Re: [Flashcoders] AS3 finally..

[Kevin Newman]

Why? The answer has to do with Adobe's adherence to the ECMAScript 
working standard that they were basing AS3 on. At the time (before the 
ECMAScript 4 process fell apart), the body determined that private 
constructors were not needed, so adobe built this restriction into AS3.


Private constructors aren't useless, particularly for single pattern. 
With a private constructor, you can instantiate the class from within 
itself, assign it to a private class (static) property, and then expose 
the single instance through a public class (static) getter function. 
You'd be protected from every other way to instantiate the class. There 
are ways to do singleton without it, they are just more of a pain. Like 
taking an instance of a key class in the constructor, where the Key 
class is defined in the local class file scope chain. Since nothing else 
will have access to that Key class except your singleton class, you can 
use that as a nice locking mechanism.


I can't think of any use for private class off the top of my head, but 
that doesn't mean there isn't one.


Kevin N.


On 5/21/13 2:39 AM, Cor wrote:

Karl,

One: why doesn't ActionScript 3 allow private classes?
A: They are useless because they couldn't be used, I guess.
You can use a Class within a public class which then would be private to
that class it self.

Two: why is writing "public class" a best practice if "private class" does
not exist?
Look a the variations with static etc.

HTH
Cor




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Re: [Flashcoders] Re: Air is dead (was Flash is dead)

[Kevin Newman]

The video performance in AIR on desktop is horrendous (no hardware 
accell - even through webkit), and on mobile it's only better if you go 
through stagevideo. For heavier lifting you'll need to use an ANE. Once 
you are down that road, why not just go all native, or look for a better 
cross-platform framework like Xamarin?


When Adobe says "premium video" they really mean "we aren't going to 
pull the plug on our DRM partner and customers (yet)." Their "premium 
gaming" narrative was similar, though in the case of Unity3D (one of 
their premium gaming partners) it did fall apart once they canned AVMNext.


Adobe is not serious about expanding their Flash market. They don't seem 
to be interested in being a middleware provider. Even for gaming at Max 
(I'm not there, but word on the street is) talk is all about gaming in 
HTML5, and the only real Flash presence is third party vendors - those 
partners and customers that the "premium" label applies to - with not 
much from Adobe themselves. My customers, and from the looks of it, many 
others', have gotten the right message. It's time to move on.


Kevin N.



On 5/9/13 12:09 PM, Randall Tinfow wrote:
It depends.  If you are developing video centric applications, I don't 
see a platform that comes close.  WatchESPN is the perfect example. 


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Re: [Flashcoders] Adobe Flash future

[Kevin Newman]

That seems to be mostly about ASNext/AVMNext which has since been 
canned, and the developers moved not back to AS3, but to webkit and 
other web tech.


Kevin N.



On 5/10/13 7:20 AM, John McCormack wrote:

Alex Harui at Adobe had these interesting things to say:
http://tech.groups.yahoo.com/group/flexcoders/message/165517
John


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Re: [Flashcoders] Adobe Flash future

[Kevin Newman]

Gospel.

Kevin N.


On 5/9/13 11:18 AM, James Merrill wrote:

>From my perspective as a former Flash Developer at an Ad agency, I can't
imagine us getting any more serious Flash work. These days we still use
Flash for banner ads, but that's it. We've tried using Adobe Edge to do
HTML5 banners, but it was an awful experience. I rest ALL of my blame on
Adobe for both of these situations, not the underlying technologies.

If you're betting on Adobe, you're going to lose. They've royally screwed
up how they handled this whole Flash fiasco in the last five years. I have
ZERO faith in their Edge HTML5 platform, and I suggest that you don't buy
the hype. Adobe makes good designs software, and that's it.

As AS3 Flash developers, we understand the complexities of RIA's much
better than your average Javascript programmer. We've been doing "AJAX" far
before it was popularized in mainstream web development. It was sendAndLoad
to us in AS2. We understand animation, interactivity, and user experience
much more than most. That's our strength, and it transcends Flash. A lot of
you may not believe me, but it's becoming a reality that you can make Flash
quality experiences in modern browsers.

As for coding HTML5/CSS/JS in an opensource IDE with Greensock JS, Angular,
or even Jquery, it's getting better. Javascript is not as elegant as AS3,
actually it's more akin to AS2... But progress is being made with new
releases of ECMAScript, and MV* frameworks like Backbone and Angular.

I miss the good ole days of Flash... But times are exciting as a web
developer, I've found some comfort in embracing the change.


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Re: [Flashcoders] Adobe Flash future

[Kevin Newman]

On 5/8/13 2:20 PM, John R. Sweeney Jr. wrote:

Please tell me another software that I can build an app that runs on 
PC/MAC/Linux/iPad/Android/Web (non-mobile)?
NME / haXe, or with a bit of additional work, Xamarin (with the various 
Mono ports) - or Unity3D - based on the same tech. There are dozens of 
C/C++ based cross platform frameworks as well - Cocos2D, MarmaladeSDK, 
etc. Some scripting engines, CoronaSDK, LoomScript, etc. I still think 
Flash has an edge (except maybe over Xamarin), but tell that to Adobe.


I wish Adobe was as enthusiastic about defending Flash as you are. That 
would go a long way toward convincing potential buyers, that the 
platform isn't going to evaporate tomorrow. As I said in another post - 
Flash and AIR are great tech, but Adobe's public support is nonexistent, 
which is sad, because it wouldn't take much.


Kevin N.

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Re: [Flashcoders] Adobe Flash future

[Kevin Newman]

That seems to be Adobe's general problem. They are very reactive, like 
used car salesmen. "You want HTML5? Boy have we got HTML5! Clouds? We 
got clouds - on sale this week only!" Technology companies can't succeed 
that way.


Kevin N.



On 5/8/13 1:58 PM, John R. Sweeney Jr. wrote:

Adobe didn't even make any kind of an announcement or anything.


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Re: [Flashcoders] Adobe Flash future

[Kevin Newman]

That's what I mean by I think of Flash as Directory/Shockwave. It's not 
dead, it's just not the job engine it was for a while. It's a much 
harder sell - but it's still possible, and still has its niches.


I still think Adobe could do some things to make it easier, even if they 
don't actively promote and as vigorously develop Flash. They could send 
a big signal that Flash is still alive, if they just mention is more, or 
rebrand AIR as Flash Apps (cause no one know what the heck AIR is - in 
fact, many still operate under the "Flash is banned from the app store" 
narrative that Adobe never quite countered). That'd go a long way to 
providing the necessary confidence that they are indeed maintaining it 
and standing behind at least what's already there, and that they aren't 
going to just pull the plug, which is the sense I think they've sent out 
into the market. It's truly next to impossible to sell AIR apps right now.


I've moved on anyway, and I suspect a lot of developers have done the 
same. I love Flash, and I think it's great tech. Adobe not so much.


Kevin N.


On 5/8/13 1:39 PM, Micky Hulse wrote:

On Wed, May 8, 2013 at 10:31 AM, John R. Sweeney Jr.
 wrote:

And Director 12 came out a little while ago and compiles out to iPad. :)

Wha??? That blows my mind. I thought Director was dead. Shows what I know! :D

So, is it any good these days? Director was a fun animation tool back
when I used it.
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Re: [Flashcoders] Adobe Flash future

[Kevin Newman]

On 5/8/13 1:16 PM, Micky Hulse wrote:

Personally, I still love Flash. I miss that I don't use it as often these days.

A few thoughts:

1. Correct me if I'm wrong, as it's not my industry, but isn't Flash
still one of the popular tools to use for video animation?
It was popular for certain types of cartoon animation and motion 
graphics. But these days there are a lot of alternatives, especially 
After Affects, but also toon boom, etc.



2. I love AS3! I'd take AS3 and the Flash GUI over HTML5 any day.
AS3 is great. But we have alternatives. For apps, I've been looking at 
Xamarin which is mostly through C#. If you like AS3, you'll love C#. You 
can also use PlayScript or AS3 (and even Stage3D) on top of Xamarin if 
you like. I've been playing with it for a couple of weeks, and I have to 
say, it feels like going home again. I don't miss mobile AIR - Xamarin 
is what Adobe should have done for Flash/AIR devs years ago. HTML5 has a 
place in apps, but it's place is not to BE the app.



3. We do a lot of ad work at my company ... HTML5 animation is a
LONG way off. Even if we did do HTML5 anims, then the ad serving
software and ad networks would have to be on board too; I'm not
holding my breath on this one (have you seen the JS these people use?
Hell, they can't even get away from using multi-nested document.writes
which kills it if you're trying to do responsive loading of ads).
You could always use the various SWF -> HTML5 converters, including 
Google's Swiffy, which is just fantastic (again, Adobe could have done 
that, but they farmed out CreateJS - wtf). 
https://www.google.com/doubleclick/studio/swiffy/



4. This is maybe tangentially related, but several months ago,
Facebook decided to go native app vs. using CSS3/HTML5 technology (as
an example of HTML5 getting mud in its eye).

Don't get me wrong, I think HTML5 is pretty cool stuff (compared to
its predecessor) but I think there's room to grow for both
technologies.

Then again, I'd hate to see Flash go the way of Director. Man, it's
been years since I last coded in Lingo script! :D
It's too late - Adobe has already pulled a large portion of their 
developers off of both Flash Pro and the Flash runtime, and cancelled 
FlashNext/AVMNext.  It's over. Time to move on.


I like Xamarin so far. It's cross platform, and provides access to 
native GUI toolkits, which is all most people need when they say they 
want a "native app". The AS3/PlayScript front end that Zynga's employees 
threw together is icing on the cake. I hope this one gains some 
traction, cause it's pretty slick. I'm a little surprised more Flash/AS3 
developers haven't picked up on it yet, because I think it's a natural 
fit. Maybe PlayScript will prompt more of us to take another look at the 
technology.


In the web world, there's some great stuff happening, from AngularJS, 
Backbone.js, Node.js, jQuery, and the transpilers - TypeScript (very AS2 
like, only better) and CoffeeScript. Even Apache Flex is working rapidly 
on an HTML5 compile target and set of components.


These are increasingly two different worlds - two worlds Flash could 
have bridged, but Adobe didn't chose to move in that direction. But 
that's ok, cause these two worlds are pretty fun if you embrace them (or 
just one or the other).


Kevin N.

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Re: [Flashcoders] Adobe Flash future

[Kevin Newman]

I think of Flash the way I think of Shockwave. There is still work out 
there, but not much, and less every minute.


Kevin N.



On 5/8/13 10:40 AM, natalia Vikhtinskaya wrote:

Hi
What do you think about Flash technology in the near future? It is a
pity but it seems that almost all clients have no interest in Flash
projects.
Do you think Adobe Flash has no future? Where to move from Flash?

Thanks
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Re: [Flashcoders] Long running tablet apps

[Kevin Newman]

I'm running an AIR based task server on Windows XP - for weeks at a time 
(only patch Tuesday knocks it down). So this can be done. :-)


Kevin N.


On 11/23/12 7:23 AM, Hans Wichman wrote:
I wouldn't put too much time into it, noone realistically expects 
windows to run for a couple of weeks, let alone your app on a samsung 
tablet ;)). 


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Re: [Flashcoders] Long running tablet apps

[Kevin Newman]

I have a task server running on AIR (for generating images and other 
static website assets - it's part of a CMS) running on a local machine 
that stays up for weeks. You'll have to find and fix any memory leaks, 
or infinite event loops (and event handler build ups, etc.), and things 
like that. AIR itself shouldn't have any problem running that long 
(barring of course any uncovered bugs in uncovered corners of the AIR 
API that you may uncover).


Of course, it can be pretty difficult to find this kind of stuff without 
a good debugger and profiler - and debugging and profiling workflow.


The event stuff is probably the hardest part to manage in the Flash API 
with regard to memory leaks. You really do just have to make sure to 
unhook all the events once they are no longer needed - or even better, 
just reuse the ones you set only once.


Kevin N.


On 11/23/12 5:27 AM, Paul A. wrote:
I've been asked about making a long-running app for a Samsung android 
tablet.


In the past, I made one for a windows tablet but there was clearly a 
memory leak (not that I could find it in my code) and after being 
active for many, many hours it would hit a problem.


We looked at automating a restart of the app to get around this.

If I encounter the same issue on the Samsung, would I be able to 
restart the app before it happens?


Or does anyone who has developed similar have any advice?

