mike downey speaks

the highlight of the day - besides the free beer - was mike downey talking about what's new in flash 8. he's the 'flash product manager' aka the man.

you know how flash does vector graphics on the fly? now it can do bitmaps, too. at runtime.

ever use the blending modes in the photshop layers panel? flash has them and they can be applied to anything - even video.

effects like blurs and drop shadows? - ditto.

there's a thing called Script Assist to help w/actionscript syntax.

and the new video codec can take a 30MB mov and make it a 600k flv - with very good results. smashing.

he got applause more than a few times.