Faisal Iqbal (aka // chall3ng3r //) of Orison.biz just created a nifty app that’ll let you view the Adobe Flash CS3 IDE’s help files outside of the IDE.

This app is pretty useful as the help panel in the Flash CS3 IDE is relatively clunky and panel/window positioning is somewhat a chore.

Anyway, read more about it at //challenger//’s blog and grab the app over there.

Fellow Phlashers member JP Tiangco just released a new Flash game, The Green. Composed of charming graphics reminiscent of The Behemoth’s Alien Hominid, it’s a combination of a platformer and fighting game where you finish waves of enemies in different levels. Check out JP’s other games here.

The downloads for 30-day trials of Flash CS4 et al. are now available!

Grab them at http://www.adobe.com/downloads/

Flash Player 7 is at 98.6%, Flash Player 8 at 98.3%, Flash Player 9 at 97.7% and Flash Player 9 Update 3 (v 9.0.115 & 9.0.124 that included the H.264 codec + a number of updates) is at 89.4% in mature markets.

Can’t wait to see the Flash Player 10 penetration stats out of curiosity. Flash Player started including auto-update capability since Flash Player 8, and Flash Player 9 adoption was one of the fastest massive software downloads/installations in history.

Check out the full report and previous stats over at Adobe’s Flash Player census page.

Via Airtight Interactive: Building Flash 3D Sites that Work

“It seems like every other site on FWA is using 3D Flash these days. 3D effects are great for adding an element of surprise to a website, since it’s still a relatively new technique. I’ve been building 3D engines since the Director 5 days, so it’s great to see 3D finally hitting the mainstream.”

And a whole bunch of useful AS 3D links via  Anand Vardhan - “Links I am reading today: 3D in ActionScript”.

Upcoming free Adobe Flash Lite eSeminars by Dale Rankine of Moket Pty Ltd:

Adobe Flash Lite Mobile Gaming - Wednesday 12 November 2008 2:00PM Australian EDT

Adobe Flash Lite is a fantastic platform for developing mobile games, and gives developers many options for creating rich visual and interactive gaming experiences.In this eSeminar session we’ll talk about several game developers who are working in the Flash Lite gaming space, some Flash Lite game titles, and options for bringing mobile games in the current market.

Adobe Flash Lite and Nokia Series 40 - Wednesday 26 November 2008 2:00PM Australian EDT

For many years now, Adobe Flash Lite has been supported by the Nokia Series 40 platform - one of the widest support bases for Flash Lite in the market.

The operating system is designed for mid-range handsets, and reaches deep into the content-consuming market. This essential eSeminar session will look at the S40 platform, and unveil how Flash Lite best works with the platform.

Register for the free seminars here.

And for those who missed it, the recording of the Flash Lite Webinar - CS4 and Nokia S60 Platform Serviceis now available.

Wootness! AS3 for the PS3! A little late in posting, but interesting nonetheless for us Flash Developers:

“Sony has actually been working on Flash 9 support for quite some time — as far back as late last year. To get it running on the PS3, Sony ended up customizing a separate Flash implementation that was provided to it by Adobe.

For a sense of how computationally intensive some areas of Flash 9 can be, you need only consider this little bit. According to Takase, the PS3 implementation of Flash-based playback for H.264 videos makes use of an SPU. This allows for loading up of web pages to be separate from video playback, improving framerate.”

Flash 9 will run via the PS3’s web browser, pretty similar to how the Nintendo Wii runs Flash 7 via the Opera browser I guess. Flash 9 Homebrew for  PS3 anyone?

With this, Flash is emerging as one of the most widely distributed gaming platforms — running on Windows, Macintosh, Linux, mobile phones, devices like the Chumby (Flash Lite), the PSP  (Flash 6), the Wii (Flash 7) and now the PS3 (Flash 9).

Sadly, still no AS3 for the PSP, much like Flash Lite devices.

Relevant article links:

Sony Talks Firmware

Munechika Nishida’s Random Tracking column (Japanese)

New info on the firmware updates for PS3 and PSP…

What the heck?!? Is that a Windows XP running … err crashed… on the OLPC XO-1?

Almost! There are rumors about it but the picture above is an edited photo by an OLPC volunteer to protest on the idea of having XP as pre-installed OS on XO-1.

On the side note, Phlashers has started to participate to OLPC development through OLPC Philippines. The idea came from Carlos Nazareno to target XO-1 as a Flash game platform.

Not quite! I hyped blogger posted that Alternativa3D got semi-opensource.

Well, yes, you can get the engine for free after being forced to register. Another thing is, you get the engine on a SWC format — I mean, come on.

So what would you want on this so-called semi-opensource engine? The demos look very promising but there is something fishy about not sharing the sources to this demos while they usually release sources before.