Thanks,

Paul
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Re: [Flashcoders] AS3

[Kevin Newman]

I literally meant AS3 is dying. Adobe does have their replacement (check 
some recent discussions on the Apache Flex-dev mailing list ;-) ). 
Hopefully it'll revitalize things a bit.


Kevin N.


On 10/28/2012 7:24 AM, Hans Wichman wrote:
I think the heart of the matter is that in my opinion 
actionscript/flash is not dying,


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Re: [Flashcoders] AS3

[Kevin Newman]

There is absolutely definitely going to be /something/. ASNext is what 
it's called in the roadmap:


http://www.adobe.com/devnet/flashplatform/whitepapers/roadmap.html

Kevin N.


On 10/26/2012 2:28 PM, Kerry Thompson wrote:

I don't think there is going to be an AS4.


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Re: [Flashcoders] AS3

[Kevin Newman]

True enough - I keep hoping we'll get renewed interest in AIR apps on 
mobile, but the brand has taken such a beating no one seems willing to 
promote the usefulness of AIR that way. In my view, it's just as easy to 
make an awesome app experience in AIR as it has always been out of Flash 
Pro and/or with pure AS3 (not speaking about RIAs/Flex). It's not like 
there were ever great component tools out of Flash Pro (the ugly forms, 
bleh!), so we all have plenty of experience creating all that from 
scratch (and frankly I prefer that anyway). Nothing has changed for 
those of us who always used Flash that way. Add in Stage3D - the sky is 
the limit. It's just no one wants to hear about Flash anymore.


But yeah, AS3 is still one of my favorite languages. TypeScript looks 
good, and I'd really love to dive into Google's Go Lang - that looks 
awesome! I'm stuck in hopeless PHP most of the time these days. :-/


Kevin N.


On 10/26/12 4:54 PM, Merrill, Jason wrote:

It's the platform that is taking the big hit (Flash player)  therefore AS3 is 
decreasing in use because the platform is decreasing in use. It's not because 
AS3 lost favorability, the player did.


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Re: [Flashcoders] AS3

[Kevin Newman]

And don't forget, without being as feature complete as well.

Kevin N.


On 10/26/12 3:11 PM, tom rhodes wrote:

hmmm, nowhere near as mature as haxe and haxe compiles to JS without
needing a "lightweight runtime" either.


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Re: [Flashcoders] AS3

[Kevin Newman]

But why? :-)

To add a little bit - perhaps AS3 is only dying in some industries (like 
mine). But surely once ASNext ships, AS3 will become the next AS2 (which 
has been diminishing for years now).


Kevin N.


On 10/26/12 1:44 PM, Hans Wichman wrote:

I call bs:)


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Re: [Flashcoders] AS3

[Kevin Newman]

I hate to say it, but AS3 is kind of dying. My hope is AS4 (or whatever 
they end up calling Actionscript Next) with it's gaming focus, will 
revitalize things a bit.


Kevin N.


On 10/26/12 11:11 AM, tom rhodes wrote:

how depressing that a simple AS3 question has turned into a thread about
how everyone is now coding JS!!


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Re: [Flashcoders] AS3

[Kevin Newman]

Where it gets complicated is when you do inheritance. You can do it this 
way:


(function(window){

function Person(name, address){
this.name = name;
this.address = address;
}

Person.prototype = {
sayHello: function() {
console.log(this.name + " says hello 
from"+this.address);
};
};

Person.SPECIES = "human";

function NeoPerson(name, address){
// kind of like super()
Person.call( this, name, address );
// or (you only need one)
Person.apply( this, arguments );
}
// protects the prototype chain, without invoking the parent constructor
// Object.create will need a polyfill in some browsers.
NeoPerson.prototype = Object.create( Person.prototype );

// manually sync class props
NeoPerson.SPECIES = Person.SPECIES;

// can't use object literal syntax in child classes
NeoPerson.prototype.sayHello = function() {
// call parent method
Person.prototype.sayHello.call( this );
console.log(this.name + " says \"I know Kung Fu.\" ");
}

window.Person = Person;
window.NeoPerson = NeoPerson;

})(window);

var foo = new NeoPerson( 'Neo', 'somewhere' );
foo.sayHello();
// logs both sayHellos

But you can see how verbose that it, which is why it can be useful to 
use a framework like Ross's or underscore.js.


Also, there is Jangaroo, which compiles AS3 to JS. That is closer to AS3 
than haXe. ;-)


Personally, I'm a big fan of TypeScript from what I've seen so far. I'll 
be looking at that much more closely soon.


Kevin N.



On 10/26/12 11:30 AM, Merrill, Jason wrote:

Yeah, unfortunately the world has accepted Javascript without much complaint. 
But here's a simple example of simulating a class in Javascript - put this in a 
js file:

(function(window){

function Person(name, address){
this.name = name;
this.address = address;
}

Person.prototype.sayHello = function(){
console.log(this.name + " says hello from"+this.address);
};

Person.SPECIES = "human";

window.Person = Person;

}(window));


Then in HTML you can do this after importing the above js file:

var jason = new Person("Jason Merrill", "123 Smith Street");
jason.sayHello();


  Jason Merrill
  Instructional Technology Architect II
  Bank of America  Global Learning
  703.302.9265 (w/h)





___

-Original Message-
From: flashcoders-boun...@chattyfig.figleaf.com 
[mailto:flashcoders-boun...@chattyfig.figleaf.com] On Behalf Of David Hunter
Sent: Friday, October 26, 2012 11:23 AM
To: Flash Coders List
Subject: Re: [Flashcoders] AS3

Thanks Kevin, I guess what I meant was a more object orientated approach, which 
I have enjoyed learning and using in AS3. I'll look into those libraries you 
mentioned.

David

On 26 October 2012 16:11, tom rhodes  wrote:


how depressing that a simple AS3 question has turned into a thread
about how everyone is now coding JS!!

whilst we're on that subject though...

http://haxe.org/doc/targets/js
http://www.haxejs.org/

is about as close as you are going to get to AS3 in terms of JS. i
can't recommend haxe enough for a million reasons but the JS target
has just improved massively in the code it generates and haxe 3 is a
few months away which should have the complete html5 spec covered as
standard, including webgl.

On 26 October 2012 16:40, Ross Sclafani  wrote:


my framework lets you code like this:


_package('com.neuromantic.display.shapes',

 _import( 'com.neuromantic.display.shapes.Oval'),

 _class( 'Circle' )._extends( 'Oval',{
 Circle: function ( size ) {
 this._super( size, size );
 }

 })
);



Ross P. Sclafani
design / technology / creative

http://ross.sclafani.net
http://www.twitter.com/rosssclafani
http://www.linkedin.com/in/rosssclafani
[347] 204.5714



let go of even your longest held beliefs, the only truth is in
observation.

On Oct 26, 2012, at 10:25 AM, Kevin Newman  wrote:


JS doesn't have classes, and emulating them is somewhat tricky
using

the

prototype chain (it can be done though).

The easiest way to emulate classes though is to use a framework
like

underscore.js (which Backbone.js is built on).

Kevin N.


On 10/26/12 9:21 AM, David Hunter wrote:

I'd
really like to learn to approach javascript from a class-based

approach,





--
David Hunter

www.davidhunterdesign.com
+44 (0) 7869 104 906
@DHDPIC


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Re: [Flashcoders] AS3

[Kevin Newman]

JS doesn't have classes, and emulating them is somewhat tricky using the 
prototype chain (it can be done though).


The easiest way to emulate classes though is to use a framework like 
underscore.js (which Backbone.js is built on).


Kevin N.


On 10/26/12 9:21 AM, David Hunter wrote:

I'd
really like to learn to approach javascript from a class-based approach,


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Re: [Flashcoders] AS3

[Kevin Newman]

There are some things that are quite nice about JS, but it can be hard 
to get used to closures over classes, and that kind of thing.


If you are looking for library suggestions, I loved Backbone.js, but 
Flex folks seem to prefer Angular.js. QUnit is actually a lot of fun too 
(I haven't found another Unit testing framework on other platforms that 
I like quite as much).


One more unsolicited suggestion - add "use strict"; inside your JS files 
(inside a closure). This turns on some compiler like functionality in JS 
consoles, to cache typos and things like that, which normally fail 
silently. Also, you can enable stack traces in FireBug, if you are 
developing in Firefox (took me a while to find that).


Good luck!

Kevin N.


On 10/25/12 11:35 AM, Merrill, Jason wrote:

I'm about to start my first HTML5/CSS3/Javascript job - wish me luck! :) Going 
through a lot of courses on Lynda.com - completed some Javascript courses and 
jQuery, now enjoying Lee Brimlow's HTML 5 For Flash Developers course right 
now. Good stuff - I wish Javascript was a more advanced language but it has 
some pretty cool features.

  Jason Merrill
  Instructional Technology Architect II
  Bank of America  Global Learning
  703.302.9265 (w/h)






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Re: [Flashcoders] AS3

[Kevin Newman]

There might be other problems I have forgotten about (I made the switch 
a long time ago) - do you have any specific examples of problem areas? 
(You should at least be getting line numbers during errors with "permit 
debugging" checked - that's a huge help).


If you've already gone down the path of defining all your stage elements 
as properties, you'll also have to undo all that.


Another big thing is how to reach into a child-clip's properties - which 
the compiler won't let you do with children that aren't dynamic - unless 
you cast to that object's specific class, or a dynamic class (like 
MovieClip). So for the short term, it's probably easier to stick with 
MovieClip, or a custom Sprite derived class marked with dynamic, until 
you really get used to static typing and casting.


On the opposite side, there's getting access to parent clip's props and 
methods. The other coders on the list may wag their fingers at me for 
this - but this is how you can do it:


// in some child clip that you want to access the parent's public 
functions and properties

(parent as MovieClip).method();
// or
var _parent:* = parent; // I think this works..
_parent.method();

The problem with doing things this way, is you can get some pretty 
cryptic error messages (but that was true in AS2 as well).


I think (I can't remember how AS2 works, it's been a while), you have to 
change properties to be more explicit in AS3 - so if you want them to be 
properties they have to be preceded with `this.` in AS3, so:


// to make this accessible to parent or children
this.method = function(){}
// instead of
var method = function(){}
// or
function method(){}

// if you already have local references that don't use `this.`, you can 
do both

this.method = function method(){}
// or
var method = this.method = function(){} // or some value

I actually really recommend starting from scratch on some project with 
AS3, rather than converting an older fla. When I did that, is when I 
started to figure out how AS3 stuff works.


Oh, another thing is targeting Flash 9 is buggy (the MovieClip object 
doesn't work right). Adobe fixed it all in flash 10 though. That was the 
other real big headache.


Kevin N.

The FLA problem only seems to show itself when you convert an older AS2 
fla from Flash 8 or lower to AS3. If you start with an AS2 fla from 
Flash Pro CS3 (or whichever was the first with AS3) or newer it doesn't 
do that.


On 10/24/12 6:43 PM, Karl DeSaulniers wrote:

That didn't fix my problem. :(
I got all excited too.. lol

Karl


On Oct 24, 2012, at 5:38 PM, Karl DeSaulniers wrote:


I did start with a AS2 FLA and switched to AS3.
So your saying the IDE does not add the appropriate stuff when you 
just convert?

WTF! Good to know Kevin.
Thanks

Best,
Karl


On Oct 24, 2012, at 4:25 PM, Kevin Newman wrote:

When I first started in AS3, there were two blocks that caught me up 
a lot. I started from an older AS2 FLA and then converted to AS3 - 
that was the cause of the problem.


If you do that, you end up with an AS3 fla that doesn't have the 
right settings in the AS3 Properties panel. You won't have 
automatically declare stage instance set, or strict mode (you want 
both).


Also, to get actual line numbers with errors, you'll need to check 
"allow debugging" in publish settings - I know it sounds like it's a 
permissions thing, but it really enables debugging symbols to be 
embedded in the swf, so that when you get an error, you'll actually 
get a useful error number with it.


Good luck!

Kevin N.


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Re: [Flashcoders] AS3

[Kevin Newman]

Sometimes anonymous and inline functions as terms are used interchangeably.

I wrote an addOnce method that utilized a closure - an inline function 
(it wasn't anonymous though) that subscribed to the main add (this is a 
Signals implementation) method, then removes itself from within itself, 
and calls the user func.

https://github.com/CaptainN/SignalsLite/blob/master/src/com/unfocus/signalslite/SignalLite.as

I tend to agree with you though in general. It's easier to work with 
classes and class methods than with a hundred closures, especially 
during debugging (and especially when they're all unnamed).


