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"flash"

02
Jan
2021

Goodbye Flash

So, I finally uninstalled Flash Player on 31 December 2020 as it ceases to be supported by adobe.

Adobe Flash Player was removed from your system.

Consequently a number of the older articles on this blog, if they didn’t already, will cease to make sense. I started the blog back in 2006 when I had decided to freelance and focus my programming skills on flash.

I now have couple of archive boxes books and DVDs of redundant material.

The first time I encountered Flash was around 1996/1997. I was at the time developing CD-ROM applications using Macromedia Director. The web was starting to take off, although outside of corporate networks everybody’s access was via a dialup modem. Very slow. Browsers were pretty crude and inconsistent in behaviour for all but the most basic interactions.

We had a visit from someone at Macromedia that excited our manager at the time, but I didn’t see the potential in Flash. Yes, it used vectors. Yes, it had animation. But there was little or no interactive capability – no programmatic language – Director was so far ahead.

My career moved to project management, and Flash did make it’s way into our studio, primarily in the realm of designers – interactions remained extremely limited but Flash had two key valuable properties that I think gave it a solid foundation: It looked and behaved the same, no matter what browser or platform, and that being vector based, it was extremely bandwidth efficient compared to anything that could be built in Director (or Authorware)

Next step in my career was server side, and xhtml/javascript. Flash added a further string to its bow by enabling video streaming – mixed with vector animation and more sophisticated interactions – again maintaining consistent appearance across platforms and browsers while the browser wars raged.

As the dot com boom went bust, I went freelance, but having to decide where to focus. I spent time learning Java and Flash, and eventually Flash won my attention – I have always enjoyed working on ‘creative’ projects along with designer and other creative types.

I enjoyed programming ActionScript 2, but Flash felt somewhat buggy at the time. The ActionScript components were good in principle, but again, buggy – so much time spent developing workarounds against a tight deadline.

I really enjoyed programming ActionScript 3 – It was far more solid. capable and better structured, Flex provided a solid framework that did not suffer the problems of the earlier UI component framework.

Flash with Flex remained great at:
* Being consistent across platforms
* Providing a video playback platform
* Proving an animation platform and intuitive ways of tying interactions together with ActionScript
* Enabling designers and developers to work together on really interesting creative projects

In 2010, I was really disappointed by Steve Jobs thoughts on Flash, but more disapointed by Shantanu Narayen’s response. It didn’t feel like there was a technical initiative coming to solve the issues raised by mobile. On reflection, Steve Jobs was right. It is true that performance was poor on mobile devices – certainly on my HTC Desire. And using flash to attempt to emulate the new touch controls, even the scroll inertia was hugely wasteful of cpu cycles compared utilising controls already built into the mobile systems.

I quite liked AIR, and used it with Flex on a few projects. It worked well, although it exposed the perennial issue of the UI controls not necessarily behaving as a user would expect. Yes it continued to provide consistency across platforms, but when we move into an application space, compliance with the expectations of the host system becomes more paramount than ensuring the application looks pixel-for-pixel the same across platforms. Attempting to adapt (testing for OS to decide where to position things like dialog button defaults and window controls) became tedious. The end result – spend the extra effort, or release an inconsistent product.

Most of my discussion is from a programmatic / application point of view. For all it’s faults Flash Platform created a great community of designers and developers and a few who could wear both hats, working to build some wonderful projects while the browsers were somewhat chaotic.

Having seen the full life cycle of a product makes me feel old. From its humble beginnings, to massive dominance, to falling back as other technology caught up and surpassed. I still have a sealed copy of Flash Builder 4. I wonder what I’m going to do with that.

Here’s a search that will return my old flash related bloggings

As reported elsewhere

Posted by creacog, 0 comments
22
Mar
2010

Flex 4 and Flash builder 4 final, finally released

It’s been a long time coming, but looks worth the wait. Lots of improvements and a fundamental change (enhancement) to the skinning components in the form of Spark. Although Flash Catalyst isn’t released yet, there’s still scope to get to grips with the developer side of the Spark skinning architecture in the meantime.

Although the charting components have now been open-sourced, i.e. you don’t need the professional licence to access them, significant differences make the premium version vital for heavy development e.g. Performance profiler, Memory profiler and network monitor. For more detail check the Flex version comparison chart.

