Below is a matrix that shows supported runtimes for Rich Runtime browser plugins. The matrix compares the latest versions of runtimes, which are supported by the companies that create them. The runtimes covered include: Adobe Flash Player 10 Microsoft Silverlight 3.0 Java FX 1.2 Information is obtained from the runtime’s websites (linked below). A green box indicates that the runtime is supported on the specified platform, while a red box indicates the runtime is not supported and / or not available for the specified platform.

For the past month or two, I have been spending time building a game (something I haven’t done since my Flash 4 days). This has really been a lot of fun, as it has allowed me to use some of the Flash Player APIs which I really haven’t had a chance or need to use before. One thing which I have been (slowly) learning about are using Matrix transformations on DisplayObjects.

I recently bought my first DSLR, the Nikon D90, which I have been having a blast with. One of the cool features of the camera, is that it supports creating HD video clips (of up to 5 minutes) (view an example here). However, the way the clips are created seems to confuse Adobe Premiere Pro CS4, which won’t open or import the clips without a little work on your part.

I am fortunate to have been invited to speak again at Flash on the Beach in Brighton this fall. The event is September 20th - 23rd, in Brighton, England, and is hands down the top Flash Conference in Europe (and a contender for top worldwide). I will be doing a session titled “Advanced Desktop Development with Adobe AIR” which will cover some useful tricks and techniques when developing AIR Applications. I will also be going over some next generation Adobe AIR features and APIs.

Just a quick note, but I have updated my “fyi” Firefox Ubiquity command to work with the latest version of Ubiquity (0.5). You can find more information on the command, as well as install it from here.

If you have read my blog any this week, you have probably noticed that I have been doing some basic research on collision detection within the Flash Player. As part of this, I have put together a simple test suite, showing the performance of a couple of different techniques for checking for collision. This is by no means meant to be exhaustive (and currently tilts towards boundary collision). However, I wanted to post the results as the current information is useful (if nothing more than to confirm existing assumptions), and perhaps generate more tests an ideas around collision detection.

Yesterday I blogged about how you can use the BitmapData.hitTest API to do collision detection between the visible parts of multiple DisplayObject instances. This works very well, but as some of the BitmapData apis can be cpu intensive (particularly new BitmapData and BitmapData.draw) you have to take care to make sure that performance does not get out of hand. This post will discuss a number of approaches for optimizing collision detection when using BitmapData.

The Flash Player contains a number of APIs for handling collision detection within Flash content. The DisplayObject class contains hitTest and hitTestPoint which can be useful if you need to detect bounding box collisions, or detect collisions between an individual point and bounding boxes or shapes. However, BitmapData also contains a hitTest API, which can check collisions on BitmapData. Where the API really shines, is when you need to detect collisions between the visible areas of DisplayObjects (and not just of their bounding boxes).

I have been learning some game development lately, and building my first game (well, at least my first game since Flash 4). I think game development and deployment are some of the real strengths of the Flash player, but ones which we haven’t specifically focused on in a while. While working on my game, there were a couple of things I needed to do where additional player APIs could have made the development easier (as well as likely speeding up execution).

We have just posted information about FlashCamp San Francisco, a free developer event that we will be holding in the Adobe San Francisco Office on Friday night, May 29th. This will be similar to the ApolloCamp event that we held for the Apollo Beta launch a couple of years ago, although this event will be focused on the next generation of Flex, including Flex 4, Flash Catalyst, and Flex Builder 4.