That said, JavaScript (which doesn't have proper classes, only 
prototypes and closures) can be quite fun.

https://github.com/CaptainN/SignalsLite.js

There again, it's actually a lot better to name your functions (even 
inline ones) because then they show up with a name in the error 
messages. ;-)


Kevin N.


On 10/24/12 10:08 AM, Merrill, Jason wrote:

Ok, what's a good case to use them?  Just curious, I have never found a 
situation where they were warranted.

  


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Re: [Flashcoders] AS3

[Kevin Newman]

When I first started in AS3, there were two blocks that caught me up a 
lot. I started from an older AS2 FLA and then converted to AS3 - that 
was the cause of the problem.


If you do that, you end up with an AS3 fla that doesn't have the right 
settings in the AS3 Properties panel. You won't have automatically 
declare stage instance set, or strict mode (you want both).


Also, to get actual line numbers with errors, you'll need to check 
"allow debugging" in publish settings - I know it sounds like it's a 
permissions thing, but it really enables debugging symbols to be 
embedded in the swf, so that when you get an error, you'll actually get 
a useful error number with it.


Good luck!

Kevin N.
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Re: [Flashcoders] Actionscript lives on.

[Kevin Newman]

The other problem is that in a GPU rendering pipeline, vector art is 
even more expensive (maybe a bit less so with D3D 11 and hardware 
tessellation, but so far that isn't common on mobile devices). The GPU 
really needs bitmaps. But a smart render path with vector caching could 
really get the best of both worlds (kind of a like a cacheAsBitmap 
that's a bit more upfront and easier to use). It'd use a bit more 
battery the first time the vectors are drawn, than just using bitmaps, 
but it may make up for it through lower cell data charges, and quicker 
downloads. You could also generate art that is exactly the size the 
screen and system can handle, instead of down sampling Bitmaps (or just 
squeezing it onto the wrong sized screen using GPU filtering - so many 
apps do that, and it looks horrible on many devices like the iPhone 3gs).


Kevin N.


9/17/2012 4:28 PM, Ross P. Sclafani wrote:

i think battery life is paramount to data consumption in mobile, and the bits 
saved by vector formats
have a very high cost in cpu cycles.

this is why AIR for iOS tends towards starling / spritesheet methodologies.


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Re: [Flashcoders] Actionscript lives on.

[Kevin Newman]

On 9/18/12 11:04 AM, Tom Gooding wrote:

1) Has anyone on this list shipped anything decent (by this I guess I mean 
commercially successful; gave +ve ROI on dev/sales costs) into the AppStore 
using AS3/AIR?
Also, I didn't have anything to do with it, but I think the NBC Sports 
(formerly NBC Olympics) apps are both done in AIR.



2) Has anyone got any practical advice for technology choices for an AS3 / Java 
shop looking to do mobile apps / games  (we have a framework using SmartFox 
server with AS3 client tech).
Get started with Starling or another Stage3D based framework (through 
direct rendermode) from the start, and don't bother with CPU or GPU 
rendermodes.


Kevin N.

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Re: [Flashcoders] Actionscript lives on.

[Kevin Newman]

I haven't shipped anything public, but have shipped a couple of demos 
and ad-hoc distributed apps that clients were pretty happy with.


There is a highish profile Flash site that we are currently planning to 
revamp for mobile and desktop, all using Flash and AIR. I think Adobe 
has a good story going forward, if they can get their PR goons out of 
the way.


Kevin N.


On 9/18/12 11:04 AM, Tom Gooding wrote:

1) Has anyone on this list shipped anything decent (by this I guess I mean 
commercially successful; gave +ve ROI on dev/sales costs) into the AppStore 
using AS3/AIR?


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Re: [Flashcoders] Actionscript lives on.

[Kevin Newman]

There are a number of Stage3D based frameworks that are attempting to do 
just that (including my poor neglected Backstage2D).


Kevin N.


On 9/17/12 5:54 PM, Henrik Andersson wrote:

Flash needs a more powerful caching system for rasterized vector art.


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Re: [Flashcoders] Actionscript lives on.

[Kevin Newman]

HTML5 is finally on the downslide of the gartner hype cycle's peak of 
inflated expectations. So it makes sense that people are starting to 
pronounce it's death. Mark Zuckerberg has caught on with his comments 
about native apps vs. HTML5 from last week too.


HTML always had a place, and probably will until another document spec 
supersedes it. I wouldn't bet the future of my company on it though.


I wrote about this a while ago:
http://www.unfocus.com/2011/11/09/flash-and-air-nothing-but-opportunity/

The market is splitting, and that's great. Both are growing, one is just 
growing faster. BTW, FaceBook's whole play was making apps out of web 
apps, and providing ways for app makers to monetize those apps while FB 
gets a tax - that's why Facebook is in scramble mode, they are trying to 
compete for attention against far more rapid growth from device apps, 
which also happen to take a far larger tax. Its not a short term problem 
because the desktop/laptop install base is so large (same for Flash 
gaming), but they will hit a wall at some point, and that's what their 
horrible stock numbers are about.


Kevin N.

P.S. I wrote that before I witnessed the horrible PR nightmare that 
Adobe created (and still hasn't addressed). I have less confidence in 
Adobe as a company than I did when I wrote that. On the technology, I 
still think Flash is well positioned to be a killer multi-platform app 
toolkit. I just can't say I believe Adobe will be able to execute well 
enough to capitalize on it. I think they're leadership is too busy 
chasing the fads of Wall Street, rather than generating their own as any 
technology company must. The Adobe evangelists have caught a terminal 
case of pragmatism too. Since when is technology about pragmatism? Pft.


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Re: [Flashcoders] Fonts taking up too much space

[Kevin Newman]

Every static glyph for every font face and weight/style is also 
embedded. The only way to really reduce the size of those fonts is to 
embed fewer glyphs. One strategy might be to consolidate the number of 
fonts you are using.


If you are using 4 typefaces, try to reduce it to 3 or even 2. That'll 
probably have the biggest reduction.


I've never really tried it, but you could try editing the font names so 
that they are shorter in the font embed screen, then make sure all your 
text fields are set to those new embedded names (such as a, b, c and d). 
I'm not sure how much space that would save, but it might get you a few 
bytes.


And maybe it's obvous, but make sure you aren't including XMP metadata 
or debug symbols (uncheck both boxes in the publish settings) - that's a 
couple of KB.


Kevin N.


On 6/26/2012 4:59 PM, Tristan wrote:

I did not embed any fonts but the numerals and period for the input box.



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Re: [Flashcoders] Accessing FlashVars

[Kevin Newman]

Back in the day I remember embed just plain old worked better across the 
board in non-IE browsers. That may have changed (object offered better 
fallbacks for one thing, and has been worked on a lot more lately, but 
it also had other kinds of problems). Then we came up with this nested 
object thing that has conditional comments, and duplicates of all the 
params, and called that standards. Then HTML5 embraced tag soup again, 
arbitrary tag names, and now even arbitrary attributes names, so using 
embed with random attributes is actually standards compliant, but is 
still considered "deprecated" whatever that means anymore. And embed 
still works better and is less verbose, afaict.


/bitter-lament

Kevin N.


On 5/1/2012 1:21 AM, Kerry Thompson wrote:

That's one way of doing it, but the embed tag has been deprecated. Well,
maybe not officially deprecated, but it's considered obsolete.


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Re: [Flashcoders] Publishing / Packaging for Mobile - Command Line Workflow

[Kevin Newman]

You can add Android SDKs in such a way that you can compile and test - 
the full monty from Flash CS5.5:


http://swfhead.com/blog/?p=1378

The same trick doesn't work for iOS unfortunately, you'll have to 
overwrite your main AIR SDK to update iOS.


Once you have that done, a regular test movie or publish will get you a 
swf you can build with the command line tools. You may need to add the 
-swf-version=15 switch though - AIR 3.1 is swf version 13 or 15 I think.


http://blogs.adobe.com/cantrell/archives/2011/08/how-to-use-the-air-3-beta-sdk.html

Kevin N.


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Re: [Flashcoders] Real System Make Money Easy 2012 Trend‏‏‏‏‏

[Kevin Newman]

The Starks are /always/ right eventually.

On 3/11/12 3:52 AM, Ima Newsletta wrote:

Winter is coming


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Re: [Flashcoders] MVC style Correction

[Kevin Newman]

Also, this thread has helped to flesh out my understanding of MVC to a 
substantial degree. I love that. :-)


Kevin N.


On 3/6/12 11:40 AM, Kevin Newman wrote:
That's how I understand MVC anyway. 


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Re: [Flashcoders] MVC style Correction

[Kevin Newman]

I think a core concept got lost with MVC - the controller "controls" 
things. That is, it can directly update (control or talk to) a model and 
a view.


A model should not directly update (control) anything except it's own 
data sources (remote or otherwise), and should only broadcast changes to 
anything listening, which should usually be just the controller, but 
sometimes a view may listen for changes too (then you have to put 
controller logic in the view, unless that particular view is a custom 
fit for the model data).


A view similarly can be directly updated (controlled) by a controller, 
view controller, or presenter (I like that - it's a descriptive term for 
a view controller). For example, a controller for a list view changing 
the data source to a different category, or deleting an item from a view 
list because of remote changes, etc. A view should not directly control 
(or talk to) a model or a controller - it should broadcast changes to 
it's own state to whatever might be listening (and only controllers 
should be listening). So if the user hits the delete button on an item 
in a list view, the controller would receive a notification of some 
kind, and then directly tell the model to delete that item. (The glue 
between the controller and the view can be a bit messy in some APIs - 
especially the iOS API, with targets and all that.)


To me having the model broadcast to the view is a shortcut - or even a 
short circuit - one that is justifiable in many cases, but it's good to 
understand that you are basically doing an end-run around the controller 
usually to just save some short term development time, or because you 
really do need a custom view for a particular model, rather than a 
generic view.


That's how I understand MVC anyway.

Kevin N.


On 3/6/12 5:35 AM, Karl DeSaulniers wrote:
I guess I am looking to the controller to do the event dispatching to 
the model
the model to listening for the result. the view listening for changes 
to the model. 


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Re: [Flashcoders] MVC style Correction

[Kevin Newman]

If the model is updating the view, then it doesn't sound like you have a 
generic view at all. This can be appropriate in certain cases, but if 
you really want reusable View objects (like a generic scrolling text or 
image list view), they should be generic and abstracted from the 
underlying data sources (the model) - and have the data filtered through 
a data adapter, usually associated with the controller (or you can skip 
the adapter, and just bulk convert the entire model list data into 
generic view data, if it'll fit in memory or won't be updated in real time).


In this version of MVC, to answer the original question - the controller 
sets up the view and wires the data source, but doesn't necessarily 
directly update the view (though that's who's job it is).


In iOS these kinds of controllers are actually called "view controllers" 
- for maybe obvious reasons. :-)


Kevin N.


On 3/5/12 7:31 AM, Paul Andrews wrote:
I don't think the controller should be updating the view. Period. Nor 
do I think that the view should be calling methods of the controller 
class.


One of the main benefits of MVC is separation of concerns. Views 
shouldn't care about controllers, controllers should care about views.


My views dispatch events about their changes and the controller 
listens for the events, not caring which view dispatched it.
The controller updates the model, and the view listens for changes in 
the model.


There are several ways to build the MVC pattern. The video shows one 
way, but really it shows a coupling that shouldn't be as tight as it 
is and the idea of a controller updating a view, is a no-no.


Sometimes people use a micro-mvc architecture within a view to control 
it - no problem about that, but we should keep our MVC components as 
separate black boxes. 


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Re: [Flashcoders] MVC style Correction

[Kevin Newman]

Well, not every object has to be a Model, a View, or a Controller. You 
can have your controller and view work with an instance of an adapter. 
You wouldn't want an adapter hanging out in the ether - but but your MVC 
objects could certainly have a "uses a" relationship to an adapter object.


For example, you could have the controller create an adapter, wire it to 
the model, and set it to the dataSource of a view. This is clean because 
the view only needs to know how to get data from the adapter, it doesn't 
need to know anything about how the data lives in the model.


Kevin N.


On 2/26/12 8:45 PM, Karl DeSaulniers wrote:
So is the basic construct to choose between a controller or multiple 
adaptors?

