Since the integration of the Flash and PDF ( since ColdFusion 8 ) platforms, more and more developers are flocking towards ColdFusion again, and it is seen as a great alternative to meet business needs quickly and effectively, and more and more businesses are hiring ColdFusion developers because of that.

Read more about ColdFusion 9′s key features and download links…

Some of the Coldfusion 9 features include:

• ColdFusion Object Relational Mapping (ColdFusion ORM) – a powerful Rapid Application Development (RAD) solution for building data-centric applications
• Offline application support for AIR applications
• Enhanced Flash remoting capabilities
• A broader set of Ajax controls that leverage the new Ext JS 3.0 library
• Improved PDF functionality
• Integration with other products and technologies such as Microsoft SharePoint and OpenOffice
• Server Manager – an AIR-based desktop application to centrally manage multiple ColdFusion servers from a single location
• Powerful search capabilities using Solr, an open-source enterprise search server based on the Lucene Java search library
• database enhancements and significant performance enhancements such as, granular control over caching, in-memory file capabilities, and improved clustering
• many language and CFC enhancements

You can download the ColdFusion 9 beta here, the ColdFusion builder beta can be found here (Adobe Labs membership required). As always, these are betas and may still contain a ton of bugs, so make sure you backup and existing projects, just to be safe

This new player will enable developers and integrators to create rich, expressive applications targeted to the latest version of Adobe’s Flash technology, with the ability to distribute their apps including the runtime installer to millions of open OS mobile devices with a streamlined workflow and reduced time to market.

For now, the distributable player is only available on Nokia S60 and Windows Mobile devices, but more devices are to follow very soon…

An integrated, updatedable solution

The runtime is part of a solution that includes the Flash Lite 3.1 Distributable Player and Adobe Mobile Packager, with authoring support provided via Adobe Flash CS4 Professional and Adobe Device Central CS4 (or via Adobe Flash CS3 Professional and Adobe Device Central CS3). Adobe Mobile Packager is a desktop tool enabling developers to transform an swf file into an install-package for S60′s and Windows Mobile devices.

The distributable player works in a similar way to Adobe’s Flash 10 Player – once installed and if you have a mobile device that allows OTA (over-the-air) updates, the application will update itself, ensuring that every user has the latest version of the mobile player installed.

The distributable player solution allows you to create rich mobile applications that:

• Target the latest Flash Lite player, by mimicking the successful Flash Player desktop model of content triggered downloads but for applications. Developers no longer need to worry about whether the device has the latest Flash Lite runtime.
• Reach millions of open OS smartphone users in the US, UK, Italy, Spain and through free direct-to-consumer distribution, new off-deck aggregator partners (GetJar, Thumbplay, Zed), or your existing distribution channels.
• Improve end user experience through easy installation and visual icons for Flash Lite applications.

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Easy distribution and marketing

There are several ways that a user can discover the application you developed, depending on the distribution channel, some examples of how the consumer may discover the application are:

• Catalog of one of Adobe’s Aggregator partners such as GetJar, Thumbplay and Zed
• Your own/the aggregator/other distribution channel desktop or mobile website
• A print or TV ad, with an SMS shortcode or web address

At the moment, Adobe’s Flash Lite solution is only available on Windows Mobile and S60 devices in India, Italy, Spain, UK, and the U.S., however additional countries will be added over time.

If you would like to give this new distributable player a try and work on your own mobile Flash application, why not have a look at the link below.

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Related information:

• Adobe’s Distributable Player Solution information (Abobe Labs)
• Download the Distributable Player

Last time I wrote about this Yahoo / Flash mashup I connected the Yahoo map’s API through Flash and PHP to a MySQL database and was able to write / read from the entries. My next goals were to integrate a user-login, adding links, implementing moderation and a Flash image uploader script.
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Integrating a PHP uploader script

A very important aspect for both users (and our clients) is to be able to ‘take part’ and ‘be part’ of shaping the user-generated content area of a site, to leave their mark. Naturally, images and content are the weapons of choice, as such the next step was to work on an image-uploader. The task:

Develop an image uploader script through Flash that would allow users to upload an image from their desktop, store it online in a writeable folder on the server and reference to it from the SQL database and display the image for the relevant post for the relevant user.

This wasn’t such an easy task. I had a good look around how Flash tutorial websites I usually frequent handle image upload. After some working I managed to get the PHP side of things working – which also had its own issues to start with, it would not update file names properly (see image to the right, click to enlarge)! After some fiddling around I managed to get the php script to work, and if you like you can download it here:

Please download the file here: fileupload.zip (~800 bytes)

What the script does is it defines the maximum file dimensions (180×300 max in either direction) and uploads the file to a temporary directory (/tempstore/) before giving it a timestamp and name-change and putting it into the /images/ directory.

