personal weblog of a tech addict
Posts tagged Flash
Upgrading Flash Builder
Mar 1st
Whether you’re upgrading because you’re using BETA versions that change rather frequently or upgrading to the next major release, you don’t want to lose all your hard work invested in configuring your setup. Here’s how I handle it and hopefully it’s useful to you. If you have other cool ways to persist workflows between upgrades, please share them.
Workspaces
I’ve created a workspaces folder in a custom directory on my HD where I store all the workspaces I like to use with Eclipse-based IDEs. I separate them by IDE and then by purpose. So for Flash Builder, my workspace hierarchy is like this:
/workspaces
/_fb4
/air
/as
/flash
/flex
This is where all of my IDE preferences and workbench layout settings are stored. Centralizing them here allows me greater flexibility when upgrading since I never have to worry about any changes to installation procedures overwriting my custom settings. Nevertheless, I backup my workspaces prior to upgrading and since their small text files it only takes a second to archive.
Documents Directory
On OSX, the Flash Builder installer creates an Adobe Flash Builder 4 directory in your Documents directory. The installation instructions advise you to uninstall any previous versions of Flash Builder before installing the new version. Following this advice will delete this folder if it already exists. So, be sure to back this up prior to uninstalling your current version. That way you can cherry pick anything you need after installing the new version.
Applications Directory
You should also backup up your program installation in your Applications directory for the same reasons as with the folder in your Documents directory. If you’ve heavily modified your install with additional plugins, etc., this is vital!
Plugin Restoration
Where are all my cool plugins? They got wiped during the upgrade process but if you followed my advice and backed everything up, you’ll be back up and running in a minute or two. There are generally (2) locations where plugin info is stored for Flash Builder. If you pull the data from your backups and place them in the following locations, you should have full access to all your plugins post-upgrade (provided they still work with the latest release)
#1 – /Documents/Adobe Flash Builder 4/.metadata/.plugins
#2 – /Applications/Adobe Flash Builder 4/plugins
Although this post is slanted more towards upgrading on OSX, it should be similar for other operating systems. Any issues, let me know…
Introducing Opticon Runtime Debugger
Jan 9th
Opticon is a runtime debugging console useful for Flash/Flex developers. It’s simple to start using in your projects. To use, follow these steps after installing the application:
1. Launch the application
2. Click the Settings button
3. Click on the SWC icon to add the OpticonConnector to your project’s build path
4. Replace your trace statements with one of the following:
- a) Opticon.log(‘message to display’)
- b) Opticon.warning(‘warning to display’)
- c) Opticon.error(‘error to display’)
Download available from:
Adobe AIR Marketplace
RIAForge
Some might ask why? This idea first appeared when AIR was Apollo and was born out of necessity (I always forget some trace statements during cleanup). Could I use global find and replace? Sure, when I’m developing with Eclipse-based IDEs but that’s not always the case.
Why not use one of the other great tools out there? After 2 years in the shadows, it’s ready to be shared with the world and, because I have a vision of where I’d like to take this so hopefully you’ll come along for the ride.
Where can I submit any bugs I find? I’ll have the bug reporting mechanism in place shortly. You’ll be notified via the application or you can subscribe to this post to be notified once that goes live.
My version doesn’t include the connector. What can I do? This happened as a result of a build error. Visit this link to download the connector Get Opticon Connector.
ZamfBrowser – ZendAMF Service Browser
Nov 13th
One of my colleagues at Almer/Blank, Omar Gonzalez, just released a very promising project into the open source community today, ZamfBrowser. This AIR application is a lifeline for all the developers who have embraced ZendAMF since its release yet have longed for that familiar service browser paradigm we grew used to with AMFPHP. Well, wait no longer. ZamfBrowser performs server introspection to give you access to your ZendAMF services and it even features test retention by remembering the last arguments used for method testing between sessions. This is definitely an application worth a look if you plan on doing any AMF development.
Cool Features in Flash Builder 4
Nov 4th
I was recently working on a project in the latest beta release of the forthcoming Flash Builder 4 and wanted to point out the new contextual help feature. What’s nice about this feature is that I had just added the highlighted event to the event class and was busy implementing it in a view class and because of FB4’s new code-hinting muscle I was able to see everything that I had documented in the event class concerning the event without having to have the event class open.
This is definitely a much appreciated usability enhancement. Now, if we could just get editable code (not file) templates (think FDT, Zend Studio, etc), FB4 would be that much closer to being ready for prime time…:D
Adobe Stepping Up Its Game
May 15th
The next version of Flash Player will offer a lot of enhancements to the user experience and it seems Adobe listened to the developer community on a few of the features. Here’s one that is sure to be huge:
“File Reference runtime access — Bring users into the experience by letting them load files into your RIA. You can work with the content at runtime and even save it back when you are done through the browse dialog box. Files can be accessed as a byteArray or text using a convenient API in ActionScript without round-tripping to the server. You no longer have to know a server language or have access to a server to load or save files at runtime.”