It seems (to me) that a combination of the two is overkill.
If you cant fit everything your trying to do within a MVC or MVA style 
pattern, your coding it wrong.
Not setting flame, just inquiring. :) 


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Re: [Flashcoders] MVC style Correction

[Kevin Newman]

I would say an adapter class is part of the controller, and it's ok for 
the controller to know about the formats of both the model and the view 
- it's job is to translate, and facilitate model data into generic view 
data (and back), even if all it does is setup a delegate, like an adapter.


Many times that's honestly overkill - you might be able to get away with 
just taking a list of some stuff from the model, creating another list 
of view data, and copy the subset of data it needs (title, description, 
and id for one example) in a full list. It's often easier to do it this 
way. Other times, you might start from MVC, but your view isn't really 
all that generic (be careful if you find yourself here a lot, you might 
be spinning your wheels), so why not just pass a reference to the model, 
and skip all the API wrangling, adapters, etc. I consider it like 
optimizing my time, vs. optimizing the machine's time.


But other times, there will be too much data to copy around, or you just 
wouldn't want to alloc all that memory just for duplicated data, cause 
that's slow on some hardware (or might use up more battery life, if you 
want to be kind to your users). That's where adapters comes in, to 
basically stream and wrap a subset of the full list of model data to the 
view as needed through an API, rather than all at once in a giant copy.


The real problem seems to be that patterns are descriptive, more than 
prescriptive. So as implementations change, ideas tend to diverge, and 
sometimes differing patterns might even get described by other names. 
Maybe I've been describing MVA for example:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Model%E2%80%93view%E2%80%93adapter

Use what works, and doesn't drive you mad. That's what I say. :-)

Kevin N.

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Re: [Flashcoders] MVC style Correction

[Kevin Newman]

On 2/25/2012 8:00 PM, Paul Andrews wrote:
Who is then? 


The model - but it depends on what you really mean by manipulate - if 
you are storing it (such as in a database) to be retrieved by the model 
at a later time, the model should do it. If you are channeling the data 
to a generic view, and need to transform the format to fit the view, you 
would do that in the controller.


Kevin N.

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Re: [Flashcoders] Flash Platform roadmap released - time to start learning HTML 5 unless you make games.

[Kevin Newman]

I only played with Edge briefly on vacation last summer. :)

I think that fear about HTML is warranted in terms of the quality of 
code you'll end up with - but the same can be said for hand written 
PostScript vs. Illustrator generated PostScript.


Personally, I'll be happen when I don't have to edit HTML by hand 
anymore. That day came for PostScript a generation ago, and with some 
luck and hard work, it'll come for HTML.


Kevin N.


On 2/24/12 10:29 AM, James Merrill wrote:

Have you guys given Adobe edge a try? It's like Flash MX, without easily
accessible fonts or drawing tools...

My fear is that handwriting HTML will always be cleaner and more structured
than using an IDE. Imagine building a robust web application with tons of
animation in Edge... It just seems impossible, where as Flash made it easy.


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Re: [Flashcoders] Flash Platform roadmap released - time to start learning HTML 5 unless you make games.

[Kevin Newman]

Well from most of the numbers I've seen, IE6 has a higher use percentage 
than IE7 - but even the global IE6 usage share numbers represent an 
inflated average pulled up by users in China. In the USA IE6 usage is 
already not even in the single digit percentage points anymore:

http://ie6countdown.com/ (Seems to be down right now.)
http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:3KGBOAC5mhYJ:ie6countdown.com/+&cd=1&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=us&client=firefox-a

For the American corporate hold outs, if you are unfortunate enough to 
have to deal with them, it might be worth seeing if the users can 
install ChromeFrame, which runs in user space, and doesn't require admin 
privs to install:

http://code.google.com/chrome/chromeframe/

Things certainly aren't as bad as they once were. :-)

Kevin N.


On 2/23/12 1:01 PM, John R. Sweeney Jr. wrote:

IE 6 was introduced August 2001 and is still the predominant corporate browser, 
so when do you see old browsers dying off? Another decade?


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Re: [Flashcoders] Flash Platform roadmap released - time to start learning HTML 5 unless you make games.

[Kevin Newman]

True - but the new focus of Flash being a sort of a slimmer cross 
platform abstraction layer also means that's what Flash is for. ;-)


Kevin N.


On 2/23/12 11:50 AM, Sidney de Koning | Funky Monkey Studio wrote:

Why don't you write a ANE for it?:)  That's what they are for:)


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Re: [Flashcoders] Flash Platform roadmap released - time to start learning HTML 5 unless you make games.

[Kevin Newman]

Well, you have a point - but once the basics are covered (video, audio, 
DOM, CSS3, and Canvas), and reasonably compatibly implemented between 
all the browsers (and the old browser finally having died off), I do 
think it'll get easier, because we'll spend less time patching browser 
inconsistencies, and more time just building on the basics - and I do 
think the browser market will eventually get there (IE 10 is looking 
good). This also assumes performance across all the browsers and 
hardware platforms can reach some kind of reasonable baseline (4 core 
ARM9 CPUs in tablets and smartphones means much less optimization 
required). We are a few years off though, for sure.


If you keep your work at the cutting edge though (WebGL, etc.) you're 
right, it'll pretty much stay the way it is now. :-)


Kevin N.


On 2/23/12 11:42 AM, Kerry Thompson wrote:

Will it get easier?


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Re: [Flashcoders] Flash Platform roadmap released - time to start learning HTML 5 unless you make games.

[Kevin Newman]

There is this idea that was articulated by an old timer - an ex-bank CEO 
- on Bill Moyer's show a few weeks ago, that companies and running 
companies used to be about product and solving customers' problems - 
great loan products if you are are a banker, or Flash and great tools if 
you run Adobe. But these days business culture has changed to be 
primarily about profit, to the point where you actually get Kudos for 
gloating about how much money you were able to stock pile this quarter, 
instead of what great products you created, or how many customers you 
satisfied.


This is a sad state of affairs that affects more than just Adobe, though 
they seem to have slipped into that black hole of profit gloating just 
like so many other American corporations. And the CEOs probably get real 
social kudos for that money gloating at their cocktail parties.


Personally, I'll stay focused on products and customers, and hope that's 
enough to help change the culture back. I'm pretty much at the bottom of 
the totem pole though. I can only hope these old ideas will see some 
kind of revival at that corporate board and CEO level of American culture.


Kevin N.


On 2/22/12 7:20 PM, Karl DeSaulniers wrote:

Because they didn't start it. They just bought it.
Flash is not personal to them, it's just a number, that is loosing.
IMO

Business is business, personal is personal.
If it don't make dollars then it don't make sense!! Right!?!

If I had anything to say about the future of flash, it would be, sell 
it back to Macromedia if you can't fill the position.
I am sure those guys would make it WAY better then HTML 5 and it would 
work better then it ever did. Including no need for AIR.


They'd probably create something like FLAIR. lol

Rant done.
Thank you for your time. 


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Re: [Flashcoders] Flash Platform roadmap released - time to start learning HTML 5 unless you make games.

[Kevin Newman]

Oh! That's right, I would totally love game controller support!

I wonder if it has something to do with a lack of system APIs on certain 
systems, to put an abstraction around (OSX, iOS, Android, etc.).


Kevin N.


On 2/22/12 3:50 PM, Henrik Andersson wrote:

Oh and, there is a curious lack of support for game controllers. I don't
get it, why would they even make that an AIR exclusive feature? And for
TVs only? WTF?


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Re: [Flashcoders] Flash Platform roadmap released - time to start learning HTML 5 unless you make games.

[Kevin Newman]

That one is useful for iOS where framescripts aren't necessarily evil - 
but totally unsupported (because of Apple) in loaded swfs.


Kevin N.


On 2/22/12 3:37 PM, Henrik Andersson wrote:

* Frame label events: Because framescripts are evil (they are not)


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Re: [Flashcoders] Flash Platform roadmap released - time to start learning HTML 5 unless you make games.

[Kevin Newman]

That's the most important point IMO. You can at least technically do 
high quality Flash like work with HTML5. It can still be challenging, 
but it'll only get easier over time. That Nike site BTW, doesn't run 
well even on the newest iMac we have in the office (less than 2 months 
old), and it obliterated my poor Mac Mini (I'll never even try to open 
it again), the experience is substantially diminished on iPad (thought 
frankly, better than desktop - see notes on performance), and large 
swaths of the thing are actually done in Flash anyway. I'm also certain 
no one bothered to test that on older or less powerful equipment.


HTML5 is the future, because Flash won't run on mobile browsers (not by 
choice, but it doesn't matter), and managers and other people who don't 
know any better have decided it's "better" (again the reasons why truly 
don't matter, it has been decided).


That irritation aside, there are some technical reasons for why HTML5 
can be argued to be better, SEO, pushState/CMS integrations, etc. I'm 
doing one now (and it'll run on the iPad - if I have to switch from 
Flash in the name of iPads, I'll for damn sure make it work on an iPad!) 
that integrates with the server tech and uses pushState, etc. (with fall 
back for IE and older browsers). Some of these tighter integration 
points do make working in HTML5 feel more valuable - I still hate 
JavaScript and it's silent failures ("use strict"; helps, but it doesn't 
go far enough).


The thing about "HTML5" (and we might as well say jQuery), is it's 
harder and takes longer to do the same thing as in Flash (for now) so 
you've got project triangle decisions to make. Then there's getting it 
to run well on iPads, which next to no one does (or it's a nerfed or 
entirely segregated experience, like that Nike site), which makes you 
wonder why they bothered with HTML5 at all.


Kevin N.


On 2/22/12 2:52 PM, James Merrill wrote:

Another major concern of mine was seeing this site:
http://www.nikechosenseries.com/

That's basically Flash quality, with SEO, linking, native scroll, all the
goodies from HTML. Once it becomes easy to develop sites like that, I can't
see why using Flash would be better.


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Re: [Flashcoders] Adobe Mobile Forum

[Kevin Newman]

Flash is dead. The buzz is about AIR.

Seriously though - our clients are figuring out that "HTML5 apps" 
(mobile browser apps) are not what they wanted. Once they understand 
they need an app store app, then they don't care what it's built with 
(especially for the kind of over the top custom - not native looking - 
apps that Flash is known for). I'd bet that has more to do with it than 
the Flash or AIR branding problems.


Also, the market in general seems to be improving (subjectively), which 
is good news for everyone.


Kevin N.


On 2/20/12 1:40 AM, Ima Newsletta wrote:
Are we able, at last, to reverse the ignominious idea that Flash is 
dying? 


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Re: [Flashcoders] MVC style Correction

[Kevin Newman]

That idea that the one thing MVC interpretations have in common - that 
models can only be updated by the controller makes sense.


I tried to learn MVC a few times before it really stuck in my head. 
These where the problems I encountered:
- What does MVC apply to? Is it an application level framework, or does 
it apply to tiny parts? In other words, do you have one or many in your 
app? (the scope the pattern was meant to apply to wasn't apparent from 
most descriptions.)
- If I have to have a different view for each bit of model data - why 
bother with it all (the idea that you should work to make generic 
reusable views was never clear from most descriptions.)
- How does the communication work again? Most diagrams are slightly 
different from the others and the dotted line connector lines vs. the 
solid lines never made as much sense as the road lines metaphor in the 
diagrams I linked to.


The video I linked to addressed each of those issues, for the first 
time. Really though the problem is there are so many different 
interpretations of this "pattern" it's almost not really a pattern at 
all - more like a group of similar patterns, and that variance makes it 
hard to learn and understand (this thread is kind of proof, IMHO).


What I ended up taking away from that video the first time I came 
accross it last year was the model <-> controller side, the idea that 
the controller directly manipuates the model and the views - it 
basically "controls" things. And the model broadcast tower diagrams for 
notifying the controller of changes was useful. I applied the same 
communication idea to the view side, as it seemed very iOS specific 
(even mimicking the UI of XCode to an extent in the diagrams), and 
overcomplicated anyway (3 different communication methods - enough 
already). I also don't usually bother with the data source or adapters 
(but I don't deal with a ton of changing remote data, usually just an 
item list that the view can handle).


The guy in the video did slip a little "assume the model and view don't 
communicate *for the purposes of this class*" in there - which indicates 
at least at a some point having a model specific view makes sense (I do 
that a lot - frankly a lot of the UIs I make aren't generic, so why 
bother with a generic view framework). It's still mostly MVC in the end, 
but it's not a strict implementation of that specific pattern. But when 
someone is first trying to learn MVC, the exceptions could be 
superfluous information the learner probably doesn't need.


Kevin N.

