dispatchEvent()™

I’ve tinkered a bit with Flash Player 10. One thing that seems almost funny about the 3D effects of Flash thus far is that very few examples show off actually 3D objects. Most examples I’ve examined show 2D planes transformed in 3D space. So, I’ve created a sample 3D cube primitive in AS3 as a convenient example for people who want to get started with their own parsers or drawing tools (etc).

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Its that time again. Time to get into the latest and greatest tech from one of those giant software engineering companies. This time, the tech is Adobe’s Flash player 10.

Step 1: download the Flex 4 SDK and the Flash player 10 (debug version).

Step 2: Create a fresh config file that will target Flash player 10.

Step 3: Use MXMLC to compile your Actionscript or MXML file.

Step 4: Explore AS3 with Flash 10!

I’ve only tinkered around a bit at this point. But as soon as I get a chance to build a crazy app, I’ll have a more thorough write-up. So far, I’m quite excited at the new features. Be sure to read up on the following:

new Vector class

The inverse kinematics package

The new Shader class

The all new text engine package

ECMA script 4 (or 3.1) and OpenGL 3.

I may be in the (rare?) position of being highly interested in two disparate technologies. The first being an online scripting language standard governed by ECMA (used in Javascript & Actionscript). The second, an open standard for real-time rendering governed by the Khronos Group (OpenGL). In recent days these two languages have faced most unfortunate developments. First the ECMA script 4…

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After late-night conversations amongst coworkers and friends over beers, I’ve discovered that many flash developers remain unfamiliar with AVM2’s inter workings. A while ago, I found a couple documents which have benefited me greatly in understanding AVM2 and AS3:

Actionscript 3.0 and Performance Tuning

AVM2 Overview

There are definitely some big take-aways in these two documents. I would list them here, but then you might not read them for yourself! ;)

The first document is 74 powerpoint slides (prepared by Gary Grossman of Adobe) which is very useful for getting a quick understanding of AVM2 topics such as garbage collection, the benefits of strong typing, the Actionscript byte code (abc) format, the code interpreter and JIT compilation. For an AS3 developer this is a must-read.

The second document is a bit more dense. It contains 108 pages of more formally described underpinnings of the virtual machine. It focuses a lot on how your AS3 code will ultimately be run as processor instructions. Its a great follow-up to the first document. If you’re a geek, I would highly recommend reading this overview.

One of the new features in KitchenSync 1.5 is the ability to tween animations on a MovieClip’s timeline… and I’m not just talking about gotoAndPlay(), I’m talking about controlling the starting and stopping points, speed, and easing functions of an animation on the timeline with code. It does this by incrementally controlling the current frame number of the MovieClip using a KSTween and a special ITweenTarget (a class used to control the values of an object) called TimelineController.

Take this FLA animation.

As you can see, there is a simple animation using a guide layer and labels on the key frames.

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Hark, Flex developers. Lend me your ears! I must take this post to implore you: use Resource Bundles! Trust me, I know, there’s a lot to keep up with these days, but if you aren’t already privy to the awesome secrets of the humble bundle, hopefully I can help convince you to use them. I’ll show you how, without breaking one bead of sweat from your brow! First, let me tell you why they’re cool. Then, I’ll show you how to get rolling with your first bundle. Then, I’ll set you loose, and hopefully you can all write in with excellent questions and help me make this a great resource for the next readers! Read on, fair Flexer.
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Aral Balkan, champion of open-source flash, just annouced a Flash / Flex extension to the Google App Engine called GAE SWF. He also announced that KitchenSync will be a part of it. I’m very excited to see what happens with both projects.

GAE SWF

Woo! KitchenSync v1.1 is out! It now supports timecode, default values, new easing functions and juping to a specific time in a tween. Go check it out!

Changes in 1.1:

• ADDED jumpToTime() method to Tween (this may be moved to AbstractSynchronizedAction in a later release)
• ADDED getTimestampFromFrames() and getTimestampFromMilliseconds() to TimestampUtil
• ADDED Timecode to TimeStringParser. Now “:ss”, “mm:ss;ff”, and “dd:hh:mm:ss;ff” are supported.
• ADDED ActionDefaults class for storing default initialization values.
• ADDED easeOutIn() to most of the easing functions (buggy. seems to overshoot target in some cases)
• ADDED version check in Synchronizer.initialize()
• CHANGED type of Numbers within Timestamp to int.
• REFACTORED all actions to contain super() in the constructor.
• REMOVED errors that are thrown when pause() and start() are called at the wrong times.

KitchenSync version 1.0.1 was released last week. This version is just a patch that fixes a few minor issues. Here’s the change log for this version.

===== v1.0.1 (2008.02.04) ======
Fixed Cubic.easeOut bug.
Made getters for Tween's toValue and fromValue.
Added source code to main download.
Added metadata for events.
Updated docs and added summaries to all wiki pages.

I received some feedback from people who were having trouble setting up KitchenSync for use with Flash CS3. I didn’t know this before but you cannot use .swc files compiled with the Flex SDK in a .fla file (WTF, Adobe!) Also, some people were confused by having to use SVN to get the source. To help solve these problems, I’ve added the latest source code as its own download.

I’ve also written EVEN MORE documentation including help for downloading and setting up the source code.

Finally, if you’re using KS, drop me a line or post to the mailing list. I’d love to hear any feedback you may have!

If you’ve used Flex, you’ve no doubt (er, hopefully) been using View States (AKA <mx:State>) to change the look of your RIA as it progresses through different situations of use. While this is immeasurably useful, it does not necessarily qualify as an implementation of the State Design Pattern which allows you to change not only how a component looks but how it functions as well.
(for more on design patterns, read my favorite book Head first design patterns).
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