" section, with FUNNY SMALL button that gets me started with registration process. What the hell? If you need to attract the user to start using your new service, you do not put button 10x10 pixels small, you make it attractive and big!

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Where on Earth is the login box if i already have an account? There is none? Oh, no, there is, but you need to ROLLOVER it for button to appear! Armmmm, is it just me or this is so unusable that it is actually painful? Hidden button to log in! Some designer at Microsoft actually gets salary doing this, you know?

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OK, so i either registered (registration form is more or less OK) or i have an account, so i logged in. Now i have to choose which version of Hotmail do i want, the stripped down one, or the full powerful one. But the powerful one is positioned LOWER. If you invest so much time in a new powerful product, then position it so - on top of classic one!

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So i picked the advanced version, prepared to be amazed. In search of language switcher, because i could barely stand to look at stupid Croatian translations, i first went searching how to switch language. Options > More options > Change language. My god, i need to dig through bloody options in oder to switch languages. Usability, lesson ONE - users need to be able to read or change language of your site INSTANTLY, not after 10 page reloads and different settings.

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Of course, once i got to language selector, it was there in Alphabetic order, but English was not bumped to the top. How any normal designer would have done it, is put English, Chinese, and Croatian (since browser detected it) on top, then put line, and then the rest of the languages in Alphabetic order.

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Alright, now i switched to normal language, now i can start using this amazing email software. First thing, let's check how to write emails. Well, click "New Message", doh. And this is what you get.

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Just in case your eyes are not so quick at making out details (as are my trained "Lazer Eyez 2000 Super Plus"), i will point the things out for you.

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Microsoft just released Vista, and in Vista they introduced (finally) cool looking icons. What the HELL are this icons then? Who authorized usage of this? Someone actually said "Yea, good job mister designer, we will go out with this icons, here is a pay raise!". Let me zoom in onto them, check them out in full glory:

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Anyone who was ever doing any pixel work is now most likely throwing-up lunch, i apologize for that. But, let me show you, just one more time this Smiley Microsoft used, it feels so "Beginning of the Internet" it is unbelievable:

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At this point, i just stopped this and went doing something more constructive. Sleeping or something.

I haven't posted anything remotely intelligent on our bling bling blog for a while. 15 hour work day here at nivas.hr didn't help nether. :)

For the last couple of weeks I've been reading Essential ActionScript 3.0. And, oh my... What a great book that is! I am overwhelmed because I haven't read Essential AS2, and for that I should shoot my self in the leg and bang my head in the wall repeatedly.

Two years of work, over 15 technical reviewers including chief Adobe engineers. Very fluent (book is reading it self) and perfectly written, Colin goes into much detail as he can, but he doesn't bore you to the death. 900 pages of really essential ActionScript fundamentals. If you want to get into serious actionscripting - this book is the one you want!

According to Mike Downey and Ryan Stewart, Colin Moock's Essential ActionScript 3.0 is the bestselling O'Reilly book EVER and I just checked - it's 8th on Amazon's best seller list in Computers & Internet category. Go get it NOW! :)

Update: There is interesting post on Colin Moocks blog about composition vs inheritance for Sprite and MovieClip. Something that puzzled me big time after reading ActionScript 3 Design Patterns and still while reading EA 3.0. Check it out and be unpuzzled. :)