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Re: [Flashcoders] MVC style Correction

[Kevin Newman]

I just rewatched the video, and it turns out that I forgot about the 
more complicated version with data sources.


But still, if I got it right, the general idea is the controller adjusts 
the data into the generic formats for generic views (either all at once 
if you skip the data source glue, or through an adapter), it doesn't 
just pass along the model's raw data.


Kevin N.


On 2/17/12 5:18 PM, Kevin Newman wrote:
- Views have view data, data that is specific to the view, are updated 
directly by the controller, broadcast changes to listening controllers. 


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Re: [Flashcoders] MVC style Correction

[Kevin Newman]

Hands down the best explanation of MVC I've ever seen anywhere, is in 
this iTunes U series (item 43 at the bottom of the list) - you can just 
grab the slides too, but you'll miss all the emotion and humor of the 
delivery :-)

http://itunes.apple.com/us/itunes-u/ipad-iphone-application-development/id473757255


There seems to be some basic pieces that are commonly missing from most 
descriptions of MVC:
- Models have model data, broadcast changes to listening controllers, 
are updated directly by the controller.
- Views have view data, data that is specific to the view, are updated 
directly by the controller, broadcast changes to listening controllers.

- Models shouldn't communicate with Views (ever).
- Views shouldn't communicate with Models (ever).

A lot of examples of MVC I've seen take a shortcut and basically send 
the model data to a view which renders that data, but that isn't MVC at all.


Kevin N.


On 2/16/12 1:43 PM, jchilc...@interactivityunlimited.com wrote:

Models and Views don't talk to each other.


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Re: [Flashcoders] Large Images with Alpha Channel

[Kevin Newman]

I'm not sure why that would be the case - you could put your sprite 
sheet on the stage and compress it (a 1 frame swf), and then load the 
swf. The problem as I understood it is the file (download) size, and 
this would solve that.


Once you've loaded the swf, if you need a BitmapData - you could do a 
BitmapData.draw on the loaded swf, then unload that swf (to free the 
memory). There's a bit of runtime overhead in doing that, but it could 
be worth the download savings.


Kevin N.


On 2/11/2012 7:09 PM, Beatrix Krümmer-Frau wrote:
But that doesn't work when you need great images for games - like 
walkcicles - and load them, instead of embedding them into flash!! 


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Re: [Flashcoders] Large Images with Alpha Channel

[Kevin Newman]

If you have access to Flash Pro, you can import a PNG-32 into the 
library, and use the Flash to apply the JPEG compression. Flash will 
retain the alpha mask.


There may be other programs that can output a jpeg with an alpha channel 
in a swf format like that, but I can't think of any off the top of my head.


Kevin N.


On 2/11/2012 12:43 AM, Ben Sand wrote:

This blog shows how to combine a jpeg with a png alpha mask to get file
sizes down, but it is for HTML5, although they were able to use a flash
converter successfully:
http://blog.jackadam.net/2010/alpha-jpegs/


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Re: [Flashcoders] Confirmation succeeded?

[Kevin Newman]

On 1/30/12 12:16 PM, Terry Riney wrote:
Thanks for input. By "mostly in ad games" I would image that would be 
the Flash end of it, and taking some graphic talent. Trying to stay in 
the OOP arena as best I can. 


It's all the traditional "Flash Pro" skills if you will. I do everything 
with OOP (well mostly), even MVC - but I do like to use Flash Pro to lay 
things out and create components, etc. I never got into Flex.


Kevin N.

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Re: [Flashcoders] Confirmation succeeded?

[Kevin Newman]

I can't say things are slow here - but my Flash work dried up a lot in 
the last half year. There are some signs on the horizon of new Flash 
work though (mostly in ad games).


What I do notice is there's not a lot of discussion in the areas I've 
been looking at, like stage3D, and mobile dev with AIR, or the 
conversations have moved to other venues.


It seems most Flash devs are jumping ship for native platform work (iOS 
or Android), or HTML5 - but that's just a sense of things, I have no 
hard evidence.


Kevin N.


On 1/30/12 11:01 AM, John R. Sweeney Jr. wrote:

• Slow quarter
• Unemployed
• No problems or errors
• Busy with HTML 5 classes.
• Add yours here…



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Re: [Flashcoders] I invite everyone to troll Apple's support forums

[Kevin Newman]

Agreed. (but Jangaroo is happy!)

Kevin N.


On 1/13/12 12:11 PM, Merrill, Jason wrote:

Javascript is sad.


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Re: [Flashcoders] I invite everyone to troll Apple's support forums

[Kevin Newman]

Flash Player in mobile browsers is dead (and always was due to Apple's 
intransigence) but AIR is still alive. Maybe it's worth trolling for 
tips on how to write better ANEs for AIR? :-)


I wrote some thoughts on that, and the wider industry a while back:
http://www.unfocus.com/2011/11/09/flash-and-air-nothing-but-opportunity/

The only thing wrong with Frash is that it actually doesn't work on the 
latest iOS builds, and Comex abandoned development (or at least I 
haven't gotten it to work in a while (though I haven't tried on 5.x). 
What was impressive about Frash is it ran (much) faster on my iPhone 3GS 
back in the day, than every (higher speced) Android device I tried it on.


Kevin N.


On 1/12/12 4:53 PM, Anthony Pace wrote:
I know Apple will probably never allow Flash on their Mobile devices, 
and with Adobe backing out of Mobile the future of the Flash Player is 
looking grim;


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Re: [Flashcoders] Switching to HaXe?

[Kevin Newman]

That's an architectural quirk of jQuery - it's their whole chainability 
paradigm - everything returns a configured instance of jQuery.


It works well in JavaScript, but I can see how it wouldn't work well in 
a typed languge. That said, jQuery's chainability paradigm is not my 
favorite, even in javascript. I often feel like all I really need from 
jQuery is Sizzle (the selector engine it's based on), and some of the 
compatibility shims it contains (event normalization).


Kevin N.


On 12/2/11 8:10 AM, Andrew Sinning wrote:

What I don't like about the haXe-jQuery API is that every object has
type "JQuery".  It seems to be it would be much programmer-friendly if
there were sub-classes for the individual elements.  Imagine if in AS3
you could never specify any display object to be anything more
specific than a Sprite or an Object.


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Re: [Flashcoders] Value of AS3 Signals Slot system

[Kevin Newman]

Looking into QT's slots, it looks like they are a custom C++ function 
type - I'm not sure you could duplicate that in any effective way in AS3 
that wouldn't require a lot of boilerplate (defeating the point of signals).


Kevin N.

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Re: [Flashcoders] Value of AS3 Signals Slot system

[Kevin Newman]

Oh! Slots are a C# thing- I have a friend I can ask about that.

I asked about this because it is pretty easy to pass objects through a 
dispatcher without relying on any kind of type checking:


function dispatch( ...rest ):void {
loop {
node.listener.apply( null, rest );
}
}

I implemented a version like that, and if you don't pass anything while 
dispatching it's extremely fast. I haven't tested passing anything yet, 
or what happens if the function you "apply" doesn't take the right 
number or types of arguments...


Kevin N.


On 12/1/11 3:11 PM, Merrill, Jason wrote:

That's my understanding anyway.  I know very little about how slots are done in 
C#, only from what I have read.


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[Flashcoders] Value of AS3 Signals Slot system

[Kevin Newman]

Hi all,

I've been looking into AS3 Signals and wanted to run something by 
everyone that I can't figure out. What is the value of the Slot system 
in the AS3 Signals toolset?


It seems like a lot of overhead, and I'm not sure what it brings to the 
table. Am I just too dense to see it (likely)?


Kevin N.

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Re: [Flashcoders] Switching to HaXe?

[Kevin Newman]

It depends on how you want to work. haXe has jQuery support though:

http://haxe.org/api/js/jquery

Kevin N.


On 12/1/11 1:12 PM, Andrew Sinning wrote:

I'd be very interested in haXe if it included a set of interface
classes for jquery widgets.  I.e. a way to build HTML5 applications in
AS3 (if that is the proper name for the language of haXe) without
having to reference javascript classes and the DOM via an object-blind
IDE.  When you create an object, it's public members (vars, functions
and getters/setters) should be exposed via the IDE, with documentation
when provided.  My sense from scanning the haXe site is that you have
to know a lot about the output language.  Am I mistaken?


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Re: [Flashcoders] Switching to HaXe?

[Kevin Newman]

My info seems to be out of date (re: NME for example) - but HaXe came 
from MTASC, which was an alternative AS2 to bytecode compiler. I think 
haXe's first target was AVM2 bytecode, having been built after MTASC, 
and the creator not wanting to bother with "questionable" AS3 design 
considerations (and limitations - he might also have started it before 
AS3, I don't remember). Then came the JavaScript port - and the many 
other "meta language" ports. There is even a "native" runtime (Neko) for 
HaXe and there has been talk of an LLVM target on occasion (no idea what 
the status is on that).


Basically, HaXe mostly compiles to other languages instead of machine or 
bytecode, but in the case of Flash, it compiles straight to (highly 
optimized) AVM2 bytecode.


Kevin N.


On 11/30/11 12:41 PM, Merrill, Jason wrote:

Ooh - awesome.  Compiling to Java and C# also - so it produces the actual class 
files for the languages - not just compiles down to the executable runtimes 
right?  Like it produces .as files not just a .swf?


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Re: [Flashcoders] Switching to HaXe?

[Kevin Newman]

Wow, they have Stage3D in there - I may have to seriously consider 
moving into HaXe. Sounds awesome. :-)


Kevin N.

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Re: [Flashcoders] Switching to HaXe?

[Kevin Newman]

The same thing could have been said of PHP many years ago. I don't think 
HaXe is going anywhere.


Kevin N.


On 11/30/11 11:43 AM, Andrew Sinning wrote:

Jumping into this discussion.

Is anybody concerned that HaXe will die or languish, that features will be
unsupported or broken on customer platforms?  I don't see any major players
on the list of HaXe projects (http://haxe.org/com/projects).

GWT on the other hand.  You get the full faith and credit of one of the
most powerful companies in the world behind your development platform.  On
the downside, you have to learn Java.


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Re: [Flashcoders] Switching to HaXe?

[Kevin Newman]

Yeah, I didn't realize NME had been ported to all these other HaXe 
targets (I may have simply misunderstood NME, I thought it was just a 
C++ target).


That's just awesome. :-)

Kevin N.


On 11/30/11 6:16 AM, tom rhodes wrote:

just catching up on the thread a bit , Kevin wrote...

"but it doesn't do any emulation of Flash's APIs (I'm pretty sure)"

check it out...

http://www.haxenme.org/api/

then have a look at all the stuff in the nme package, display, errors,
events, external, filters, text etc. are all used as you would use them in
flash except they compile to c++ (iOS, android, webOS, mac, pc, linux),
flash and html5.


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Re: [Flashcoders] Switching to HaXe?

[Kevin Newman]

As a language it can export the same code to AVM2 (and AVM1 I think) 
bytecode, and JavaScript (and C++ etc.) - but it doesn't do any 
emulation of Flash's APIs (I'm pretty sure). You have to code to 
whatever platform you are targetting. It's kind of like Joa's Project 
Hiddenwood in that way (based on a cursory look at it), except it 
compiles from HaXe instead of Java. HaXe also has their own Stage3D 
shader language, which is neat.


There's also Jangaroo, which actually does have a Flash API that is 
built on core HTML tech (the display list is written in AS3 using AS3 
based HTML/JS wrapper classes), and compiles from AS3 to JS. You don't 
have to use the Flash APIs with Jangaroo though, and can code directly 
to some Javascript API if you wanted to - you can also access the 
Jangaroo AS3 classes from JavaScript directly. Pretty neat, but it can 
be difficult to set up. If you don't pack the Flash API libs, Jangaroo 
comes with a super svelte (4KB) runtime to do the AS3 language emulation 
(property access/inheritance/etc), and the generated JavaScript runs 
crazy fast, and can even be edited (even if you would never code like 
that directly).


Kevin N.


On 11/29/11 11:04 AM, Merrill, Jason wrote:

Thinking of starting to learn haXe to produce OOP apps and export as Javascript 
for HTML 5 apps. Checked it out years ago, but decided against it since it was 
not part of the normal ecosystem and would have to be sharing code with 
non-haXe AS3 developers. But not thinking of the future, I am more interested 
in it given what's happening with Adobe and HTML5. Anyone done that and does it 
work well for that?  Can you have a single source base and export for AS3 apps 
and Javascript for HTML 5 or are there caveats?


