Month: May 2007

Flash Switcher extension updated

Alessandro Crugnola firefox , , ,

Yesterday I updated my previous flash switcher extension due to some changes in the latest release of Firefox 2.0.3 which caused the extension to stop working.
Moreover Adobe continues to change the path of the flash player installation dir.. because of this you should first uninstall your current flash player before using this extension.
The Flash player uninstaller is available here.

I’ve also included a brief help on how-to add more player versions available for this extension. Just open the ‘help’ menu item from the extension’s menu.

What

I’ve tested both on my Windows Vista business and Windows XP and it seems to work correctly, but feel free to report bugs to me..
Actuallt i’ve included these flash player versions:

  • 4.0 r28
  • 6.0 r79
  • 7.0 r63
  • 8.0 r24
  • 9.0 r28
  • 9.0 r45

What’s flash switcher?
Flash switcher is a Firefox extension (the icon will be installed in the right status bar of your browser) which lets you to switch between various flash player versions without using uninstallers/installers.

This new version is available only for Firefox 2.0.3 and above.

Download the Flash switcher extension.
Be sure to uninstall all previous flash switcher extensions from firefox before install this new one

ActionScript3 library for MySQL, be careful!

Alessandro Crugnola actionscript , ,

Today I’ve read on Mike Chanbers blog a post about a newly born library which allows flex2/as3 to connect directly to mysql.

Here’s the link to the project: http://maclema.com/assql/

I must admit some times ago I tried to make a similar thing because I know as3 could speak directly to mysql.. but it was just a test and I sopped immediately the experiments.

About the assql library: this library can be useful if you think to use it in Apollo applications, but never never think to use it on the web!
First of all you need a mysql server which allows connections outside the localhost env, secondly you need to set the database password within the swf file and thirdly you will have queries within the swf too.. bad. Better to stay on amfphp or webservices

Even if a scrambler is provided with this library, it will be quite easy to sniff the password too..

Anyway, awesome library indeed for the Apollo framework!

Fear of Silverlight?

Alessandro Crugnola actionscript, general

Since the announcement of Microsoft Silverlight I continue to read posts of flashers (being subscribed to mxna feed) attacking silverlight in various manner.. (here some links to these posts)
I must admit I don’t know silverlight at all. I just watched some online demos and downloaded some examples.
For what I’ve seen I don’t like it too (but just for personal feeling), but I also have to consider it’s the first (and beta) version….
Otherwise I think the vector rendering engine is more powerful than the flash one.

But why people fear of it? Does it because it’s a Microsoft stuff? Or just because it’s a possible Flash competitor?
Usually when someone attacks something, this means that you fear or it. But I don’t agree, I hope MS will continue the development of silverlight because competition can only be a benefit in a global market.
Don’t you agree with this?