06.27.08
Great Slide Deck on Learning ActionScript 3
Grant Skinner has released an immensely useful slide deck from his Introductory AS3 workshop. There are 165 slides in the deck and they are filled with useful code snippets.
How to Get Adobe Flash working on 64-bit Browsers
OCModshop tackles to problem that Adobe does not deliver Flash players for 64-bit Windows Vista.
Quote: “Adobe must really want their users to start using Microsoft’s new Silverlight technology (a rich media technology similar to Flash). Adobe has recently released a new version of Flash, and yet there is no version for 64-bit browsers. That means that the person using Vista x64 either has to miss out on the latest websites, or they have to use a 32-bit version of Firefox. Trying to install Adobe onto Internet Explorer (32-bit or 64-bit) seems to work, but users are still met with the infamous “you need to install flash” message.
Here’s how to successfully install Flash on the Vista (32-bit or 64-bit) so it works with all of your browsers.”
Read the full report on OCModShop.
06.26.08
Flex 3 Compiler Design
please visit http://blogs.adobe.com/pfarland/2008/06/using_amf_with_flashneturlload.html
Using AMF with flash.net.URLLoader
lash.net.NetConnection is a native Flash Player class that is the workhorse for AMF based communication. Flash and Flex applications make use of NetConnection to send AMF formatted requests over HTTP or HTTPS to servers such as Flash Remoting, ColdFusion, BlazeDS, etc. However, less HTTP features are exposed by NetConnection than those of flash.net.URLLoader.
To know more about this please visit:
http://blogs.adobe.com/pfarland/2008/06/using_amf_with_flashneturlload.html
Adobe event in Banglore for designers and Fireworks users
Adobe welcome you to the showcase of Fireworks public beta in Banglore:
Date: 12 th July.
Time: 10 am to 2 pm
Venue: Adobe campus.
Please send a mail to “fwcs4bta@adobe.com” to confirm your participation.
06.17.08
AIR 1.1 Available for Download
I just saw on the AIR Download page that we’ve released version 1.1, the updated version of the AIR runtime. We’ve fixed a ton of bugs, localized the runtimes to a bunch of languages including French, Spanish, German, Russian, Korean, Japanese, Chinese and a few more. Plus we’ve added some new APIs for developers:
- Support for building internationalized applications, including keyboard input for double-byte languages
- Support for localizing the name and description attributes in the application descriptor file
- Support for localizing error messages, such as SQLError.detailID and SQLError.detailArguments, in the SQLite database
- Addition of Capabilities.languages property to obtain an array of preferred UI languages as set by the operating system
- HTML button labels and default menus, such as context menus and the Mac menu bar, have been localized to all supported languages
- Support for certificate migration from a self-signed application to one that chains to a certificate of authority (CA)
- Support for Microsoft Windows XP Tablet PC Edition and support for 64-bit editions of Windows Vista?? Home Premium, Business, Ultimate, or Enterprise.
- Addition of
File.spaceAvailable: API to obtain the amount of disk space available on a disk - Addition of
NativeWindow.supportsTransparencyproperty to determine whether a window can be drawn as transparent by the current operating system - Bug fixes and memory improvements
A couple of things if you’re planning to start building AIR 1.1 applications with Flex. First, you need to update the SDK which is pretty easy. You also probably want to change the “xmlns” attribute in your application descriptor file to http://ns.adobe.com/air/application/1.1 which will let you take advantage of the performance improvements and the new features. We’ll also be pushing out the latest 1.1 AIR build to users so those people that have downloaded your application should be getting the newest version soon (but your 1.0 applications won’t be affected).
06.05.08
Collection of tools and resources for actionscript developers
Very useful AS2 to AS3 migration reference.
AMFPHP
PHP implementation of the Action Message Format. If you need to transfer large data sets between the server and your Flash application remoting enables you to use native Flash data types which cuts down on time and resources needed to parse and transfer data.
AS3 Optimizations
Collection of useful AS3 optimization suggestions and links.
ASUnit
Unit test framework for Actionscript.
Charles
Web debugging proxy which I find indispensable for inspecting traffic between server and swf files.
Has support for remoting (AMF0 and AMF3) and can do bandwidth throttling.
The only resource listed here that is not free, but definitely worth a mention here due to being extremely useful.
You can try the 30 day demo and see if you think it’s worth the asking price compared to for example Fiddler which is a free alternative.
FlashDevelop
My favourite Actionscript editor. IMO the code completion is much better than FlexBuilder and it comes with MTASC and SWFMill to create AS2 swf’s and integrates with MXMLC for AS3 projects so it very easy to get started using it as an all-in-one solution for developing Actionscript applications.
FlashTracer
Simple but very useful Firefox extension that enables you to view trace output in your web browser which is very handy when you need to debug an application while it’s running on the server.
GAIA Framework
I have to admit that I haven’t actually tried it out properly yet since it hasn’t been applicable for the kind of projects I have been working on lately, but I had a quick look at it and it really seems like a very neat framework for certain types of projects.
MinimalComps
A neat little AS3 component set from bit101. As the name suggests it’s very minimal but usually I find full fledged architectures, like ASWing or the ones that comes with CS3, to be a bit overkill in most cases and it’s a great example to study if you like to make your own AS3 components.
They are drawn from code and hence have a tiny footprint but are not skinning friendly.
For AS2 I have mostly been using Bit101’s commercial
BitComponentSet and I would love to see a similar set for AS3 but for now MinimalComps has come in very handy for simple little apps and prototyping.
Popforge
Open source AS3 audio library started by Andre Michelle and Joa Ebert.
If you want to be able to generate or process sound without using Flash Player 10 it will help you do that, but it’s also possible to use the generators and processors with the new samplesCallbackEvent functionality of FP10 as well.
So if you are interested in Flash audio it certainly very worthwhile to check out.
Red5
Open source Flash server for media streaming and remoting. A very good free alternative to Flash Media Server.
SWFAddress
To implement deeplinking and back button functionality when possible on Flash projects have been a concern of mine for quite a while, both due to usability and SEO concerns. Back in 2005 I developed my own solution, but it was something I quickly hacked together and although functioning and better than anything I could find at that time I always thought it could be a lot neater and was hoping someone would step up and create a package that could gain popularity with a lot of developers.
Hence I was very happy when SWFAddress came along with a package that is solid, neat and easy to implement.
SWFObject
I guess there is not much to say here. You’re probably familiar with SWFObject already, but in case you are not just get it and start using it to embed you swf with it now.
Not only is it a very convenient way of adding version detection, providing alternate content and passing on query parameters to the swf but it also has the benefit of avoiding the < a href = “http://www.baekdal.com/articles/technology/microsoft-ie-activex-update/” >IE issues with activation of embedded content.
TortoiseSVN
Easy to use version control software for Windows.
TweenMax
The fastest tweening engine for AS3 with very neat syntax and always my first choice for tweening duties along with it’s smaller siblings TweenLite and TweenFilterLite.
I have come across scenarios where it doesn’t behave as expected (I guess due to the fact that it doesn’t search for overlapping tween properties to overwrite only those properties) and then I stick with Tweener which has very respectable speed and equally neat syntax.
