ZaaIL adds support for 40+ image format to Flash

Zaalabs yesterday announced the release of an opensource ( under MIT license ) library, written using Alchemy, which will allow swf to load at runtime more than 40 different image formats ( you will have access to the bitmapdata of the loaded file ).

This is indeed a great news ( I’m thinking in particular to the benefits it can have for us at Aviary )!
This actionscript library is a porting of the DevIL library. And in fact reading at the features list of the DevIL library you can see that a lot of image formats are currently supported:
  • Windows Bitmap – .bmp
  • Dr. Halo – .cut
  • Multi-PCX – .dcx
  • Dicom – .dicom, .dcm
  • DirectDraw Surface – .dds
  • OpenEXR – .exr
  • Flexible Image Transport System – .fits, .fit
  • Heavy Metal: FAKK 2 – .ftx
  • Radiance High Dynamic – .hdr
  • Macintosh icon – .icns
  • Windows icon/cursor – .ico, .cur
  • Interchange File Format – .iff
  • Infinity Ward Image – .iwi
  • Graphics Interchange Format – .gif
  • Jpeg – .jpg, .jpe, .jpeg
  • Jpeg 2000 – .jp2
  • Interlaced Bitmap – .lbm
  • Homeworld texture – .lif
  • Half-Life Model – .mdl
  • MPEG-1 Audio Layer 3 – .mp3
  • Palette – .pal
  • Kodak PhotoCD – .pcd
  • ZSoft PCX – .pcx
  • Softimage PIC – .pic
  • Portable Network Graphics – .png
  • Portable Anymap – .pbm, .pgm, .pnm, .pnm
  • Alias | Wavefront – .pix
  • Adobe PhotoShop – .psd
  • PaintShop Pro – .psp
  • Pixar – .pxr
  • Raw data – .raw
  • Homeworld 2 Texture – .rot
  • Silicon Graphics – .sgi, .bw, .rgb, .rgba
  • Creative Assembly Texture – .texture
  • Truevision Targa – .tga
  • Tagged Image File Format – .tif
  • Gamecube Texture – .tpl
  • Unreal Texture – .utx
  • Quake 2 Texture – .wal
  • Valve Texture Format – .vtf
  • HD Photo – .wdp, .hdp
  • X Pixel Map – .xpm
  • Doom graphics

flash player 8 demo in tokyo

via Moock.
I just read on moock’s blog that kevin lynch, macromedia’s chief software architect, demonstrated the next generation version of the flash player at the macromedia flash conference in tokyo, japan.
only a few features were shown, but it seems they are great, expecially, as we were already heard few time ago, for the graphics.
There is a video available, taken from te conference, in which these features are shown:

  • a new type-rendering engine
  • performance improvements
  • bitmap effects (blur, dropshadow, colour matrix etc)
  • realtime video alpha channel

video is avail at different locations:
Carl-Alexandre Malartre from ScoLab
>> low bw (5mb 320×240, 15fps)
>> med bw (14.5mb 320×240, 30fps)
>> high bw (42mb, 640×480, 30fps)

Ultrashock
>> low bw (5mb 320×240, 15fps)
>> med bw (5mb 320×240, 30fps)
>> high bw (42mb, 640×480, 30fps)
Link: http://www.moock.org/blog/archives/000146.html