Don’t even wait on player version saturation to start noticing the explosion of web-based Flash apps taking advantage of this feature. You can review all of the release notes and even download the beta at Adobe Labs….:D
Getting Some …rest
May 8th
Thought I’d blog about this since I haven’t seen this posted before and it comes up from time to time. With AS3, we got access to a new function parameter, the …rest parameter, which allows us to pass in a dynamic list of parameters for usage by our functions. Here’s an example:
// Method in SomeClass public function someMethod(...rest):void { for (var i:uint=0; i < rest.length; i++) { trace(rest[i]); } }
That will trace out each …rest parameter that you pass to the method call like so:
// Usage from SomeOtherClass var sc:SomeClass = new SomeClass(); sc.someMethod(arg1, arg2, arg3, arg4);
This allows a lot of flexibility because those arguments can be simple (String, Number, etc) or complex (Array, Object, etc). But, what if someMethod() is part of SWC library that you may or may not have access to and you want to capture those …rest arguments and pass them to SWC class?
Well, the easiest way that I’ve found is to use the built-in arguments object in your local code and then pass that to the SWC class that’s expecting the …rest array. Here’s what I mean:
// Usage from LocalClass public function someMethod(arg1:String, arguments:Object=null):void { var sc:SomeClass = new SomeClass(); sc.someMethod(arguments); }
This way you can expose LocalClass.someMethod(), accept the concrete parameters that it expects and pass on the dynamic parameters that SomeClass.someMethod() expects.
TextMate + Flex SDK + Ant
Mar 19th
This is a pretty sweet combination. TextMate has been my favorite text editor on the Mac for a while although I must confess that I hadn’t been taking advantage of all it’s features. Through “bundles”, you can transform TextMate from an ordinary editor into a complete development environment.
Case in point, I recently discovered the stock Subversion bundle and checked out the Ant, AS3 and Flex bundles and now have a viable alternative to Eclipse + Subclipse + FB plugin for those days when Eclipse feels too sluggish.
To add the extra bundles, create a path for them, switch to that new directory then do a SVN checkout:
$ cd /Library/Application\ Suppport $ mkdir TextMate $ cd TextMate $ mkdir Bundles $ cd Bundles $ svn co http://macromates.com/svn/Bundles/trunk/Review/Bundles/#bundleName#.tmbundle
Where #bundleName# is the one you want to check out. If you don’t specify a bundle, you’ll check out the whole lot. Also, as an alternative, you can grab the Open Terminal script which lets you open a terminal from Finder after you’ve created the paths the GUI way. In that case, you just have to run the checkout command.
Happy coding!!
FITC Hollywood 2007 – Day 1
Oct 22nd
There were a lot of cool presentations during the 1st-half of the day. Here’s a rundown of the ones that received good reviews:
- AS2 to AS3 Migration (Stacey Mulcahy)
- AS3 Events: The Whole Story (Jacob Bullock)
- Motion XML (Chris Charlton/Omar Gonzalez)
- Think You Know What Red5 Is? Think Again! (Chris Allen)
- Bed Rock Revisited (Sandro Corsaro)
Congratulations to those guys/gals!! This evening there’s an awesome “Get A Job Fair” going on from 530-9p that aims to connect great freelance talent with great companies. After that, Influxis is throwing a monster jammy-jam for everybody to unwind and relax.
There’s more great stuff planned for tomorrow as well. Here are my picks for Day 2:
- Flash CS3 Advergame Development (Sam Rivello)
- Reducing Complexity: The Making of Saffron (Samuel Agesilas) **
- Making Money: Pricing & Contracts (R Blank)
- WTF is Phlash 5 (Allen, Swann, Balkan, Lee-Delisle, Mills, Sims, Agesilas) **
- GMUNKICKDOWN 07 (GMUNK) **
- Adobe AIR for Interactive Designers (Lee Brimelow) **
** means those sessions will rock (guaranteed)! Got to rap with a lot of cool people today. Love all the girls from FITC!!! Erin, Naomi, Carly, you guys rock!! Chatted w/Lee Brimelow for a bit and that was cool. He told me a funny story about the fallout from his ZendCon keynote. He also had his video cam in tow so I expect to see some cool footage up real soon. I plan to have my iPhone charged so I can snap some shots on tomorrow and post them for everybody.
FMS Eclipse Plugin
Aug 6th
Developer Darren Lee has just released a beta version of his new FMS Eclipse Plugin. It allows you to build out your FMS solutions in Eclipse, right along side of Flex, CF, etc.
It’s a really cool tool and I think many will appreciate its features. It’s got a lot of what you expect in Eclipse; outline view, code-hinting, etc and even sports an AS2 converter. Hey but don’t take my word for it, go to the site, download it and try it out for yourself…
Floating on AIR!!
Jun 11th
Last night @ midnight, Adobe released Beta 1 of AIR (Adobe Intergrated Runtime), formerly known as Apollo. If you’ve already been developing apps using the Apollo Alpha, here’s the steps to follow to migrate to the new AIR Beta:
- download the AIR runtime
- uninstall the Apollo Alpha SDK
- download Flex Builder 3 Beta 1
- in your existing apps, change ApolloApplication to WindowedApplication
Total time: about 10 minutes for me to update the app I’m using to write this post. The only issue was with my app icons. The Alpha could read them but the Beta couldn’t so, I had to re-save them and viola!
