NxtGen Media - The Freeman View

Change and Choice

The past few months have been a roller coaster ride for Flash devs. The events have felt like an action movie complete with cliff hangers and crazy plot twist. Adobe has this new campaign regarding “Freedom of Choice“. I think it is a great move on their part, but I can’t help but think that this whole Apple thing has been a warning shot over their bow. The writing is now on the wall, the coffee is burning, and it is obvious that ‘someone is trying to eat Adobe’s lunch’.

Adobe has had many warnings in the past from its devs out in the field to fix and upgrade various aspects of the player. Improvements have been made, but there was no pressing need to move faster, because there really was no competition. Truthfully, HTML5 is not quite ready for prime time and there is time for Adobe to step it up and make Flash really solid, but that time grows short. Steve Jobs may have inadvertently done something that Flash devs could not do, and that is turn up the innovative fire in Adobe’s boiler room.

If all goes well, I am hoping that Flash will become the general choice for the game console, the video player, the RIA platform, the anything media console for any device, web or stand alone. Flash being the closest to the ‘write once, run anywhere’ pipe dream, and with the most penetration, it just seemed logical that it would eventually happen. This whole Apple stir is business. It’s about who’s going to be the player of choice and ultimately the gate keeper. If Flash did not have this kind of potential, this drama would not be happening.

Flash Hardware Acceleration…Coming

When I used to see articles like this, “Hardware-accelerated Flash almost here“, I would have gotten excited and begun dreaming of all the cool things that I would be able to do with Flash. Now I just shake my head, and wonder why it took so long to address this. The ‘Almost’ in the title of that article, is indicative of what has been going on for years with Flash. Too little, too late.

It’s not like there was no writing on the wall. Folks have been saying (begging) for years what was needed to make Flash a truly unstoppable force on the web. Hardware acceleration has definitely been high on the wish list. The potential for Flash to become the ‘gaming console of the web‘ has been mentioned in the past, but it’s like the point was missed as to the importance of games. If the player performed really well with 2d and 3d games (the most demanding of all apps), then RIAs would benefit as well. Meanwhile, many Flashers are looking at Unity for their game development needs.

I am just glad that a fire has been lit under the proverbial arse of Adobe to beef the player up. If nothing else, Apple has sure stoked that fire. Flash still has a chance to secure its position as it is still early in the game, but that window is closing fast. Almost is still not good enough.

DCF

Flash on any Screen

Here is an Adobe Flash promo video that sums up the immediate and assumed future penetration of Flash. Love the idea and concept, and vision. I really hope they can pull it off, but there are many who want to see Flash die and are truly gunning to make it so. Interesting times.

-DCF

Odd character in Flex, PHP, and JSON

Been busy as all get out these days. Seems like since it is the holidays, things would be slow. Guess this is a good thing. I  have been working on a Flex project using JSON and PHP. Basically, I am using httpService to get data from MySQL using the PHP JSON functions. Fairly straight forward stuff.

I had used this setup in a previous project so the code was already setup. I had my method set to POST in the flex service and was getting the data just fine. All was good until i tried to decode with JSON.decode(). I kept getting this parsing error on a single character. This was the same code I used before, with very minor changes.

I checked up and down trying to figure out what got screwed up. My returned JSON string appeared to be valid. I ran it through the validator and it was fine. Turns out that a question mark was being returned by PHP as the first character of the JSON string. Not very obvious to see just echoing the JSON string to the screen on the PHP side. I ended up processing the string to remove the character before decoding it, but I still don’t know why the question mark shows up in this project and not the previous one.  Very odd.

DCF

Flex HTTPService and IE

I recently had a weird problem with working with HTTPService for Flex. I had been using the Flex RemoteObject along with ZendAMF which was working fine until I recently upgraded and could not for the life of me get everything set up correctly. From what I understand, I guess something got messed up in the packaging of the recent release. I figured I would go back to it later once they got that all sorted out.

Since the data I was pulling was fairly light, I figured it might now be a good time to check out JSON in Flex. Got evertything working just fine, and was able to get records from the database fairly easily. Then I started inserting and updating records and thats when it got weird. Aparently, there is a caching issue with Internet Exlporer (IE).  I was using GET as my transfer method and it turns out that subsequent GETs are cached in IE, so if you try to update your table, you get the same data until you restart the app. Could drive one mad. Firefox does not have this issuse. Once I switched to POST as my method, all went well. Thank God for folks who post these quirks!