Andrew Shorten’s post on the Official Flex Team Blog is a good start point for getting into this release.

Posted by creacog in Adobe, Flash Builder, Flex 4, 0 comments
02
Mar
2010

to learn more about Flash Player internals

Being of a Computer Science background I think it useful if not important that developers have some understanding of what’s going on behind the scenes. It can be a real time saver in choosing the right approach in solving a particular problem. In the Flex framework for example, we have full access to the source code via the open source SDK. However for some decisions it is handy to know the low level implementation. The Flash Player tends to be something a black-box with our knowledge constrained to the documentation which largely covers the ‘what’ is available — but only at a high level ever covers the ‘why’ or ‘how’.

To that end it is especially good to see Tinic Uro finding enough time to blog more frequently recently particularly with the changes for Flash Player 10.1. Tinic’s blog is essential reading for any Flash developer. The two most recent posts:

Posted by creacog in Flash Platform, Flex, 0 comments
21
Feb
2010

5 days of Flash 5

Flash 5 User manuals As we look forward to the release of CS5 before long, I had an unusual 5 days producing a new SWF based on a publish-to Flash Player 5 predecessor. So time to put on my Macromedia cap and dig out the old Flash 5 manuals.

This version pre-dates my working with Flash and dates back to when I quite frankly hated Flash. Ironically a number of designer types look on these as the good old days when Flash was very much a designer tool. I have to admit when I first saw Flash V1 further back in 1996 I didn’t rate it. I’d been using programming Director since 1993 and Flash didn’t have Lingo so it had seemed a step backwards to me.

Back to the current project, since most of flash 5 was easily described in two skinny manuals, there wasn’t really that much to have to read up on. The main issues encountered:

  • The original designer seemed to have no discernible logic to the placement of graphics and their anchor points.
  • Static text didn’t render particularly well — over-anti-aliased.
  • Initially had problems with artwork imported from Illustrator

As regards the Illustrator problem, I had imported an .ai document to library and used on stage. Then while publishing I received an error alert :

This movie uses features that are not supported in Flash Player 5. View the Output Panel for details.

In the Output Panel, the message:

Enhanced stroke is not supported in this player

Simply solved by opening the .ai document in Illustrator then exporting a SWF. At which point it is possible to specify the Flash Player version. So saving off a Flash Player 5 SWF and importing that the Flash library rather than the .ai document avoids the problem.

As regards the text problem, this proved to be the motivation enough for the client to agree to updating the target player version from version 5 to version 8 in order to take advantage of ‘anti-alias for readability’.

Sometimes I wish Adobe would obsolete old versions — much like the current pressure to remove support for explorer 6 from the web. On the other hand I have to admire the facilities across Adobe tools that continue support output to legacy flash player versions for when it is impossible to persuade clients to be more current.

Posted by creacog in Flash Platform, 0 comments
09
Feb
2010

flash in the pan

So, Flash player 10.1 is available in beta and includes mobile device oriented new features such as multi-touch gestures. Smart! Makes sense with Adobe strategy of delivering to emerging mobile devices. However there are a few million of us already using desktops and laptops with track pads, mouse wheels and mouse trac-balls who are feeling a bit ‘inhibited’. Flash is being used more and more to deliver applications either via browser or the AIR runtime. Such applications immediately feel somewhat inferior when a user cannot scroll or pan a view as they normally would native applications. Arguably ‘Rubbish’ rather than ‘Rich’ RIA in such cases.

For a long time the MOUSE_WHEEL event has been part of the Flash API but only officially supported on the Windows platform (in browser). Original reasoning for not implementing support for the Mac platform can no-longer be argued as all Macs for a number of years have been shipped with the Mighty Mouse (2005) and now Magic Mouse or Trackpads. All of which facilitate mousewheel style interactions. All of which go further and support horizontal as well as vertical scrolling interactions or ‘panning‘. There are JavaScript workarounds for in-browser Flash on a Mac such as this solution on hasseg.org or this SWFObject based pixelbreaker solution. Fortunately Flash applications delivered via the AIR runtime can respond to MOUSE_WHEEL events without any such workarounds. However MOUSE_WHEEL currently only facilitates vertical scrolling in any case.