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Re: [Flashcoders] Adobe ceases development on mobile browser Flash

[Kevin Newman]

On 11/11/11 4:22 AM, Glen Pike wrote:

First rule of Flashcoders is...

I can't say, but it's the same as the second rule. ;-)

Kevin N.


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Re: [Flashcoders] Adobe ceases development on mobile browser Flash

[Kevin Newman]

I'm not sure where I'll end up, but thanks for the concern!

;-)

Kevin N.


On 11/10/11 4:17 AM, Cédric Muller wrote:

Flash was a platform full of mentally disabled people;)
where will those people go now ?


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Re: [Flashcoders] Flash + jQuery

[Kevin Newman]

You could look into using a Proxy class inside of Flash, to wrap method 
calls to ExternalInterface calls.


http://help.adobe.com/en_US/FlashPlatform/reference/actionscript/3/flash/utils/Proxy.html

It's easy to set up, and actually is pretty common for remote procedure 
calls.


Kevin N.


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Re: [Flashcoders] Flash + jQuery

[Kevin Newman]

You could look into using a Proxy class inside of Flash, to wrap method 
calls to ExternalInterface calls.


http://help.adobe.com/en_US/FlashPlatform/reference/actionscript/3/flash/utils/Proxy.html

It's easy to set up, and actually is pretty common for remote procedure 
calls.


Kevin N.


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Re: [Flashcoders] no posts since yesterday

[Kevin Newman]

Awesome. Thanks for the info.

Kevin N.


On 10/20/11 6:38 PM, Kerry Thompson wrote:

There are several. I'm in the Boston area, so I check out
  when I'm
on the market.http://www.riajobs.org/  sometimes has recent job
postings.
is another site.

Some people use guru.com, but I don't like to go through them. They
demand a lot of paperwork, and most of the gigs I've seen have been
small-potatoes, lowball gigs.

Cordially,

Kerry Thompson


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Re: [Flashcoders] Flash Player 11 and Flash Professional CS 5.5 (11.5)

[Kevin Newman]

This is the best resource I've seen on overlaying new SDKs (and Flash 
and AIR versions) into your existing Flash Pro CS5 and CS5.5 installations.


http://swfhead.com/blog/?p=1378

The only one that doesn't overlay cleanly is the iOS publish target, 
which requires you to choose only one AIR version.


Kevin N.

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Re: [Flashcoders] no posts since yesterday

[Kevin Newman]

On 10/20/11 5:32 PM, Kerry Thompson wrote:

I would guess either busy or overemployed. I see a lot of demand for
Flash/Flex developers on the job boards.

Which job boards? :-)

(I don't freelance, but I'm curious.)

Kevin N.

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Re: [Flashcoders] Flash on top of flash

[Kevin Newman]

If one the two swfs need to interact (if I understood) LocalConnection 
could be used. That works even when two swfs are on different domains, 
running in two different browsers (as long as they are on the same machine).


Kevin N.


On 9/21/2011 7:38 PM, Karl DeSaulniers wrote:

Unless you need them to interact.
In that case they need to be in the same swf. 


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Re: [Flashcoders] Flash on top of flash

[Kevin Newman]

If it's like a popup thing, I guess you'd want to block access - 
however, that won't work anyway in wmode="window". The iframe is what 
divides the two swfs, and allows the one on top to display over another 
swf with wmode set to window (which as I understood it could not be 
changed), by forcing the browser to create another system window (for 
the iframe).


Kevin N.

On 9/21/2011 7:30 PM, Karl DeSaulniers wrote:

With that solution, I have an idea.  Using Flashvars and javascript.
Set up a javascript file that tells when the two flash files are 
hovering over each other and have it put an invisible png between them.
This png will be inside a div, so technically you would put the div 
between them. Making the png stretch to the size of the bottom swf. 
Cover it.

Basically blocking any flash interactions on the one below?

Also, in order for this to work, I think you may want to assign 
z-index:0 to the body.

That way it explicitly sets zero first.


< transparent png img>


Kind-of like an invisible button does inside flash.
Not tested,
JAT,

Best,
Karl


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Re: [Flashcoders] Convert flash animation with sound to Ipad

[Kevin Newman]

To make an app, you'll want to change the publishing settings to publish 
as iPhone app.


The only thing is, you'll be publishing with AIR 2.0 by default from 
Flash CS5 - there is a way to overlay the AIR package to get it to work 
with newer AIR builds (AIR 2.7 is fast much much faster, and supports 
iPad, retina, etc.).


Alternatively, you could use the command line, and not worry about 
overlaying the AIR SDK:

http://icodesnip.com/snippet/actionscript-3/adt-command-line-to-compile-ios-app-in-air-26

You could put that command line in a bat file (and edit it as needed), 
and run that after you do a test movie from Flash (to generate the swf). 
I do that to get access to the interpreter builds (which you can't get 
from Flash's iOS publish dialog) for more rapid iteration (a full AOT 
compile is very very slow, but produces quick runtime performance, vs. 
the interpreter which compiles fast, but runs more slowly).


This is windows centric, but I found it the easiest entry point to 
getting up and running with PFI (the old name)/AIR for iOS:

http://gotoandlearn.com/play.php?id=133

Kevin N.


On 9/21/11 12:50 PM, natalia Vikhtinskaya wrote:

I have Flash CS5. And I try to find way to convert animation into iPad
application. Flash file has not much scripting: stop() and script for
navigation buttons. So I have two questions:
1. What format should I save  in Flash CS5?
2. Should I have CS5.5 for better result?
3. What  should I change in scripting so that play correctly in iPad?
I am looking for simple example that can help.


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Re: [Flashcoders] Convert flash animation with sound to Ipad

[Kevin Newman]

That question could mean 1 of two different targets:

1. HTML5 - so that the "flash app" runs in Mobile Safari, integrated 
with the website. In that case, you need to port or convert to 
HTML/JS/CSS. I haven't found anything particular hands free to do that 
conversion, but you could try Google Swiffy if it's AS2 (don't know if 
it supports Sound). I'm not sure what you'd use for AS3 (there is 
Jangaroo, but it doesn't convert fla or swf, only AS3, and doesn't run 
particular well on the current version of iOS).


2. An iOS App Store app, that can be installed through that system. In 
that case AIR for iOS is probably a good bet. If you don't have Flash 
CS5 (or 5.5), you can use the free SDK to compile the necessary app. 
Make sure to use at least AIR 2.7 (especially if you target CPU mode), 
as it's much much faster than previous versions.


Which do you mean?

Kevin N.


On 9/21/11 6:59 AM, natalia Vikhtinskaya wrote:

I want to convert Flash application to iPad.


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Re: [Flashcoders] Convert flash animation with sound to Ipad

[Kevin Newman]

On 9/21/11 9:29 AM, natalia Vikhtinskaya wrote:

Do I need CS5 or CS5.5? I am looking  for any working example or
tutorial for using timeline animation and touch events.
You can use MouseEvent.CLICK and the like, it's just that mouse over 
interactions will be problematic (the events are fired in a different 
sequence on iPad, and there is no way to "hover" on touch screens).


Stick to MouseEvent.CLICK, and assume no rollovers, and you should be 
fine. Also, make your hotspots bigger, so they are finger friendly.


Kevin N.

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Re: [Flashcoders] Flash on top of flash

[Kevin Newman]

There is an old solution - put the top layered Object in its own HTML 
page, and load that into an iframe, then position the iframe over the 
windowed flash movie.


I haven't tried that in ages, but I think it still works.

Kevin N.


On 9/21/11 2:09 AM, Mikael Enroos wrote:

Hi,

I'm trying to position a windowed swf on top of another windowed swf on my 
site. The underlaying swf (windowed) is the main application and now I need to 
add a separate swf on top of it, which is another application.

I tried with some css work including z-layer but without any luck. Has anyone 
else done this?

Mikael Enroos
Webmaster


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Re: [Flashcoders] TLF (TextLayout) markup (or even FXG markup) to PDF: hints/help/advice/save me

[Kevin Newman]

Hi Cédric,

I think you can open FXG (and TLF) in Illustrator or InDesign and save 
it out as a PDF from there.


It should also be possible to create an AIR app (or Flash) that renders 
the FXG or TLF using the TLF library, then use PrintJob to print to PDF 
on Windows with Acrobat Distiller, or natively on Mac OSX.


If you need something more automated, I'm not sure what you'd use - but 
there may be an AS3 library that can export your stage elements to PDF 
(it'd need to support FTE, which is what the TLF lib distills your 
TLF/FXG xml into, when it adds it to the stage). I've never looked for 
something like that, so I'm not sure if it exists.


On the server side, I'd guess you'd need to find (or create) an xls 
style sheet (or some library written in some server side language) to 
translate the document.


Good luck!

Kevin N.


On 9/21/11 8:00 AM, Cédric Muller wrote:
Does anyone know if Adobe did a TextLayout FXG markup to PDF converter 
? (that would be a blast to envision such txt layout without building 
a bridge towards PDF !! Seriously, I am about to whine as I didn't 
find anything ... just wondering what to do next)


What I have found, and I am not happy about it:
I have TLF markup -> I convert to XML -> I use XSL:FO and render to 
PDF ???


Never used to beg or anything, but pleeease  (Why do I feel left 
alone when I opt for TextLayout action ? )


Cedric
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Re: [Flashcoders] :O

[Kevin Newman]

NVIDIA PhysX in Flash?!

Ok, I'm interested.

Kevin N.


On 9/1/11 6:54 PM, Ross Sclafani wrote:

WOW Unity 3D will publish to Flash Player bit.ly/rmNbGp

but i imagine webGL can't be too far behind?


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Re: [Flashcoders] Calling native code from Flash

[Kevin Newman]

Or Pixel Bender - I've heard you can do some heavy processing with that too.

Additionally, HaXe has some ways to avoid some of the overhead of 
Alchemy when using it from AS3. You'd have to do a lot in haxe instead 
of AS3, but you can use the alchemy stuff though inlining, which 
accesses the memory stored in Alchemy directly, instead of copying data 
back and forth between AS3 and Alchemy memory space, which if I 
understand it correctly, is where the overhead is with Alchemy.


Joa has a tool (http://code.google.com/p/apparat/) which might be useful 
to help do some AS3 inlining to the Alchemy memory operations. I think 
the way to use it, is to make sure your bytearrays are stored in the 
Alchemy memory. Then you can access that from AS3 without the memcopy 
overhead.


Kevin N.


On 7/19/11 7:35 AM, Gerry Beauregard wrote:

On 2011-07-19  , at 18:07 , Leandro Ferreira wrote:


Have you tried Alchemy?
http://labs.adobe.com/technologies/alchemy/

*
*
*   @leandroferreira*
*   55 61 91151257*




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Re: [Flashcoders] BunnyMark on iOS

[Kevin Newman]

I posted some result tables and the source to all this here if anyone is 
interested:


http://www.unfocus.com/2011/07/03/performance-benchmarks-with-air-2-7-for-ios/

Kevin N.

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Re: [Flashcoders] scrolling webpage with flash

[Kevin Newman]

I sure hope they don't nerf it. :-)

Kevin N.


On 6/30/11 5:32 PM, Henrik Andersson wrote:

Kevin Newman skriver:

On 6/30/11 4:40 PM, Eric E. Dolecki wrote:

document.getElementById("divName").style.height =

You can even do that completely from within flash:

function onResizeHandler(event:Event):void {
if (ExternalInterface.available)
ExternalInterface.call("function(){document.getElementById('divID').style.height 


= '" + stage.stageHeight + "px';}");
}
stage.addEventListener(Event.RESIZE, onResizeHandler); // I think


Of course, that may or may not get nerfed in the future, since it 
wasn't supposed to be a full fledged javascript eval style function.

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Re: [Flashcoders] scrolling webpage with flash

[Kevin Newman]

On 6/30/11 4:40 PM, Eric E. Dolecki wrote:

document.getElementById("divName").style.height =

You can even do that completely from within flash:

function onResizeHandler(event:Event):void {
if (ExternalInterface.available)

ExternalInterface.call("function(){document.getElementById('divID').style.height 
= '" + stage.stageHeight + "px';}");

}
stage.addEventListener(Event.RESIZE, onResizeHandler); // I think

That requires you have your div setup as the container of your flash 
content, the flash content set with height="100%, allowScriptAccess set 
to a value that allows flash to call JavaScript (like "samedomain" or 
"always"), and your scalemode set in a way that will no scale your 
content in appropriately ("noscale" is the easiest option to work with 
here).