Flex HTTPService, Browser Cache and IE

Using Flex, PHP, and JSON to Modify a MySQL Database

D

Adobe MAX Widget

Flash and Flex Developer’s Magazine Goes Digital

When I first heard about this magazine, I was very interested. Problem was, I could not find it in my area, and I really did not have the desire or inclination to get a subscription. Now I hear that FFD Magazine is now a digital publication, and the magazine will be FREE! Such a great resource, and it’s free as in beer!

The Flash community is pretty vast and eclectic, so I imagine by going digital FFD obviously cuts the printing and distribution cost and most likely can make it on advertising because of their reach. Regardless, it is a great magazine with tips from industry experts, and is a great way to keep up with all that is going on with Flash and Flex. The old issues are already up.

Check it out at: www.ffdmag.com

-DCF

Flash MiniBuilder

Here is a cool little app that allows you to edit and compile a flash file online!

From the website: ActionScript 3: A Programmers Log

This project, currently named ActionScript MiniBuilder, features code assist (code completion) for ActionScript 3 and compilation of one-file AS3 SWF. It runs in your browser, you only need Flash Player 10 and Java. The code assist part is written in pure ActionScript. The compiler runs in a Java applet.

Very cool example of the power of Flash, and the developer has plans to extend it even further. I am very interested in this project just from the sheer novelty of such an app. I mean really, who would have thought we’d see the day that you could do such a thing in Flash? Very inspiring indeed.

DCF

Back in the Saddle

After more than a week of tinkering and configuring, I have settled on a reasonable configuration in Ubuntu Linux, and it looks like I can live with it. I honestly tried to work with the Flex SDK, and with haXe using Gedit. I was able to get Gedit all configured, and compiling, but found myself missing FlashDevelop a great deal. Ya just don’t realize how good something is, until you don’t have it anymore.

Thankfully, it was noted on the FlashDevelop site that it works well in VirtualBox. I spent the weekend figuring out the various idiosyncracy’s of VirtualBox, and finally was able to get it running with an instance of Windows XP. I now have FlashDevelop and Flash CS4 running under VirtualBox, and I must say that it really is not too bad. Flash being the resource intensive program that it is obviously is a bit slow, but I can get what I need done for the most part. I am quite pleased with how FlashDevelop is running, since that is where I spend most of my time. I gotta send that guy some money.

So after my nightmare of losing my Windows Vista setup, I’m back up with Linux, and access to Windows XP via VirtualBox. There is now no reason for me to go back to Windows as my primary OS. Might not seem like a big deal, but I’ve been using Windows since version 1.0. Up until this point, Linux was just a hobby at home, and used on the backend at the office. This is really a turning point for me. I still can’t see every day end users making the switch, because it still is not as friendly as Windows to get things working, but it is pretty close and with a little effort, you can have what you need for pennies on the dollar.

DCF

Staying Ubuntu

Well, after more fights with trying to get Windows running, I finally gave up and went with Linux for my home system. I ditched the entire dual boot configuration in favor of 100% Linux. Ya know what? I am stoked! For years I have been courting making the transition, because I did not believe that I could go on without Microsoft. There were just too many apps that I depended on. Now, I am sitting here configuring Ubuntu Linux for my personal use, and I am totally impressed.

I honestly have been jumping through hoops to get Flash type stuff running, but dealing with the command line, really has not been that difficult. I can pretty much do what I need from a text editor and compiling from the command line via the SDK . I really don’t need all of the frills at this moment. To me, that is amazing. I can actually write some code with minimal graphics, and pump out a prototype, that pretty much skeletons the project. So I don’t necessarily have to go out and purchase Windows again for my home system. Don’t get me wrong, if I did not have Windows and Adobe products on my work computers, I’d be buying Windows, but I can get by with Linux for the moment when working at home. This is really all new to me since I’ve always had Windows, and never considered going without.

How to set up the Flex SDK on Ubuntu

-DCF