Performance of Coral vs Vector3D and Matrix3D

This is part 3 of a 4 part series comparing Coral, a derivative of the 3D math classes that used to be in the Flint Particles project, and Flash’s native 3D math classes.

In the first post I introduced Coral, explaining what it is and why I’m releasing it as an open source project. The next post looked at...

Posted on 24 February 2011 | 1 comment | continue reading

Architecture of Coral vs Vector3D and Matrix3D

This is part 2 of a 4 part series comparing Coral, a derivative of the 3D math classes that used to be in the Flint Particles project, and Flash’s native 3D math classes.

In the first post I introduced Coral, explaining what it is and why I’m releasing it as an open source project. In later posts I will...

Posted on 24 February 2011 | 1 comment | continue reading

Introducing Coral, an Actionscript library for 3D Math

I started work on Flint Particles before Flash 10 was launched, so back then I created my own 3D mathematics classes for Flint. At the time this was not unusual – Away3D and Papervision3D had their own Number3D and Matrix3D classes, for example.

Since the release of Flash 10, open-source projects have gradually switched to use the...

Posted on 24 February 2011 | 1 comment | continue reading

One conference, two presentations

360|Flex DC starts in just 9 days and I’m not quite ready yet, but I will be. A few months ago, I suggested two presentations to John and Nicole who organise the event, hoping one would be up to scratch. Their reply was “Awesome submissions!” followed by “We’re happy to tell you, your submissions were accepted. You ok doing 2?” Yes, I’m ok doing 2, but it requires twice the preparation which is why I’m not quite ready yet. But I will be…

Posted on 10 September 2010 | no comments | continue reading

Flint Particles 2.2.0 released

Yesterday I released version 2.2.0 of Flint Particles. This version includes a new feature enabling collisions between particles and zones. Since zones can represent any shape, that means particles can collide with other objects provided a zone is defined to match (or approvimately match) the shape of the object.

Here’s a simple example of these collisions in action

View the source

Full details of what is new in this version are on the Flint website.

Posted on 26 August 2010 | 2 comments | continue reading

Spring Actionscript example project with source

In preparation for my session at gotoAndSki I have created a Spring Actionscript version of my frameworks example application. The Spring Actionscript developers have released a version 1 release candidate and it’s time to include it in these comparisons.

For this Spring Actionscript example I’ve used exactly the same project as in the previous examples for other frameworks. Like many of the newer frameworks, Spring Actionscript is not prescriptive about your application’s architecture so I’ve used a similar MVC architecture to the one in my Swiz example.

Posted on 9 June 2010 | no comments | continue reading

What project will replace the Flex framework?

In my previous post I discussed the idea that a project might emerge to replace the Flex framework, in a similar manner to Spring replacing EJB in the Java world. Although I am not in a position to predict what that project will be, I did mention some characteristics that I think the project will have. They were

1. It will start as something simple, with a strong foundation and the potential to grow.
2. It will have some very strong developers at its core.
3. It will have at least one project member with an ability to market effectively to the developer community.
4. It will be open source.
5. Its roadmap will develop through open discussion with the community.
6. It will have a very active developer community around it.
7. It’s probably a project that has already begun.

I can think of three excellent projects that meet most or all of these criteria. Whether any of them will one day replace the flex framework depends on many things, including in two cases whether the developers would even want to do such a thing. Here are the projects…

Posted on 13 April 2010 | 14 comments | continue reading

Is The Flash Platform waiting for a Spring moment?

I’ve dipped my toe back in the Java world recently, and I’m reminded of some interesting Java history that may be echoed in Flash’s future.

Back in the distant mist of Java’s past, most large Java web projects were built using something called Enterprise JavaBeans. EJB was a complex framework developed by Sun, the developers of Java itself (with some input from IBM). EJB had a number of good things going for it, but some developers also thought that the architecture and APIs were too complex.

Then a smart guy called Rod Johnson wrote a book about an idea, and he created a small framework called Spring to illustrate that idea, and the Java world started to change…

Posted on 8 April 2010 | 5 comments | continue reading