Demos

http://labs.adobe.com/technologies/flashplayer10/demos/index.html

Links on Flex integration

http://opensource.adobe.com/wiki/display/flexsdk/Targeting+Flash+Player+10+Beta+with+Flex+SDK+3.0.x

http://opensource.adobe.com/wiki/display/flexsdk/Download+Flex+3

http://www.senocular.com/flash/tutorials/flash10drawingapi/ (drawing API tutorial)

Well, this week provided a fair amount of activity on the bug. The is technically a Flash Player bug (Reference #225434).

Well, the good news, Adobe’s recent 9.0.124 release fixes this issue for most browsers.

Safari 2, Safari 3, and Opera were all fine on Mac.
IE6, Firefox, Safari 3 were all fine on Windows XP.

The issue does remain for Firefox on OS X & Linux  (Unix code versions).  Hopefully they’ll fix it in 9.0.25, but it’s nice to know it’s being worked on.

Note - in Firefox on Mac, the first click worked for me, the second click would be blocked. And eventually all clicks were blocked.

http://bugs.adobe.com/jira/browse/SDK-12987

Today I was working on a Degrafa based skin. When I hit some unknown accidental key combination and discovered the file I was working on had been closed. This closure was followed by my problems window suddenly displaying about a dozen errors.

Moments later I discovered, why! The file, along with it’s two counterpart skins were “gone”, *poof*, DELETED, gone to the digital Gehenna. Needless to say, I was quite distraught. And while you might chime in with criticism on how I should have had copies of the file stored in an SVN or similar repository; let me add in my defense that this file was less than 10 minutes old.

But I had an idea…!!!!

I created a new copy of the file with the same filename. I then used Eclipse’s version compare tool to do a comparison of the current version against older versions. Thankfully, Eclipse retained this information. I was able to easily grab my old code and copy it to the new file instance

UPDATED: Dan Wilson chimed in that you can restore files from local history as well. (Found right below “Compare with”).

Thanks Dan!

- Jason The Saj

PS - If you are unfamiliar with Eclipse’s version compare tool. You need to familiarize yourself with it. You can find more info in my Flex Builder tips’n'tricks post here:

My employer Nxtbook Media recently had a corporate office game/fundraiser event. It was a week of the game “Assassin”. In this case, fellow office workers try to assassinate each other by the careful unnoticed placement of the all-lethal “clothespin”.

I created this tool as a little experiment in utilization of the webcam and motion detection. I was first made aware of this possibility by Doug McCune’s “TiileUI” experiment. (Who in fact used a different methodology which he has now posted to his blog.)

UPDATE: For whatever reason, my host server seems to have problems delivering the .air file. So I’ve encapsulated it into a .zip file and uploaded that instead. Just open the zip, and you should get the .air file. Sorry about the hassle. If anyone knows WHY this is happening. Please enlighten me. I also tried my work’s host environment and it tried to deliver raw code. So I presume it’s a server setting.

I published antiAssassin as an AIR application, which you can download here. There is also a Flex version, with the option to view source here. I’ve endeavored to document the code.

Enjoy!!!!

- The Dark Lord of the SWF

Adobe’s Online Office Productivity Suite:

Photoshop Express (Photo Editor)
https://www.photoshop.com/express

Buzzword (Word Processor)
http://www.buzzword.com

Sliderocket (Presentation Software)
http://www.sliderocket.com/

idubee (Spreadsheet)
http://www.idubee.com

Blist (Spreadsheet)
http://www.blist.com/

A lot of these are still betas, some much rougher than others…

NOTE - Just to clarify, Adobe hasn’t acquired Blist or Sliderocket. But they don’t need too… their technology is beginning to provide almost a full online ‘light office productivity’ platform.

Here’s where to register:

http://flexregistration.com/

Today, I am reviewing methods of including content for Google indexing. As well as my thoughts of where this should be going in the future:

Current Trends:

• SWFObject style - division filled with content re-populated if Flash player exists.
  •  First, potential of code to be seen briefly before the Flash content is loaded on slower machines.
  • Question over whether Google respects such code and what risks of Googlebot viewing such methods as code hiding.

• Dual HTML/Flash content sites, using Flash only for animations, videos and other media.
  • Not suitable for all Flash based sites, especially those that more so full fledged applications or RIAs
    
  • Once again limiting the web to the age old, over-extended cumbersome HTML
    
  • Lose out on the full power of the Flash environment
    
    
• Limited garnering by Googlebot via Adobe’s swf2html SDK

• No Flash (obviously not an acceptable option for RIA developers like myself)

Are there other means being implemented? Please chime in….

***

Where should we be going? Sadly, this is a ship that is stranded in a sargasso sea of the doldrums with little us mere sailers are able to do to free her.

