Adobe and Google made a big announcement yesterday about a new technology developed by Adobe and to be used by Google and other search engines to better crawl and index Flash content on the Internet. Historically, a major drawback for using Flash was the fact that it was almost invisible to search engines. That did not only mean that the content in a Flash file itself cannot be found by Google, but all content linked to from the Flash file was also invisible to Google if the only reference to that link was in Flash.

The new technology developed by Adobe is a special Flash player that will enable search engines to crawl and read the text content in a Flash file as if it were a regular user viewing the Flash file. A search engine such as Google is supposed to be able to go through a Flash file, click buttons, read the textual content throughout the movie, and even follow links in the Flash file. This means that Google should be able to index text within a Flash file and follow links made from within Flash.

The announcement mentions that Flash will be on equal competing grounds with HTML in search engine optimization, but that is not true. Flash has major SEO issues other than merely the inability of search engines to read the text or links in it. A search engine does not usually just tell what website has the information we are looking for, but it leads us the EXACT SCREEN on which the keyword we searched for is. However, in most websites made purely in Flash there is no way to link directly to a certain screen because of the dynamic structure of Flash based content.

Flex (the Adobe tool for creating Flash rich Internet applications) provides methods for creating applications that use components to recreate information on a screen, but an application will not usually call that URL from within the application but will instead use a method to load the content directly onto the same browser window, so that direct Flex link we need will not exist for Google to find it in the first place.

It also means that if Google manages to discover that a certain Flash website has a specific keyword, Google will not be able to point you to the exact screen that has that keyword. This is, of course, better than not showing up the website at all, but it is a major findability issue. It also worth noting that it is still not clearly known what exact sort of text will be visible to Google, Flash is capable of having static or dynamic text directly created in the file, yet Flash is also capable of generating the text using ActionScript. It is also still unknown if Flash will be able to read only links called using the ActionScript getURL() method or just links attached directly to a textfield or using HTML in Flash.

This new technology will still be of a great benefit to HTML websites that use Flash for their navigation, because without this technology Google would have not gone deeper than the homepage if the only means for going inside the website was through that Flash navigation. Now Google can crawl the links in Flash menus and access the entire website.

It is also worth noting that Adobe has made this search engine Flash player compatible with all existing versions of Flash and developers will not need to take any action to make their Flash files accessible by search engines.

You can learn more about Flash Searchablility by checking Adobe’s FAQ on this topic.

Silicon Alley Insider is reporting that Adobe said in an earnings conference yesterday that it has developed a Flash Player for the iPhone that has been running under emulation. No official word has come out from Adobe or Apple regarding this, but Apple has previously publicly criticized Flash saying that Flash Lite did not have enough features to justify having it on the iPhone and that the PC version of the Flash Player was too resource intensive for it, and even though Apple has opened the doors for developers to create application for the iPhone by releasing its SDK long time ago, the SDK license prohibits developers from creating any sort of runtime such Flash or Java that is capable of running additional code on top of it. So the only way for Adobe to have Flash on the iPhone is by having a special agreement with Apple. This new info about a player being in the works does not necessary mean that there is any sort of agreement with Apple regarding it, but we are keeping our fingers crossed.

[via CrunchGear]

Adobe recently released a new version of its leading software, Acrobat 9. The whole new Acrobat 9 deliveries modern features that enables the pdf files to be more rich and flexiable. Its worth mentioning that in the ninth installment of Acrobat, you are able to create polished PDF files, present multiple documents in a PDF Portfolio, and even add multimedia such as flash animations. And all in a single file. You can read more about the Acrobat Family’s new features here.

Flash Player 10 code named “Astro” has been released as a beta version for the time being by Adobe Labs. The beta 10th installment of flash player includes new features, enhancments and bug fixes. Highlighted features are the creative expression’s, Custom Filters and Effects, 3D Effects, New Text Engine, Drawing API Enhancements and many more. Click here to read the overview on Flash Player 10 beta. If you would like to test flash player 10 follow the installation instructions at Adobe Labs.

 [via Download Squad]

Adobe announced today a new project called “Open Screen Project” that aims to make Flash an ubiquitous platform for creating and running the content across a variety mediums, namely: TVs, computers, and mobile devices. The Open Screen Project is supported at launch by ARM, Cisco, Intel, Marvell, Motorola, MTV, NBC, Nokia, NTT Do Co Mo, Qualcomm, Sony Ericsson, and others. In order to accomplish this project, Adobe is removing all licensing fees that manufacturers had to pay to install the Flash Lite Player on their mobile handsets, opening the Flash Player API to let anyone to port the Flash Player onto any device, removing restrictions on the use of SWF and FLV formats so that any one can create custom players to run the format. Adobe is also publishing its Flash Cast protocol and the AMF protocol to allow new usages of data transfer services.

The Flash platform has been ever expanding the past two years as Flash developers can already now make desktop applications using AIR, web based applications using Flex, and mobile applications using Flash Lite. The expansion of these platforms onto new devices and set up boxes will make it easier for developers to create an application once only and then deploy it across a variety of mediums easily. Learn more about the Open Screen Project from Adobe website.

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Adobe released earlier this week the 1.0 version of Adobe Integrated Runtime (AIR), a technology for running rich internet application (RIAs) on the desktop using technologies such as AJAX, Flex, and Flash. AIR creates new opportunities for ActionScript and web developers by letting them use their existing skills to create cross platform applications with desktop-responsiveness and web based features such as data portability and collaboration.

AIR technology has been demonstrated by new applications from companies such as FedEx, eBay, Nickelodeon, Nasdaq, and AOL all of which can be used once you download and install the free AIR runtime on your desktop.

AIR is available for Windows and Mac currently, the Linux version should be out soon.

InstantStorm is a Windows freeware tool for creating Flash based screensavers with many advanced features. Unlike many other flash screensavers conversion tools, InstantStorm allows you to fully customize your screensaver’s about box, installer and uninstaller including all texts. InstantStorm is really easy to use. If you’re a beginner, the New Project Wizard will help you make a professional screensaver in simple steps. Learn more about InstantStrom’s features here. You can also get your hands on a free copy of this application from its offcial site’s download section here.

[Via Downloadsquad]

Just in time for the holidays, Adobe released new updates to AIR and Flex along with a first time release of a new technology called BlazeDS. Adobe AIR Beta 3 is the latest update to Adobe’s cross-platform runtime for deploying web-enabled desktop applications created using Flash, HTML, and Ajax. The latest update includes various features such as the functionality to run applications at start-up and the detection and launch of installed AIR applications from a web browser. The first application made by AIR Beta 3 is Adobe’s new desktop version of Kuler, Adobe’s color theme creation tool.

Adobe also released the new update to its open-source framework for creating rich internet applications, the new Beta 3 of Flex includes updates to the Flex SDK and the Flex Builder.

The last major release by Adobe this week is BlazeDS, a new technology for pushing information live from a server to Flex and AIR applications without the need for the client-side application to request a data update. This new technology is distributed under the LGPL vs3 making it available to developers free of charge. The source code of BlazeDS will be available for download early in 2008.

Adobe released yesterday the developer edition of the latest version of the Flash Lite player. Developers from all around the world can now download and try the Flash Lite 3 player on any Nokia S60 3rd edition mobile phone. This latest update brings Flash video playback support to mobile devices and enhances the performance of the player up to 30%, but it does not however bring ActionScript 3.0 support yet and uses ActionScript 2.0 instead. Authoring Flash Lite 3 content requires the latest updates to both Flash CS3 authoring tool and Device Central CS3 for managing the creation of mobile content and the emulation of mobile devices. You can download the player from Adobe Labs here.