Posts tagged as 'Flash'

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 | 13 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

Showing DHTML content on top of flash content

I get asked about this often in my training courses so I thought it might be good to air the issue here. I’m not the first to post about this online but for some reason many people aren’t finding the solution so here it is.

How to show DHTML content (e.g. a pull-down menu) on top of flash content?…

Posted on 18 April 2007 | 1 comment | continue reading

Protecting a swf

In my training courses I often get asked about protecting swf movies. There’s two sides to this – one is encrypting the code to make it hard for others to decompile and use, and the other is limiting where the swf can be used from so that users can’t simply place your swf on their website.

There are a number of commercial and free obfuscating and encryption tools to help protect your code so I’m not going to say any more about them (maybe in a later post). Here’s a few ideas for how to limit where the swf movie may be used.

Posted on 21 March 2007 | 1 comment | continue reading

Free flash preloader components

Some time ago I created a set of components for creating preloaders. They are designed so that the graphics, style and text feedback can all be modified by the user without writing any code.

I used to charge a small fee for them but they’re getting a bit long in the tooth now. Since updating them doesn’t fit with my current plans I’m making them available for free so please help yourself…

Posted on 7 March 2007 | 3 comments | continue reading

Custom context menu with keyboard shortcuts in Flash

I was very pleased that Strictly Sudoku was Adobe’s Site of the Day last Friday. In creating the site, the aim was to make the best sudoku site on the web and this award suggests we have gone some way towards that. What follows is a description of how I implemented the custom context menu and keyboard shortcuts on that site…

Posted on 13 December 2006 | 2 comments | continue reading

IE7 and Firefox2 search providers for Flash & Coldfusion LiveDocs

I’ve made some more search providers for the Internet Explorer 7 and Firefox 2 navigation bar search boxes. These scripts search various sections of the Adobe LiveDocs, specifically Flash 8, Flex 2, Flash Media Server 2 and Coldfusion MX 7 docs…

Posted on 8 November 2006 | no comments | continue reading

Flash player update adds full-screen support

Adobe have released a beta update for the flash player on Adobe Labs. Among the new features are support for a full-screen mode on the web, so it won’t be long now before we have full-screen flash video and other content on web sites. A brief summary of using full-screen mode in Actionscript 2 follows…

Posted on 13 October 2006 | no comments | continue reading