The solution requires joint work on the part of Adobe and Google. And while such is not within my power to make happen. I do have a thought about how to do it, but not being involved in the nitty-gritty inner workings of Flash itself these thoughts are not much more than whimsical - but I’ll share anyways.

Flash recently went to a very event listener based model. I believe this should be leveraged for Flash/Flex apps. My thought is to have a listener that can be defined as active or not call echobot.

If echobot is active, it gives a hook for a spider to listen. Obviously, Adobe would have to work very closely with Google so that their spiderbot would be modified to listen. The echobot listener would essentially receive a simple collection of the current content in an XML structure most likely. Delivering text content along with basic formatting (ie: font size, weight, etc) which would allow google to weigh the content a bit. Also, would receive tabular info via data grid which would include row content and global content (ie: # records, number of fields, etc). Perhaps the means to define “alt” values for graphics/animations/effects/etc.

Of course, there is another aspect which is necessary. As is often brought up, the issue of tracking location within a Flash application. And this would tie in to a URL/state definition. So that a spider could go thru various states similar to loading pages. And the echobot listener would deliver the bot the content result of the given state. (Or in a traditional Flash app, the current stopped frame.)

Now, clearly this would require some logistical changes both internally to Flash and with Google’s bot. Adobe would need to devise the internal and then put forth the workings as an API for Google (or any other indexer) to utilize.

Of course there is a performance hit, you’re listening and delivering said content at all these event points. However, firstly, the echobot listener would be able to be specified as disabled. Second, even if enabled, it should not be active unless passed a signal by the spider-bot saying “I’m here, I want to listen”. Only then should the listener be active.

This would enable Flash sites to be indexed, even to sub states. As well as encouraging much more internal state existence for purposes of URL bookmarking, etc.

If you haven’t heard… Adobe launched Flex 3 & AIR this past week.

Here is a short video I did for the 30onair. (Don’t know what that is, go to YouTube.com and search for 30onair.)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l1aAnj7haDU

I will be in Atlanta, Georgia next week attending the 360Flex Developer Conference.

http://www.360conferences.com/360flex/

If any of my readers are attending, be sure to grab ahold of me and say “Hello”. This year I will be graced with the presence of my beautiful wife, and darling little girl.

- The Saj

PS - For those unfamiliar with the 360Flex conference. It is a developer conference that is very community driven. There’s no big $$$ corps behind it. It’s focus is on Flex development and related technologies. It tends to have a very intimate feel, where you can find yourself bumping into numerous recognizable names (albeit perhaps not faces), such as Doug McCune, Jeffry Houser (The Flex Show). But more importantly, good seminars and hands-on sessions!

UPDATE: The new SWFObject 2.0 (Release Candidate 2) resolved this issue. The examples below should now give you the browser agent info when using IE6…

The one caveat, Firefox on XP needs wmode to be set to either “transparent” or “opaque”, otherwise a pop-up occurs.

******

Screenshot…
http://www.easternstorm.net/sassie/useragenttest/versionresults.jpg
On the left side observe IE6 loading the same swf, embedded in
standard Flex 3, SWFO 1.5, SWFO 2.0. Please note that that in SWFO
2.0 we receive “null”.
Now, the left two columns shows several other browsers loading the 3rd
template:
http://www.easternstorm.net/sassie/useragenttest/useragenttestSWFO20….
Note that it is working fine on Firefox XP, Safari 3 XP, Opera XP,
Firefox OSX, Safari 3 OSX. The only other exception being Safari 2,
which has known issues with externalInterface as I recall.
So clearly there is something not quite right with SWFObject 2.0
running IE6
***
Here are the three embed templates:
http://www.easternstorm.net/sassie/useragenttest/useragenttest.html
http://www.easternstorm.net/sassie/useragenttest/useragenttestSWFO15….
http://www.easternstorm.net/sassie/useragenttest/useragenttestSWFO20….
***
Source code of example:
<?xml version=”1.0″ encoding=”utf-8″?>
<mx:Application xmlns:mx=”http://www.adobe.com/2006/mxml“
layout=”absolute” viewSourceURL=”srcview/index.html”>
<mx:Script>
<![CDATA[
private function Test():void{
Debug.text = "<<" + ExternalInterface.call("function getBrowser()
{varBrowser = ''+ navigator.userAgent;alert(varBrowser);return
varBrowser;}") + ">>";
}
]]>
</mx:Script>
<mx:VBox x=”10″ y=”10″>
<mx:Button id=”btnTest” label=”Click to View userAgent Info”
click=”Test()”/>
<mx:TextArea id=”Debug” width=”450″ color=”Navy” borderColor=”Red”/>
</mx:VBox>
</mx:Application>