Free “Starling” book from O’Reilly

O’Reilly has just released a free book on the Starling Framework written by Thibault Imbert. This is essentially an updated and enhanced version of the getting started PDF that he wrote around the time of the release. Here is the abstract:

Starling is an ActionScript 3 2D framework developed on top of the Stage3D APIs (available on desktop in Flash Player 11 and Adobe AIR 3). Starling is mainly designed for game development, but could be used for many other use cases. Starling makes it possible to write fast GPU accelerated applications without having to touch the low-level Stage3D APIs. 

Most Flash developers want to be able to leverage GPU acceleration (through Stage3D) without the need to write such higher-level frameworks and dig into the low-level Stage3D APIs. Starling is completely designed after the Flash Player APIs and abstracts the complexity of Stage3D (Molehill) and allows easy and intuitive programming for everyone.

Thanks to Thibault for creating a great beginner resource for Starling. You can also check out Lee Brimelow's video tutorial on Starling at gotoAndLearn.

Abandoning Flash on the mobile? Not really, but we're done with browser plug-in on mobile browsers - Adobe.

First, we are making bold moves like stopping the development of the browser plug-in on mobile browsers in favor of investing further in Flash-based apps packaged with AIR. Playing existing content sounds like a great idea on paper, but we know it doesn't always work that way -- you need to author for mobile and think for mobile, but from talking to customers and looking at content today, we realize that very few people are targeting the plug-in on mobile browsers.

We are not stepping out of the mobile space with Flash, we are just focusing on what makes sense and where Flash looks great, standalone apps with AIR.

Why not just call a spade a spade? Flash is dead on the mobile, period!

Damn, 2 Million Polygons in Flash Player? Yes it can.

Flash is really stepping up its game in becoming a serious gaming platform. Muscle Jump pulls of 2 million polygons in Flash Player, right in your browser.