I've recently come across some good articles on Actionscript optimization, so I thought I'd share them with those of you who are Flash coders. If you want to make your code/animation run faster, then there's a good chance something here will help.

Adobe CS5 is out now, and we're using CS5 Master Collection, which includes a boat load of creativity and media production software. CS5 has really wowed us with some incredible new features, so we figured we'd share our favorites with you.

But first, for those who aren't acquainted with every Adobe app, here's a list of all the CS5 apps, and basically what they're for:

For my Flash projects, I've started using a debugger called MonsterDebugger which allows you to debug right from the browser, or if you're creating an AIR app, right from the app it self. This is great because the default Flash debugger doesn't allow you to do much if your app is embedded in a CMS (like Drupal or Joomla), or relies on some kind of server side language for input.

For doing complex development with Flash, it can help to have a more powerful Actionscript editor than the built in Flash CS3 editor. I've been testing Flex Builder and FlashDevelop, both of which can export both Flash or Flex (Flex is Flash with a library of components built for making web applications). Both seem to have their pluses and minuses. FlashDevelop is free.

There is an interesting talk on Papervision at the Blender conference:

http://river-valley.tv/conferences/blender_conference_2008/

Finally there is a way to get 3D into Flash, from Blender (or another program such as 3DsMax), with Animation! It's a tool called Cast3D.

Check out this:

http://www.rustpunk.co.za/blog/?p=10

You can download the Papervision 3D component for Flash CS3 from here:
http://code.google.com/p/papervision3d/downloads/list

Here are some more Blender and Flash tutorials that you can get for free:

http://www.cartoonsmart.com/demo_index.html

I found another tutorial that shows you how to go from a 3D object in Blender, and export it as something that you can use with a Papervision or another Flash 3D engine. It exports to a Collada file, before you import into Papervision.

Great news everyone! Search Engines are now getting the technology to crawl through Adobe Flash content. The Flash SWFs files (even old ones) are now becoming searchable by search engines. :)

The improved SWF search even includes the capability to load and access remote data like XML calls and loaded SWFs. This means Flex applications are included too!

http://www.adobe.com/devnet/flashplayer/articles/swf_searchability.html

For those that heard me talk in the Seattle Flash User Group tonight, I thought I'd post some links to the things I was talking about.