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Connecting PHP with Flash

This was a bit (okay, a hell of a lot) more complicated: through the variables ‘FileReference‘ and ‘browseListener‘ and a couple of other event listeners I managed to tell Flash how to use the “Browse…” button and how to handle the uploaded image. At the moment the Flash file uploads the image to the database correctly, but it will break if the image does not have the correct size, so I need to work on getting the image-resizer to work. Once that works I’ll upload the source as well.

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Sneak Peak for the image-uploader (snapshot of 9th July 2008)

The main uploader:

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The uploaded image and adding information:

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…and the result:

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Conclusion and next steps

Well, so far it is looking very promising with the image-uploader! Obviously we are still some way to go with it, but I think the project is starting to take shape! Integrating browse and upload functionality in Flash took some work, but thanks to ActionScript 2.0′s event listeners it worked out reasonably well and connected to the database. Obviously we are still taking about only one user at a time, so I would need to review the php code at a later date to also make sure there is a folder structure per user present, but that should not be too much of an issue. Watch out for the next entry on this mash-up, by then I will have the uploader finished and maybe add the ability to upload multiple images to show a slideshow, we will see!

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Lastly, if you enjoyed the article – or just the flash map – then please leave a comment, I would really appreciate it, as it gives me always another boost to write more

Yesterday Google announced an update to their search engines with the help of Adobe Labs. Read more about this new development after the break.

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So how does it work?

As part of their Open Screen Project Adobe has released a technology to both Google and Yahoo that enables the engines to crawl and index swf files.

Adobe Labs developed a Searchable SWF library for Google to develop an algorithm for search engines that explores swf files in the same way that a person would, by clicking buttons and entering input strings. The algorithm then remembers all of the text that it encounters while going through the file, and that text content is then listed and ready to be indexed.

In addition to that, any URL linked from the flash file will also be indexed in the same way as normal text-links would. Please note however that this only applies to static and dynamic text, text that was “broken down” in Flash to an outline will not be found and indexed.

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Limitations

A few limitations remain in Google’s ability to index SWF files:

1. Google’s crawlers do not execute some types of JavaScript. So if a web page loads a Flash file via JavaScript, Google may not be aware of that Flash file, in which case it will not be indexed.
2. Currently Google does not attach content from external resources that are loaded by your Flash files, meaning if a Flash file loads content via XML, HTML or another flash file then Google will separately index these resources, but it will not (yet) be considered part of the content of the Flash file.
3. Flash files using bidirectional languages (such as Hebrew or Arabic language) are currently not indexed as it provides a difficulty for the algorithm at this point in time.

Having said that, Ron Adler and Janis Stipins (Google) already commented:

We’re already making progress on these issues, so stay tuned!

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Good times for the flash designers and developers, however, making your Flash files visible is one thing, actually making a ranking difference is another. I would think we would have to wait a couple more months until Adobe’s library and Google’s algorithm improve indexability and deep-links, and then we’ll see how we go from here.

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Additional reading:

• Adobe’s Open Screen Project
• Google’s Weblog
• Adobe’s SWF searchability FAQ

Usability testing will reveal if the flow of the site works, and accessibility testing will ensure that our site complies to any relevant accessibility guidelines.

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User testing – preparation

Before you begin testing your prototype or pre-live-website with other users you need to make sure
that you:

• Have finished all relevant pages according to the brief / scope discussed. Make sure nothing is missing still
• Have annotated relevant sections, panels or functions: “If you are coming from page X this drop-down will be pre-populated with Y”
• Have gone through the prototype on your own and have made notes and / or necessary amendments where you struggled or had omitted functionality

Once you have reached the point of a project where you would like to invite users for testing, it is time to look for a certain kind of users – the users you successfully identified as the target audience, but also a number of “general public” users who may or may not be part of your target audience. After all, a website can be viewed by anyone. A typical group of users consists of at least 5, preferably 10 users, and should take no more than an hour per user. I hope your / the client’s budget caters for that, as well as possible payment for the users and or refreshments / lunch during the test as well as equipment (such as PCs, desks or cameras).
User testing – preparing your users

Before you being testing your prototype, please make sure that you have given your users (friends, colleagues, students, spouse…) a brief overview of the client and what the client is going to do with the website (such as “The client you are testing the site for is a new company within the perfume industry. The main focus for this website is about informing potential customers about the range and the brand, as well as giving additional information and an order facility”).

