For this demo I will use a simple add that shows an image, some text and a button to click on. My goal is to have two variations for this add, both in the same SWF and the targeting for this ad to be done using Test&Target.

Create campaign and flashbox

As you can see in the image, I am already logged in and I can choose to work on an existing campaign or to create a new one. I will create a new one.

Create campaign and flashbox

After creating the campaign I will create two experiences that will hold the two variations I want for this ad.

Create experiences

So, one variation is exactly what the ad is showing right now and I’ve called it “Local Picks”. The other variation called “Subscription” will use the same ad as a template (design and animation) but will have a different image, text and button label. The first thing I will change is the text. The text is a symbol in this case so I will go inside the symbol and using the Include button I will include the text into the Test&Target workflow, making it part of both experiences.

Add text to experiences

To have variations between the two experiences I will select the Subscription experience from the Test&Target panel, go inside the text symbol and change the text to “Subscribe to our magazine”

Change the text

I will do the same thing with the buttons’s label and with the image.

Add image to experience

When adding an image to the Test&Target workflow, the image is transformed into a symbol and a labeled keyframe is created on that symbol timeline for each experience present into the panel. To change the image for the Subscription experience I will go inside the symbol and for the second keyframe I will swap the image with a different one from the Library panel.

Swap the image

Swap the image

After this, I sync my work with the Test&Target server. By doing so, all the information necessary to present the two variations for this ad are saved on the Test&Target server.

My campaign and flashbox on the Test&Target server.

On the server, I can still edit the text present in the ad WITHOUT the need to recompile the SWF. I can create new experiences if I want to test different tag lines also WITHOUT recompiling the SWF. The only limitation is that I can not select for these experiences images that are not already embedded in the SWF, at least not in the way I have created this demo. This is possible if a Loader object is used and the experiences will hold the URL to a remote image.

I will create some very simple targeting rules for my ad: I want my site to show the Local Picks experience for all the new users arriving on it and to show the Subscription experience for all the returning ones.

Add targeting rules

All I need to do now is approve the campaign and I’m set.

Belorussian provided by PC

First, a short description taken from the release notes:

• Omniture SiteCatalyst extension for Adobe Flash Professional CS5 – Visually add tracking to Flash content, directly from the creative workflow, without manually tagging each piece of content. This will dramatically shorten analytics implementation times, allowing you to focus on the impact of your creative work.
• Omniture Test&Target extension for Adobe Flash Professional CS5 – Easily create and manage Flash content variations for online marketing campaigns directly from your creative workflow, without duplicating effort or writing ActionScript code.
• Omniture Test&Target extension for Adobe Dreamweaver CS5 - Visually create and manage HTML content for online marketing campaigns, without having to write HTML code.

And now, lets present the Flash Pro extensions using some images:

login

call to action

working environment

Soon I will start to create some small demos to showcase how to work with this extensions on a real working scenario. Stay tuned..

These platforms are in beta and our support is needed to use them in the real world and report any problems we may find.

Today thou I got a surprise: agendaBT. An AIR application that is a very nice agenda application. You can take notes per days using different colors, highlight what you have written or just draw. And while this is not particularly exciting by itself, the design is impressive, I really like it. You can see for yourself:

agendaBT

1. Labs content
   • Labs home page http://labs.adobe.com/
   • Flash Platform page http://labs.adobe.com/technologies/flash/
   • Flex framework page http://labs.adobe.com/technologies/flex/
   • Flash Builder page http://labs.adobe.com/technologies/flashbuilder4/
   • Flash Catalyst page http://labs.adobe.com/technologies/flashcatalyst/
   • FB download page http://www.adobe.com/cfusion/entitlement/index.cfm?e=labs_flashbuilder4
   • FC download page http://www.adobe.com/cfusion/entitlement/index.cfm?e=labs_flashcatalyst
   • Beta Videos http://labs.adobe.com/technologies/flash/videos/
2. Devnet articles
   • Tim’s What’s new in FB http://www.adobe.com/devnet/flex/articles/flex4builder_whatsnew.html
   • Matt’s What’s new in the SDK http://www.adobe.com/devnet/flex/articles/flex4sdk_whatsnew.html
   • Flex DevCenter main page http://www.adobe.com/devnet/flex/
3. Press release http://www.adobe.com/aboutadobe/pressroom/pressreleases/200906/060109NewFlashPlatformTools.html

Polaris - Adobe AIR desktop reporing for Google Analytics

It is simple to use and free to manage one website profile. It has nice charts and visual transitions. I would love to have this tool for WordPress stats also

You will have the chance to meet with Ben Forta – Senior Evangelist, Digby Horner – SVP Emerging Markets and lots of Adobe Romania people.