>...


Kevin N.

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Re: [Flashcoders] scrolling webpage with flash

[Kevin Newman]

It sounds like you would need to use ExternalInterface and JavaScript to 
resize your HTML container for the swf.


I'd suggest wrapping the swf container (whatever embedding solution you 
are using) in a div, setting your swf container (object/embed tag, 
swfobject, or whatever) to 100%, and setting the height of parent div 
when the content size changes from within the swf, using ExternalInterface.


There is no way to set the size of the stage from within Flash.

Kevin N.



On 6/30/11 3:32 PM, Cor wrote:

Thanks Matt,

Swffit works fine... when resizing the browser, but my issue is that the
browser is never resized, but the content in the swf grows dynamically.
So I would like to get my swf-dimensions variable.

Best regards,
Cor

-Original Message-
From: flashcoders-boun...@chattyfig.figleaf.com
[mailto:flashcoders-boun...@chattyfig.figleaf.com] On Behalf Of Matt S.
Sent: donderdag 30 juni 2011 17:50
To: Flash Coders List
Subject: Re: [Flashcoders] scrolling webpage with flash

then you should definitely check out SWFFIT, that can do what you're looking
for.

.m

On Thu, Jun 30, 2011 at 11:38 AM, Cor  wrote:

I need loaded content to be able to grow within my SWF to any height.
If this overshoots the html-height then the scrollbar of the browser
will show.


Best regards,
Cor

-Original Message-
From: flashcoders-boun...@chattyfig.figleaf.com
[mailto:flashcoders-boun...@chattyfig.figleaf.com] On Behalf Of Matt S.
Sent: donderdag 30 juni 2011 17:33
To: Flash Coders List
Subject: Re: [Flashcoders] scrolling webpage with flash

Not sure what you need exactly, but SWFFit is a nice little utility
for various flash resizing needs: http://swffit.millermedeiros.com/
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Re: [Flashcoders] PlayBook

[Kevin Newman]

You can build with CS5 - basically, you create an AIR swf (using 
standard desktop settings) then you can use the free SDK and a bat file 
(or the command line) to compile the AIR/Playbook app.


I was able to build a Playbook app with Flash CS5 using this technique.

You can even do the same for iOS - in fact many folks using Flash CS5.5 
are doing this to get at the interpreter builds in AIR 2.7 for iOS 
(since they compile so much more quickly, and can't be built from the GUI).


Kevin N.


On 6/21/11 10:03 AM, David Hunter wrote:

Thanks Jason,

Guessed that would be the case.

I was badly briefed and the app is an AIR for Android app to run on a
Samsung Galaxy TAB. Do I need to get CS5.5 to compile for Android? I have
CS5 but there is no mention of an Android packager only the iPhone packager.
I'm sure I was shown that you could compile Android apps from Flash CS5.

I saw online there was an Android extension by adobe but they have taken it
down since the release of CS5.5.

Thanks all,


On 21 June 2011 14:43, Merrill, Jasonwrote:


If you have a CS5 suite do you get a free upgrade to CS5.5?

Can't help you with your other questions, but I do know the answer to that
one is unfortunately no.

  Jason Merrill
  Instructional Technology Architect
  Bank of America  Global Learning





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-Original Message-
From: flashcoders-boun...@chattyfig.figleaf.com [mailto:
flashcoders-boun...@chattyfig.figleaf.com] On Behalf Of David Hunter
Sent: Tuesday, June 21, 2011 4:48 AM
To: flashcoders@chattyfig.figleaf.com
Subject: [Flashcoders] PlayBook

Hi All,

Hope you are all well. I have just returned to work after a 4 month break
seeing a little of the other side of the world. I have been asked to make a
Blackberry Playbook app with AIR (it just got released in the UK) and hoping
for any pointers anyone has- particularly if I NEED to get FlashBuilder 4.5
or if I can use FlashBuilder 4 / Flash CS5 (which I already have)? If you
have a CS5 suite do you get a free upgrade to CS5.5?

Cheers,

--
David Hunter

www.davidhunterdesign.com
+44 (0) 7869 104 906
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Re: [Flashcoders] PlayBook

[Kevin Newman]

A 4 month break. Man that sounds nice. :-)

Kevin N.


On 6/21/11 4:48 AM, David Hunter wrote:

Hi All,

Hope you are all well. I have just returned to work after a 4 month break
seeing a little of the other side of the world. I have been asked to make a
Blackberry Playbook app with AIR (it just got released in the UK) and hoping
for any pointers anyone has- particularly if I NEED to get FlashBuilder 4.5
or if I can use FlashBuilder 4 / Flash CS5 (which I already have)? If you
have a CS5 suite do you get a free upgrade to CS5.5?

Cheers,



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Re: [Flashcoders] BunnyMark on iOS

[Kevin Newman]

Heh, I think I was accidentally publishing with Flash CS5 and whatever I 
might have overlayed into that a while back (either it's still PFI/AIR 
2.0, or it's AIR 2.6).


My newer numbers are all from AIR 2.7, and what a difference. Everything 
is smooth, and it's just varying levels of smooth at this point.


I'll put up a blog post soon with iPhone 3GS and iPhone 4 numbers.

Kevin N.


On 6/17/11 3:52 PM, Kevin Newman wrote:
It looks like I'm not the only one to notice this strange framerate 
issue.


http://www.pixelthismobile.com/blog/1/10/2010/flash-iphone-wildly-fluctuating-framerate-or-frame-skip 



I'll investigate further tonight.

Kevin N.


On 6/17/11 11:19 AM, Kevin Newman wrote:

Hi guys,

I am running some benchmarks on iOS, to run AIR 2.7 through it's paces.

I used BunnyMark (and the blitting counter part) for context:
http://www.iainlobb.com/bunnies/BitmapTest.html

iPhone 3GS results:
Display List CPU: ~18 fps
Display List GPU: 24 fps (constant frame rate)
Blitting CPU: ~19 fps
Blitting GPU: I have to retest, my build was screwed, and it got 
late. :-)


I'll test iPhone 4 next.

There is a problem though - I don't trust the numbers on the CPU. It 
looks choppier than the frame rate would suggest, with some 
noticeable hiccups that aren't reflected in the frame rate number.


I suspect the problem is that Flash is skipping frames during 
rendering, but the ENTER_FRAME event is still ticking the FPS meter.


Is there a way to ensure an FPS measure only ticks if there is a 
RENDER event? Would moving it from ENTER_FRAME to RENDER actually do 
that?


I've only ever used RENDER with manual stage.invalidate() calls in 
ENTER_FRAME (and display list access all in RENDER, which might just 
be incorrect usage), and I suspect I'm actually disabling built in 
frame skipping by calling invalidate on every ENTER_FRAME event 
(because if the frame rate slows, so does the game logic) - I'm not 
really sure what the right way to use RENDER is.


So I guess that's the question, if I don't bother with 
stage.invalidate() and continue to do my display list stuff in 
ENTER_FRAME, and only measure FPS in RENDER, will I get a more 
accurate framerate value?


Thanks,

Kevin N.

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Re: [Flashcoders] BunnyMark on iOS

[Kevin Newman]

It looks like I'm not the only one to notice this strange framerate issue.

http://www.pixelthismobile.com/blog/1/10/2010/flash-iphone-wildly-fluctuating-framerate-or-frame-skip

I'll investigate further tonight.

Kevin N.


On 6/17/11 11:19 AM, Kevin Newman wrote:

Hi guys,

I am running some benchmarks on iOS, to run AIR 2.7 through it's paces.

I used BunnyMark (and the blitting counter part) for context:
http://www.iainlobb.com/bunnies/BitmapTest.html

iPhone 3GS results:
Display List CPU: ~18 fps
Display List GPU: 24 fps (constant frame rate)
Blitting CPU: ~19 fps
Blitting GPU: I have to retest, my build was screwed, and it got late. 
:-)


I'll test iPhone 4 next.

There is a problem though - I don't trust the numbers on the CPU. It 
looks choppier than the frame rate would suggest, with some noticeable 
hiccups that aren't reflected in the frame rate number.


I suspect the problem is that Flash is skipping frames during 
rendering, but the ENTER_FRAME event is still ticking the FPS meter.


Is there a way to ensure an FPS measure only ticks if there is a 
RENDER event? Would moving it from ENTER_FRAME to RENDER actually do 
that?


I've only ever used RENDER with manual stage.invalidate() calls in 
ENTER_FRAME (and display list access all in RENDER, which might just 
be incorrect usage), and I suspect I'm actually disabling built in 
frame skipping by calling invalidate on every ENTER_FRAME event 
(because if the frame rate slows, so does the game logic) - I'm not 
really sure what the right way to use RENDER is.


So I guess that's the question, if I don't bother with 
stage.invalidate() and continue to do my display list stuff in 
ENTER_FRAME, and only measure FPS in RENDER, will I get a more 
accurate framerate value?


Thanks,

Kevin N.

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[Flashcoders] BunnyMark on iOS

[Kevin Newman]

Hi guys,

I am running some benchmarks on iOS, to run AIR 2.7 through it's paces.

I used BunnyMark (and the blitting counter part) for context:
http://www.iainlobb.com/bunnies/BitmapTest.html

iPhone 3GS results:
Display List CPU: ~18 fps
Display List GPU: 24 fps (constant frame rate)
Blitting CPU: ~19 fps
Blitting GPU: I have to retest, my build was screwed, and it got late. :-)

I'll test iPhone 4 next.

There is a problem though - I don't trust the numbers on the CPU. It 
looks choppier than the frame rate would suggest, with some noticeable 
hiccups that aren't reflected in the frame rate number.


I suspect the problem is that Flash is skipping frames during rendering, 
but the ENTER_FRAME event is still ticking the FPS meter.


Is there a way to ensure an FPS measure only ticks if there is a RENDER 
event? Would moving it from ENTER_FRAME to RENDER actually do that?


I've only ever used RENDER with manual stage.invalidate() calls in 
ENTER_FRAME (and display list access all in RENDER, which might just be 
incorrect usage), and I suspect I'm actually disabling built in frame 
skipping by calling invalidate on every ENTER_FRAME event (because if 
the frame rate slows, so does the game logic) - I'm not really sure what 
the right way to use RENDER is.


So I guess that's the question, if I don't bother with 
stage.invalidate() and continue to do my display list stuff in 
ENTER_FRAME, and only measure FPS in RENDER, will I get a more accurate 
framerate value?


Thanks,

Kevin N.

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Re: [Flashcoders] AS3 exploding and reassemble bitmap

[Kevin Newman]

It runs at a full 25fps (it can go much faster) on the release player. 
On the same machine with the content debugger though, I only get 10fps.


It's not a problem for content that will be viewed by non-developers, 
but I do wonder why it's so slow on the content debugger.


Kevin N.



On 6/16/11 1:28 PM, Eric E. Dolecki wrote:

set it to 2 pixels instead of 1 and see how it fares.


   Google Voice: (508) 656-0622
   Twitter: eric_dolecki  XBoxLive: edolecki  PSN: eric_dolecki
   http://blog.ericd.net



On Thu, Jun 16, 2011 at 12:49 PM, Glen Pikewrote:


Probably all that CGI hair ;)


On 16/06/2011 17:40, Kevin Newman wrote:


I updated the post with a link to the source:
http://www.unfocus.com/2010/06/29/the-bunny-video-eplodes-explodes/
http://www.unfocus.com/PixelExploder/PixelExploder02.zip

If anyone knows why that runs so sluggishly in the content debugger
(including the incubator build), I'd love to know why. :-)

Kevin N.


On 6/14/11 5:22 PM, Eric E. Dolecki wrote:


that would be very nice of you - for me and those lurking too.


   Google Voice: (508) 656-0622
   Twitter: eric_dolecki  XBoxLive: edolecki  PSN: eric_dolecki
   http://blog.ericd.net



On Tue, Jun 14, 2011 at 4:43 PM, Kevin Newman
  wrote:

  Hmm. I don't seem to have the source up for that (thought I did), you

can
use a slightly older set of files from here:

(This one has source)
http://www.unfocus.com/2010/06/23/the-pixels-explode-explode/

If you are interested in the newer faster one (fast enough to work with
video - and a blur filter), I'd be happy to zip up the source and post
it
somewhere.

Quick note on the video example - it's sloow in content debugger
builds. I don't know why.

Kevin N.




