Macromedia has got a great video on the making of Flash 8. Check it out it's really a great movie to watch!

Macromedia has updated their Flash Remoting components.

Developing Rich Internet Applications using Macromedia Flash and Macromedia Flash Remoting MX requires the addition of the Flash Remoting Components. The Flash Remoting Components extend the Macromedia Flash authoring environment, adding the ActionScript APIs needed to invoke remote services using Flash Remoting MX. Authoring tool extensions—such as the NetConnection Debugger, which enables developers to watch and trace events across both the client and server—are also included in the Flash Remoting Components, in addition to powerful recordset handling and databinding capabilities for handling dynamic data from relational databases. Flash Remoting Components are available for Flash Professional 8, Flash Basic 8 and prior Flash versions.

Most of you probably have installed the new Flash 8 player by now. If you haven't press the read more button and the read it at external site link to install it.

 

Peter Elst has got a nice example on the color matrix filter, which will be introduced in Flash 8.

Macromedia and HP have developed a prototype that shows the integration of the Flash Platform, Breeze, and the HP SDP (Service Delivery Platform).

The Flash Blog has got another demo of an FLV file with embedded alpha channel. This one uses the 3D Stroke effect for After Effects made by Trapcode.

There is an interesting article on Mike Chambers blog regarding Flash and Web 2.0.

Web 2.0 is a term often applied to a perceived ongoing transition of the World Wide Web from a collection of websites to a full-fledged computing platform serving web applications to end users. Ultimately Web 2.0 services are expected to replace desktop computing applications for many purposes.

Keith Peters(Bit-101) posted his IFBIN Hello World example for Flash(r) By Example. The example uses a force to repel characters of "Hello World" from the mouse cursor.

Tink has put together a great example of the new File Upload/Download capabilities of Flash 8.

In the current Flash version loading PNG images in the Flash Player  using MovieClip.loadMovie() didn't work. But now, with the new Flash Player 8 support for PNG is finally included!

A demo of progressive JPG/GIF/PNG loading >>