AMF Format opens up..

Thanks go out to Adobe this week, for opening up the AMF (Flash remoting message format) specifications.

A PDF is available from here…

Add comment December 22nd, 2007

FocusManager code error (Flash mx.managers package)

Just a quick note of an error in the Flash mx class library, the FocusManager class (mx.managers.FocusManager) has an error on line 728.

727:    if (getFocusManagerFromObject(o) != this)
728:		o == undefined;

Because 728 won’t actually result in any useful computation, It appears the line should read…

727:    if (getFocusManagerFromObject(o) != this)
728:		o = undefined;

However, the following lines (731 - 735) make this code redundant, as you can see… (with line 728 intact)

727:		if (getFocusManagerFromObject(o) != this)
728:			o == undefined;
729:
730:		// trace("actual focus is " + o);
731:		if (o == undefined)
732:		{
733:			o = form;
734:			// trace("using form " + o);
735:		}

Just another one of the wonderful wierdnesses in the MX library. Do I win a prize? (Ed: Have a peanut you monkey.)

Add comment November 9th, 2006

Tamarin Project

Adobe and Mozilla announced that Adobe will contribute source code from the latest Adobe® ActionScript™ Virtual Machine (AVM2), the standards-based scripting language engine in Adobe Flash® Player 9, to a new open source project known as Tamarin that will be hosted by the Mozilla Foundation.

AVM2, as currently shipping in Adobe Flash Player 9, was built from the ground up to work with the next generation of ActionScript. The new virtual machine is designed to deliver the performance and features to support the needs of rich Internet application developers. Source code from AVM2 being contributed to the Tamarin project implements ECMAScript 4th edition language features such as namespaces, classes, and optional strongly typed variables, and includes a Just In Time (JIT) compiler that translates ActionScript bytecode to native machine code for maximum execution speed.

The Tamarin project will result in an ECMAScript 4th edition engine that Mozilla will use within the next-generation of SpiderMonkey, the core JavaScript engine embedded in Firefox®, Mozilla’s free Web browser, and other products based on Mozilla technology. The code will continue to be used by Adobe as part of the ActionScript Virtual Machine.

Read more, visit the Tamarin FAQ

Add comment November 8th, 2006

OSS Remoting round-up

AMFPHP

AMFPHP provides a server-side data transport layer, which enables server process calls that return objects which are native to the Flash platform, no XML or other text based format deserialising needs to take place. The advantages should be obvious.

Red5

Red5 is a very ambitious project which is still at the 0.5 / 0.6 development so not quite ready for primetime at this stage, even so, it is looking like a very promising OSS replacement for Flash Comm Server. I will be keeping an eye on this and see how it matures, it provides all the additional multimedia functionality that FlashComm Server provides (ie. Video and Audio streaming) as well as the regular AMF data transport.

The rest

There are a few other AMF / Remoting options available...

1 comment October 25th, 2006

Elipoid

I've been playing around with a little art experiment, the best description is a kind of instant record label or CD label art generator.

It's called Elipoid and it's Flash 8 based, it'll be interesting to see what sort of performance improvement is possible with AS3.0 and Flash 9.

Here it is...

Add comment September 27th, 2006

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