On 6/14/11 4:25 PM, Eric E. Dolecki wrote:

  Thanks a lot for showing that to me - I managed to get something

working
which is both quick and relatively cool. I don't ever do a pixel by
pixel
explosion to save speed, smallest I go is 2px segments, but it's very
quick
that way and looks nearly as cool. I am working on the explosion
physics
at
the moment (instead of just coming out from the displayObject, working
in
spirals, etc. for each piece).



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Re: [Flashcoders] AS3 exploding and reassemble bitmap

[Kevin Newman]

I updated the post with a link to the source:
http://www.unfocus.com/2010/06/29/the-bunny-video-eplodes-explodes/
http://www.unfocus.com/PixelExploder/PixelExploder02.zip

If anyone knows why that runs so sluggishly in the content debugger 
(including the incubator build), I'd love to know why. :-)


Kevin N.


On 6/14/11 5:22 PM, Eric E. Dolecki wrote:

that would be very nice of you - for me and those lurking too.


   Google Voice: (508) 656-0622
   Twitter: eric_dolecki  XBoxLive: edolecki  PSN: eric_dolecki
   http://blog.ericd.net



On Tue, Jun 14, 2011 at 4:43 PM, Kevin Newman  wrote:


Hmm. I don't seem to have the source up for that (thought I did), you can
use a slightly older set of files from here:

(This one has source)
http://www.unfocus.com/2010/06/23/the-pixels-explode-explode/

If you are interested in the newer faster one (fast enough to work with
video - and a blur filter), I'd be happy to zip up the source and post it
somewhere.

Quick note on the video example - it's sloow in content debugger
builds. I don't know why.

Kevin N.




On 6/14/11 4:25 PM, Eric E. Dolecki wrote:


Thanks a lot for showing that to me - I managed to get something working
which is both quick and relatively cool. I don't ever do a pixel by pixel
explosion to save speed, smallest I go is 2px segments, but it's very
quick
that way and looks nearly as cool. I am working on the explosion physics
at
the moment (instead of just coming out from the displayObject, working in
spirals, etc. for each piece).



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Re: [Flashcoders] CS 5.5 to iPad - poor image rendering

[Kevin Newman]

Vector rendering quality in general is a problem on iOS in GPU mode. The 
way around it is to use Bitmaps in place of vectors, where you can.


In Flash CS5.5, there is an easy way to do that - you can set the 
"Render" drop down to "Export As Bitmap" (in Properties, under Display). 
This will give you both a performance boost in GPU mode, as well as a 
rendering quality improvement.


Quick tip, if you want to use that for a bunch of instances of the same 
asset - apply the export setting the the nested content, instead of 
multiple instances. This will cut down on runtime memory usage, since 
the flash runtime can reuse the same 1 bitmap texture.


Kevin N.


On 6/9/11 3:09 PM, Kurt Dommermuth wrote:

Hi All,

I am porting some games over to iOS and have run into a problem.

I was very pleased to see the difference between using AUTO and GPU in
the publish settings.  The performance improvement when using GPU was
significant.  The games would almost be unplayable without it.

However, it seems that the GPU renders rounded objects very poorly.
Most of my circles end up looking like Hexagons - yes, that bad.  Most
rounded edges get squared off pretty severely.  Not all, but most.  It
may be that these graphic are vectors in the IDE.  I have other games
that use bitmaps and were coded in Objective C and this wasn't an
issue.

Perhaps it is the way Flash compiles the flash.  Perhaps the means of
converting vectors to bitmaps is not particularly good and the issue
gets compounded by the GPU.  I don't know.

Has anyone else run into this?  Any solutions other than redrawing
these as bitmaps (there are probably thousands so it is not really an
appealing option)

Flashcoders has been awesome, but are there any other mailing list
that may be more appropriate places for me to ask?

Thanks everyone,
Kurt
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Re: [Flashcoders] AS3 is it possbile to show a movieclip before its all frames loaded

[Kevin Newman]

I think the easiest answer is yes - if you use a Loader object to load a 
streamable MovieClip based swf, you can just add that Loader object to 
the display list and it'll start streaming the swf, just like if it was 
embedded in an HTML object tag.


Kevin N.


On 6/13/11 4:36 AM, B Shankar PEDANA wrote:

Hi,

Is it possible to show a movieclip before all its frames(say 100 frames) or
when its first frame is loaded?

Thanks
Shankar
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Re: [Flashcoders] AS3 exploding and reassemble bitmap

[Kevin Newman]

Hmm. I don't seem to have the source up for that (thought I did), you 
can use a slightly older set of files from here:


(This one has source)
http://www.unfocus.com/2010/06/23/the-pixels-explode-explode/

If you are interested in the newer faster one (fast enough to work with 
video - and a blur filter), I'd be happy to zip up the source and post 
it somewhere.


Quick note on the video example - it's sloow in content debugger 
builds. I don't know why.


Kevin N.



On 6/14/11 4:25 PM, Eric E. Dolecki wrote:

Thanks a lot for showing that to me - I managed to get something working
which is both quick and relatively cool. I don't ever do a pixel by pixel
explosion to save speed, smallest I go is 2px segments, but it's very quick
that way and looks nearly as cool. I am working on the explosion physics at
the moment (instead of just coming out from the displayObject, working in
spirals, etc. for each piece).



   Google Voice: (508) 656-0622
   Twitter: eric_dolecki  XBoxLive: edolecki  PSN: eric_dolecki
   http://blog.ericd.net



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Re: [Flashcoders] AS3 exploding and reassemble bitmap

[Kevin Newman]

You might be able to adopt my script to do that:

http://www.unfocus.com/2010/06/29/the-bunny-video-eplodes-explodes/

Probably is more manual than you are looking for though.

That script draws everything into a bitmap. You could probably 
transition that to the new location during the explode/implode.


Kevin N.


On 6/13/11 9:26 AM, Eric E. Dolecki wrote:

Hey all - I am looking for a class that basically explodes a bitmap (each
pixel) and then reassembles it at another x,y location. I've been googling
but have come up empty so far. Any ideas?

Thanks,
Eric




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Re: [Flashcoders] Incubator updates

[Kevin Newman]

Lots of things, like any Valve game for example, seem to run much slower 
on Mac OS X than on Windows, on the same hardware. I'm not sure this is 
a Flash Player problem specifically, though I do hope they can bridge 
the gap a bit more.


Kevin N.


On 5/22/11 6:32 AM, Karim Beyrouti wrote:

one observation here:

Stage 3d / Molehill runs much much faster on a PC than a Mac. Recently loaded 
XP BootCamp, and some Away3D examples than ran at 2-3 FPS on OsX ran at 30 FPS 
in XP on the same PC, well all examples were an order of magnitude faster in XP 
/ Window.

I know it's early days, but I do hope that this gets ironed out, and we are not 
left with too much disparity/performance differentials between platforms.


- k

On 22 May 2011, at 10:54, Henrik Andersson wrote:


Since nobody else has done this, I might as well do it. It's old news by now, 
but it doesn't hurt to tell people about it.

The flash player incubator have updated and added new features.



Here is the feature list for those who can't be bothered to check the page out.

Media/Real Time Communications

* G.711 audio compression for telephony
* H.264/AVC SW Encode for camera encoding

Language/VM

* JSON (JavaScript Object Notation)
* GC Advice
* Socket Progress Events
* Pause/sleep/resume Events

Security

* Secure random number generator
* TLS (Transport Layer Security) sockets
* TLS socket policy file


Oh and they still got that previous incubator stuff too, like Molehill and 
cubic bezier curves.
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Re: [Flashcoders] How make an SWF run on IPad?

[Kevin Newman]

Flex 4.5 SDK contains the AIR 2.6 for iOS stuff:
http://opensource.adobe.com/wiki/display/flexsdk/Download+Flex+4.5

This is the gotoandlearn.com link for Flash iPhone apps:
http://www.gotoandlearn.com/play.php?id=133

Kevin N.


On 5/3/11 1:00 AM, Kevin Newman wrote:
It's in the publish settings. Change Player to iPhone OS in the Flash 
tab and then watch the video on http://www.gotoandlearn.com/ (which is 
down right now, so I can't get you a direct link)


I would also recommend looking into AIR for iOS 2.6, which comes in 
the AIR SDK. It's command line, but the improvements are worth it. I 
believe you can use the command line with the swf you generate from 
Flash during testing, though I haven't actually tried it yet (I did do 
something similar for Playbook).


Kevin N.


On 5/2/2011 3:37 PM, Steve Abaffy wrote:
I guess I am just blind or something I have CS5 but don't see where 
or how
to "package as an app" I'm sure there is a RTFM answers coming but I 
have
done that, and either I don't understand what I am reading or I am 
missing

something.



-Original Message-
From: flashcoders-boun...@chattyfig.figleaf.com
[mailto:flashcoders-boun...@chattyfig.figleaf.com] On Behalf Of Kevin 
Newman

Sent: Monday, May 02, 2011 2:05 PM
To: Flash Coders List
Subject: Re: [Flashcoders] How make an SWF run on IPad?

If you need it for general distribution, you can package it as an app
using Flash CS5 or AIR 2.6 (gets you a newer faster runtime), then point
site visitors to the app location. All individual swfs will need to be
merged into one giant swf.

If you need to demo something on the iPad, you can use iSwifter:
http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/iswifter/id388857173?mt=8

ATM, those are the only two options (well, you could rewrite the whole
thing for haXe too) - eventually you may be able to use something like
Jangaroo to compile an AS3 based app to HTML5/Canvas (canvas is too slow
on iOS ATM), or if Adobe expands it out, use Wallaby
(http://labs.adobe.com) to export to HTML5 from Flash (or maybe a combo
of the two at some point).

For now, an app out of Flash CS5/AIR SDK, is the best option.

Kevin N.


On 4/28/11 4:21 PM, Steve Abaffy wrote:
I have been searching  the web for about an hour now, and I can't 
find a

SWF

to MP4 convert that will allow the actionscript (i.e. buttons etc..) to
work. What I am trying to do is convert my flash presentation to 
something
that will run on an IPad. I have entire site written in actionscript 
3.0

so
I have buttons and other interactive things on the screen. But flash 
will

not run on an IPad so what can one do.



Thanks

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Re: [Flashcoders] How make an SWF run on IPad?

[Kevin Newman]

It's in the publish settings. Change Player to iPhone OS in the Flash 
tab and then watch the video on http://www.gotoandlearn.com/ (which is 
down right now, so I can't get you a direct link)


I would also recommend looking into AIR for iOS 2.6, which comes in the 
AIR SDK. It's command line, but the improvements are worth it. I believe 
you can use the command line with the swf you generate from Flash during 
testing, though I haven't actually tried it yet (I did do something 
similar for Playbook).


Kevin N.


On 5/2/2011 3:37 PM, Steve Abaffy wrote:

I guess I am just blind or something I have CS5 but don't see where or how
to "package as an app" I'm sure there is a RTFM answers coming but I have
done that, and either I don't understand what I am reading or I am missing
something.



-Original Message-
From: flashcoders-boun...@chattyfig.figleaf.com
[mailto:flashcoders-boun...@chattyfig.figleaf.com] On Behalf Of Kevin Newman
Sent: Monday, May 02, 2011 2:05 PM
To: Flash Coders List
Subject: Re: [Flashcoders] How make an SWF run on IPad?

If you need it for general distribution, you can package it as an app
using Flash CS5 or AIR 2.6 (gets you a newer faster runtime), then point
site visitors to the app location. All individual swfs will need to be
merged into one giant swf.

If you need to demo something on the iPad, you can use iSwifter:
http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/iswifter/id388857173?mt=8

ATM, those are the only two options (well, you could rewrite the whole
thing for haXe too) - eventually you may be able to use something like
Jangaroo to compile an AS3 based app to HTML5/Canvas (canvas is too slow
on iOS ATM), or if Adobe expands it out, use Wallaby
(http://labs.adobe.com) to export to HTML5 from Flash (or maybe a combo
of the two at some point).

For now, an app out of Flash CS5/AIR SDK, is the best option.

Kevin N.


On 4/28/11 4:21 PM, Steve Abaffy wrote:

I have been searching  the web for about an hour now, and I can't find a

SWF

to MP4 convert that will allow the actionscript (i.e. buttons etc..) to
work. What I am trying to do is convert my flash presentation to something
that will run on an IPad. I have entire site written in actionscript 3.0

so

I have buttons and other interactive things on the screen. But flash will
not run on an IPad so what can one do.



Thanks

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