Year: 2006

Flex2 crazyness

Alessandro Crugnola flex , , , ,

After the interesting actionscript.it conference I decided to give more of my free time to Flex2 and expecially to components creation.
I must admit that ActionScript 3.0 documentation is probably the best documentation I ever seen about flash, but I can’t say the same thing about Flex developement.
Once I had to look for advanced features of Flex components, advanced compiler options etc.. I began to slam against a wall. The developer compoents guide is incomplete and does not cover all the aspects and it has some errors probably due to incorrect revision after the beta program.
So I had to search in the livedocs, but here there are missing links (many links still point to the beta version and they’ve benn removed) and the informations are spread in completely different pages…

Anyway, this is my first test with Flex2 components.. I just made a porting of my color picker as2 component.. that’s because the builtin flex2 picker is too poor.

The problem with the compiled SWC file is that Flex displays also all the other classes used in the component as they are different UI components and I didn’t find anywhere how to compile with compc an swc file which exposes just the UIComponent I want. The documentation says about “-include-component” compiler option, but it’s an error because the compiler does not allow that option!
This is the script I’m using for compiling it:
compc -source-path="." -namespace http://www.sephiroth.it/2006/mxml mxml-manifest.xml -if assets.swf images\assets.swf -if CPicker.png CPicker.png -include-namespaces http://www.sephiroth.it/2006/mxml -output "C:\Program Files\Adobe\Flex Builder 2\Flex SDK 2\frameworks\libs\sephiroth\CPicker.swc"

http://labs.sephiroth.it/flex_colorpicker/

E4X, ActionScript 3 new “sublanguage”

Alessandro Crugnola actionscript , , , ,

Since I’ve heard the voices about the upcoming E4x in actionscript 3 I awaited this moment…
Finally ActionScript supports E4X and we can kick away the old XML object (always supported for backward compatibility)! we can stop using all the various xml2object classes created in these years, we finally have a validating parser, so we will see finally well formatted XML files from flash users 🙂
But finally we have a powerful “language” with a very strong syntax.

I’ve written a small tutorial with a quick guide  about actionscript3 and e4x basic syntax (without including Namespaces and QNames for the moment)

http://www.sephiroth.it/tutorials/flashPHP/E4X/index.php

P.s. I forgot to say that E4X is also available in the Geko1.8 browser (such as Firefox 1.5). For more info see this article: http://developer.mozilla.org/en/docs/E4X. Unfortunately E4X ins’t supported by python, neither there’s a module for it 🙁

Flash Player 9, Flex 2, ActionScript 3.0: A Survey of the New Landscape

Alessandro Crugnola actionscript, flex , , , , ,

Colin has posted an interesting article on flash9, flex2, actionscript3.
Why ActionScript 2 coders should start learning ActionScript3 as soon as possible and why timeline coders and flash designers shouldn’t…
Colin underlined a significant aspect of this new flash release: the free flex2 command line compiler. (I asked for it since so much time!)

Read the full entry here:
http://www.moock.org/blog/archives/000189.html

Google browser sync

Alessandro Crugnola firefox , , , ,

I discovered today this great extension for Mozilla Firefox made by Google.

It synchronizes bookmarks, history, cookies and saved passwords continuously across your computers. It also allows you to restore open tabs and windows across different machines and browser sessions.
It allows you to select which setting to be sent using encryption (for example the saved password, even if I just use this extension only for my bookmarks).
Using firefox using different computers every day I always had the problem of bookmarks syncronization. First I used another firefox extension, but I dont remember its name, then I decided to put my bookmark.html file under a CVS repository, but now that I discovered this extension I will definitively use this one.

download the firefox extension here:
http://www.google.com/tools/firefox/browsersync

Flash Professional 8 FLVPlayback 1.0.1 Component Update

Alessandro Crugnola actionscript , , , , , , ,

This update provides fixes for problems related to SMIL support in the initial release of the FLVPlayback component. It also addresses some issues related to streaming from the Flash Media Server and Flash Video Streaming Service (FVSS) partners as well as some minor issues related to using custom UI controls. Anyone working with the FLVPlayback components should apply this update. Installation instructions are included with the download in the Readme file.

Download available here

Flash 9 Preview & Flex 2

Alessandro Crugnola flex , , , ,

On Adobe Labs (http://labs.adobe.com) it’s finally available a preview version of Flash 9. described as “A preview of the next release of the Flash authoring tool, scheduled for release in 2007, extends the capabilities of Flash Professional 8 to include support for the new ActionScript 3.0 language in Flash Player 9.”

To download the preview it’s necessary an Adobe account (you can create one, it’s free) while the installation needs a licensed copy of Flash Professional 8 or Studio 8, because a serial number will be asked during the software setup.
Finally, after Flex 2 Betas, we’ll try also the new Flash IDE!

By the way, Flex 2 seems available at http://www.adobe.com/products/flex/ !
As promised the Flex 2 SDK is available for free:
Download Flex 2 SDK