What the users need to be aware of:

• The users need to be honest in their responses. If they cannot find a bit of information they are after then it may not be because they are not web-savvy enough, it could just be that you did not link it properly!
• The users will be asked to complete a small number of tasks (“Find a product”, “make an enquiry”, “make a booking”, “find section XYZ”)
• The users need to verbalise what they are doing and why they are doing it. This will help you later on to amend or improve the prototype
• Just like when browsing a website at home, users should take their time researching into the prototype’s offering. If they spend a lot of time reading text and looking at pictures, then let them, after all, this is what the users will do once the site is live
• Inform the users that you will be making notes and that you will answer any questions they may have during testing and that you will explain functionality.

It is important that you yourself take over the role of an observer, and that you let the user do the tasks you asked for without any hinderance / distraction from yourself.

Once your prototype is ready for user testing you can go through any or all of the following options:

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1) 1-on-1 user testing

This is one of the quickest, easiest and cheapest options: you sit down with a user and let him use the website without any additional equipment other than a notepad and a PC.

After sitting down with the user you explain that you are going to show a prototype for a new client’s website and explain briefly what the company is about, what they intend to sell and what you hope to get out of this session: you want to see if the user understands the flow and navigation of the prototype and if the user finds it easy (or has problems with) finding a product or making a purchase / booking.

To start off with, let the user get a feel for the prototype and how it interacts, with a few explanatory notes (certain prototype creating applications create very rudimentary HTML and may require quick explanation of drop-downs or what items will be dynamic). Then let the user complete the tasks you set out. Stay quiet, answer questions, but do not interfere if a user does not take the route you would have taken.

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2) Unmonitored user-testing

This type of testing requires you to put the prototype online somewhere (ideally in a private or password-protected network) and send out a questionnaire to your test audience.

What you need to make sure of is that your prototype is very self-explanatory, and that you have added notes on all pages with important functionality (such as changing menus depending on where on the site you came from).

The questionnaire should have a same introduction as you would give at the 1-on-1 testing, followed by listing the objectives of this test and the tasks you are asking the user to do. Each of the tasks should have a couple of questions associated with it, ideally each of them with a rating and an optional comment field. Here is a sample questionnaire, feel free to use and edit as appropriate:

Please download the file here: Whatwasithinking – usability-questionnaire.pdf

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3) Monitored user-testing

Probably the most expensive test of the user-testing cycle: monitored user testing. In essence, it is the same test as the 1-on-1 test, but this time the user is being video-recorded. Video recording can be a bit unnerving to a user, as such it is very good practise of sitting down with the user and having a very informal chat about what is going to happen and what is expected. Have a chat with the user about anything, it doesn’t matter what, as long as you can get the user more comfortable in participating in the test.
Another way of testing is using two cameras, one for filming the user using the computer, and one for the eye-movement. This is a very expensive way, as it involves a special kind of camera (a normal web-cam would not suffice) and monitoring software, which will overlay the user’s eye movements to another monitor, showing what the user looked at when he clicked his way through the pages. This type of testing is usually undertaken for projects of big (and I mean BIG) clients or public sector / state-run websites.

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User testing – analysis

After conducting your user testing you will probably have written down a couple of pages of notes. It is now time to prioritise these notes accordingly:

• Critical – usability issues preventing the user from completing a task
• High – usability problems causing frustration, misinterpreting information given or frequent
  attempts to get to a result
• Medium – usability problems causing minor delays or problems which are overcome once the user understands or is made aware of errors
• Low – cosmetic problems, wording problems

Once you have your findings and analysis completed you will want to write a report to the client as well as an action plan on the next steps of the prototype and consequently development.

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Accessibility testing

These days it is becoming more and more important that websites (especially websites of bigger companies, public sectors and government-run) comply to certain accessibility rules.

Accessibility testing means to combine software tools with human use and judgment. Sadly, there is no
automated way to check if your website complies with the Section 508 provisions or the Web
Content Accessibility Guidelines.

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Accessibility testing – the automatic / software tests

Automatic tests are fairly straightforward: does your website comply to certain standards? Does it validate successfully?
Tools to test are plenty, here is my suggested list:

• FireFox extensions: FireBug, Accessibility Extension, and the JAWS-emulation FANGs are vital!
• W3C validator
• W3C CSS validator
• A-Prompt’s Web Accessibility verifier

It is worth trying all of them, as errors can easily be checked and consequently amended in the development phase.

