specializing in digital media technologies

I’ve been meaning to post about this for a while, but in case you haven’t caught this yet, Adobe has created a resource called BrowserLab. First, there’s a Web-based version, which only requires an Adobe account to log in and use. After you’ve done that, enter a URL and you can view how that Web page looks in various browsers. Right now, only browsers on Windows XP (Firefox 2, 3, and 3.5; IE 6, 7, and 8; Chrome 3) and Mac OS X (Safari 3 and 4; Firefox 2, 3, and 3.5) are supported, but it’s a wonderful start. For anyone needing to see how their site renders on other browsers, including operating systems they may not have, this is a wonderful tool. There’s also a way to compare how a page renders on multiple browsers at one time, so that you can get that pixel perfect look. If you’re using Dreamweaver CS4, there’s even a BrowserLab extension, so you can have the same functionality without leaving your Web development tool.

For more, also see this video on Adobe TV.

A valuable Flex resource, in case you’re not familiar with it, is Adobe’s Tour de Flex. If you’re doing any kind of Flex development, this really is a “must have”. Besides showing off what you can do using Flex (and Adobe AIR), the Tour de Flex provides a single, simple interface for referencing:

• Flex components (UI, containers, effects, validators, etc.)
• Services (data and network interactions)
• Cloud APIs (Amazon, eBay, Flickr, Google, Twitter, etc.)
• Mapping (Google, Mapquest, Yahoo!)
• Third-party tools

Most categories also have a “techniques” section, giving specifics for how to accomplish common tasks. There’s tons of sample code that are also visible in action, so you can easily understand how the code works in practice. And, of course, the related language reference is included.

Tour de Flex is available in both an online and desktop version (thanks to Adobe AIR for the latter).