Because it is written in AIR and because is open source and AIR 1.5 just got out with new interesting features, I thought, why not “bend” a little Spaz, just for fun.

I say just for fun because it was not something done after a careful consideration of the usefulness of adding this effect in Spaz.

I have used as a starting point the BlaskBookSafe application described in my previous post. The changes made in Spaz were as follows:

1. I have updated spaz/assets/air/AIRAliases.js with the last one provided by Adobe AIR SDK 1.5
2. I have copied the bender folder from BlackBookSafe into spaz
3. I have copied BenderEffect.js and Tween.js from BBS to spaz/assets/lib folder
4. I have added some small pieces of code in spaz/index.html and spaz/assets/assets/spaz.prefs.js

The added code in index.html was of course importing those two scripts added in the lib folder. We need them in order to create the effect and also to “tween” it, to transform the bend into an animation.

The code from spaz.prefs.js is a little more complicated and it creates the bend effect and starts the tween:

   1:  'window-alpha': {

   2:      setUI: function(value) {

   3:          $('#window-alpha').val(parseInt(value));

   4:      },

   5:      onChange: function(value) {

   6:          //alert(percentage+"%");

   7:          percentage = parseInt(value);

   8:          if (isNaN(percentage)) {

   9:              percentage = 100;

  10:          }

  11:          if (percentage < 25) {

  12:              percentage = 25;

  13:          }

  14:          var val = parseInt(percentage) / 100;

  15:          if (isNaN(val)) {

  16:              val = 1;

  17:          } else if (val >= 1) {

  18:              val = 1;

  19:          } else if (val <= 0) {

  20:              val = 1;

  21:          }

  22:   

  23:          /*  the bending code */

  24:          BlenderEffect.get('app:/bender/page.pbj', function(shader){

  25:              var tween = BlenderEffect.createShaderTransition(window.htmlLoader, 

  26:                  shader , 1200, Tween.effects.elasticEase);

  27:              tween.hideOnFinish = false; 

  28:              tween.start(true);

  29:          });

  30:   

  31:          window.htmlLoader.alpha = val;

  32:      },

  33:      check: function() {

  34:  .....

  35:  }

The addition was inside the onChange method for the window-alpha setting.

The reason I choose this method was to have a visual indication for changing the alpha setting from preferences. With all this in place, when changing the alpha setting for Spaz a nice effect will warp a little bit the window. I will let you to discover this as an image will not do it.

In the mean time I will send an email to Funkatron, maybe they will be interested in incorporating this in a more useful way .

What I want to talk about is a new sample made specially to show the new capabilities of this release, BlackBookSafe. It is an HTML/JavaScript application using jQuery framework and leveraging the encrypted local database, 3d transformations and Pixel Bender effects. Indeed, with the new AIR you can “bend pixels” .

BlackBookSafe screen

BlackBookSafe bended screen

The effect was created using the Adobe Pixel Bender available in Flash Player. And yes, I said that BlackBookSafe was created using HTML and JavaScript. You want to find out how was it done? Mihai Corlan, an Adobe Platform Evangelist wrote an article detailing exactly how this application was created in BlackBookSafe: Anatomy of an AIR 1.5 application.

My site on ICE

Adobe InContext Editing is an online service, available at no charge during the free preview period. It is a RIA application combining both Flex and JavaScript to create a very useful and simple tool to be used by both content contributors and web designers.

Basically what you do is create an HTML page and add some ICE editable regions from Dreamweaver CS4. Then you go in your browser at the same page and hit Ctrl+E and voila.. you can edit that page (in the image above is my Java page after I have done just that). If you need a similar page (let’s say Ajax in my case) you just hit the “duplicate page” button and that is all (aside from additional editing of that page).