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The manual tests

When doing manual accessibility testing (human accessibility testing) you need to assess:

• Whether the website complies with any government set guidelines
• How language and visual cues, tags and labels are used
• If the website is compatible with as many current browsers as possible (at the moment we usually test for IE6, IE7, latest version of Opera, Safari for PC and Mac, Firefox 1.5, Firefox 2 and Firefox 3)
• How easy the website is to read and scan over
• If common fonts are used or (if uncommon fonts are used) replaced
• Whether a style sheet has been used to control the site and whether the site is usable and accessible without stylesheets
• If the website uses any kind of scripts or Flash, and if it is still accessible without
• Whether the website sports efficient navigation

Once you went through the tests above, it is worth writing up another report to the client, again with an action plan on where to go from here.

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Closing comments

User and accessibility testing comes in all kinds of forms and flavours, some cost money, others just time. My suggestions above are a small part of a best-practice approach that I have been using over the last couple of years, and so far it has been serving me well, with about all of our sites being fully accessible and adhering to all current web standards.

Disclaimer
Again, this was just a short run-down of this vast and complex subject. Some of the above may most likely be different from how you have learnt (or read up on) information architecture and accessibility and usability testing. To be honest with you, so have I when I first came into contact with the industry I am working for. You are working in an industry that is most likely not considered the “average website”, be it websites for the music industry or landing pages, B2B sites or what have you. The user base is sometimes entirely different, you can expect your users to be a lot more experiences in some industries, and maybe less savvy in others. Certain heuristics or standards may not necessarily apply. I am not telling you to go and use ‘my’ methods described above, this is just how I work, and it some of it may just not apply to you. At the end of the day, looking at your industry, your client’s requirements, the client’s competitors and its target market are what will give you the best ideas for approaching your project.

I hope you enjoyed reading the article and if you have any questions or suggestions, feel free to comment

For the full list of features please continue reading below the break…

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Key new features

Among a great number of improvements and additions, these are the key features flash developers were looking out for:

Custom Filters and Effects – Flash Player 10 allows developers to create their own filters via Adobe’s Pixel Blender (those of you using After Effects CS3 will feel at home!) and to embed them into your flash movie. Since these filters are portable you can also share them with others (expect download sections for these filters to pop up everywhere once Flash Player 10 is in final release)

Enhanced Drawing API – drawing will be a lot easier in Flash Player 10, you can now use 3D APIs and re-styleable properties, and all that with a lot less code to use!

Advanced Text Layout – Adobe has been putting a lot of work into a new text layout engine allowing a lot more controls by providing support for more typographic elements, vertical text and right-to-left layout

3D Effects – This is where it gets interesting: Flash Player 10 allows a lot more flexibility and interactivity for objects through 3D space. The new motion engine will be a lot easier to get your heads around, plus APIs will extend your ActionScript 3.0 knowledge easily without having to rethink how you did 3D animations in the past. I am personally very excited about this part of the new features as up until now my 3D flash work was a code-mess (then again, who says it won’t be this time round!)

Visual Performance Improvements – Flash Player 10 will make a lot more use of your GPU when it comes down to rendering your animations. Thanks to that move, the CPU will be freed up quite a bit to allow more processing power for other applications – or your flash code.

Colour Management – an improved colour management system allows you to work more accurately to your client’s current website and brand without looking “out of place” or “a bit off”. Opt-in colour management allows you to convert SWFs into sRGB (standard RGB) and works with the monitor’s ICC colour profile, turning the entire SWF into a colour-managed object.

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Rich media improvements:

Flash Player 10 will also improve your work on rich media applications and media streaming. Since bandwidth is a massive factor when it comes down to enjoying flash animations and applications to the fullest, you’ll be pleased to hear that Flash Player 10 will also feature dynamic streaming to change bitrate depending on the current network conditions. Through Quality of Service metrics via ActionScript’s network and CPU information detection developers will be able to take control of video playback and dynamically adjust playback. Have a look out for Flash Media Server updates soon!

Furthermore, the new Real time Media Flow Protocol (RTMFP) allows for a secure UDP-based network connection, allowing for an improved media delivery and real-time communication with your Flash Media Server environment. which helps protect media delivery.

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My thoughts on Flash 10

So far I am enjoying Flash 10′s pre-release, and I am looking forward to learning more about the new 3D effects and Dynamic Streaming capabilities. With regards to the enhanced drawing API, what I would like to see at some piont is also a pressure-recognition for graphics tablets. Well, its still pre-release, let’s see what else Adobe Labs has in store for us