Gaia 3.0 Preview
It's been a few months of hard work to get it done, but the new Gaia Framework Panel for CS4 and CS3 is almost here. I just have a few final touches to get it finished, and I thought I'd give everyone a preview of the new panel which should be ready for launch very soon. Without further ado, here are the screenshots.
First up is the main panel. Gaia now maintains a list of your projects. You can also import existing Gaia 2.x and 3.x projects, which makes it easy to load in any Gaia project.
Next up is the Gaia Project panel. You can name your project, select its path, see what version it's using, modify the dimensions and stage color, and also set up your own custom folder paths.
The Scaffold panel is next, where you can set the class package by typing it in. No more having to navigate a folder dialog. You can choose your template, turn on SEO, as well as update your bytes in the site.xml (no more issues with duplicate ids, either!), as well as optimize the main.swf by excluding any assets you aren't using.
And finally, the Publish panel, which replaces the Project panel which was removed in Flash CS4. The Gaia Publish panel lets you check which files you want to publish (main.fla will always test movie), and you can opt to leave the files open. There's also a handy tool for syncing with the site.xml if you add pages manually instead of using scaffolding or make other changes to your site.xml.
What you can't see from these screenshots is an improved and more logical workflow because the Gaia panel will disable features that cannot be used on the project until you've done the prerequisite action. For instance, you cannot Publish or Resize a project until you Scaffold, and you can't Scaffold a project until you Create it. These features and more not only make it easier to follow the work flow, but also prevent you from making mistakes.
As you can see, it uses the CS4 panel style to blend seamlessly with the Flash IDE. This new panel has been no small amount of work, but it's been worth it. Stay tuned to my blog and the Gaia forums for the upcoming launch. Gaia 3.0 has some great improvements to the framework, as well. More news on that later, though.
Thanks again to everyone on the alpha and beta testing teams for their great feedback! You guys rock.
Posted in Actionscript, Adobe, CS4, Flash, Gaia, JSFL, Workflow
January 5th, 2009 at 4:42 am
Great work Steven!
January 5th, 2009 at 6:50 am
Nice! Will definitely check it out for our next Flash project.
January 5th, 2009 at 7:36 am
good job!+happy new year ;D
January 5th, 2009 at 8:41 am
wow looks better than the latest one
can't wait to try it !
January 5th, 2009 at 8:56 am
Happy New Year. Nice work.
January 5th, 2009 at 9:55 am
very good news! I have been putting off getting CS4 until things were worked out with GAIA.
January 5th, 2009 at 10:21 am
Congratulations, Steven! I keep seeing your tweets about the progress you're making. Thanks for putting in all this work. I hope to meet you at SXSW. Do you know if you're giving a presentation there yet?
January 5th, 2009 at 10:57 am
@John Unfortunately, because I submitted late, I was unable to get in this year. There's always 2010!
January 5th, 2009 at 11:09 am
Well done, Steven. I wish I'd had the opportunity to alpha/beta test it.
January 5th, 2009 at 2:05 pm
Amazing Steven, thanks for good job.
January 6th, 2009 at 11:31 am
That's awesome. Gives me a reason to upgrade to CS4. Thank you!
January 7th, 2009 at 6:42 am
Looks brilliant Stephen. Thanks so much for all your continuing hard work on this. Sorry you got saddled with all this over Christmas!
I'm currently halfway through my third project using Gaia and can't tell you how much I'm enjoying using it.
Now I just have to save up for CS4…
January 7th, 2009 at 8:10 am
Oh, man can't wait. I'm becoming a gaia fan boy!
January 8th, 2009 at 9:25 am
Nice job Steven.
One question though, will the updates to the framework be pushed out for CS3 users as well? I don't really intend on upgrading to CS4 anytime soon, but would still obviously like to be able to utilise the latest version of the framework.
January 8th, 2009 at 1:05 pm
This is a ton of work and thousands of people will benefit from it. Thank you Steven. Looking forward to utilizing very soon.
January 8th, 2009 at 1:23 pm
Looking forward to using Gaia 3.0. Great work Steven!!! U da man!!
January 8th, 2009 at 2:03 pm
@jason The new panel is written in Flex 3 for the 9 player, so it works in both CS3 and CS4 (but not Flash 8).
January 11th, 2009 at 12:59 pm
Hi, it's posible download a beta version of Gaia 3?
January 13th, 2009 at 2:23 pm
Greate greate job, thanks for all and long life for Gaia.
January 15th, 2009 at 1:03 pm
It would be nice to see this somehow integrate with Flex Builder for all of us who don't develop in Flash. I am wondering if Gaia and Lee Brimlow's Project Builder could somehow have a baby together… thoughts?
Excellent project, by the way. Many thanks and I look forward to 3.0
January 19th, 2009 at 4:00 pm
Hi!! Gaia it's an awesome project!! Tomorrow morning i'll download it and test it… !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!