We need to facilitate horizontal as well as vertical scrolling (panning) of content in response to events from ubiquitous input devices.

A few prominent applications I use often, which suffer:

  • TweetDeck : AIR based. High discoverability of lack of horizontal scrolling support
  • Adobe online store UK : In browser Flex application – Flash being used in an attempt to emulate HTML – no vertical scroll wheel support for Mac users
  • Adobe Flash builder : Design view (Java application with Flash based view)
  • Adobe Catalyst : Art-board view (Java application with Flash based view)

Adobe actively invite comment and suggestions on their products. More widely/easily through the Feature request/bug report form. They have opened up the bug tracking system for a number of products. Flash player being one of them. There is an active bug report with regard to this issue and I would encourage anyone with an opinion to contribute to the discussion and/or add weight by voting. Just sign up and access FP-1262. There is an active drive from within Adobe to help from the community to improve the quality of Flash Player and AIR.

As for the solution I think I’d like to see something along the lines of… Extending the flash.display.InteractiveObject with a ‘panEnabled‘ boolean property defaulted to false which, when true, allows the object’s Panning behaviour/event broadcasting (akin to doubleClickEnabled mechanism). So, when panEnabled is true, if the mouse pointer is over the InteractiveObject, and the user makes a ‘pan’ gesture, the frontmost panEnabled InteractiveObject broadcasts flash.events.MouseEvent.MOUSE_PAN events containing with the additional properties : offsetX and offsetY. Text based InteractiveObjects should default to panEnabled = true. Further, I’d quite like to see mechanisms to facilitate behaviours of nested pan-able objects. E.g. on a Mac, the front-most display object gets scrolled until it can scroll no further, then if the user continues the scroll input, the containing display object then scrolls.

In rounding up, the best place to contribute your opinions on this subject and have them heard by Adobe is here : FP-1262.

Posted by creacog in Adobe, AIR, Flash Platform, Flex, Mac OS, 0 comments
14
Sep
2009

No CMD-SPACE in Flash Builder since Snow Leopard

Ok so CMD-SPACE is the default short cut to launch Spotlight. But I wanted that combo for ‘content assist’ with Flex/Flash Builder. Until installing Snow Leopard, that is what I had for a few years, and Spotlight relegated to CTRL-SPACE. However since SnowLeopard, the CMD-SPACE combo is not transmitted to Flash Builder. I assume this is down to Snow Leopard somehow reserving the combination. So begrudgingly I have returned to defaults…

Spotlight : CMD-SPACE
Flash Builder content assist : CTRL-SPACE

Posted by creacog in Flash Builder, Flex Builder, Mac OS, 3 comments
13
Mar
2009

flash.display.BitmapData gotcha – well gotme for a while

The documentation is correct, so i have no excuse, but I didn’t initially read much beyond the signature of the constructor…

public function BitmapData(width:int, height:int, transparent:Boolean = true, fillColor:uint = 0xFFFFFFFF)

I needed a transparent bitmap. Reading the default “transparent:Boolean = true”, I assumed by simply supplying width and height, a transparent bitmap is what I would get. Not so! I got a white rectangle. The reason being, that the default fill colour is 100% white. (The first pair of FFs representing the alpha in ARGB).

At first it would seem slightly unintuitive for the second default to conflict with the first, until one realises that the ‘transparent’ flag is there to indicate whether the object will support transparency or not. Not to state that it should be initially created transparent. Supporting transparency increases data size from 24 bits per pixel to 32 bits per pixel.

So what i should have done :

bmd = new BitmapData( width, height, true, 0 );

Posted by creacog in ActionScript, AIR, Flash Platform, Flex, Flex 3, Mac OS, 0 comments
21
Feb
2008

A flurry of events : Adobe/Flash/Flex

A busy few weeks starting tonight:

  1. [Thurs 21-Feb-2008] LFPUG – Thermo Special presentation from Adobe
  2. [Mon 25-Feb-2008] Adobe sponsored Pokercoder Tournament II  – you need to be a professional user of Adobe products to join in
  3. [Thurs 28-Feb-2008] LFPUG – presentations on ‘Successful Flash Games’ and ‘Practical Particle Effects with Flint’
  4. [Wed 5th March] FLUG – Beer, presentations and chat about Flex
Posted by creacog in ActionScript, Adobe, AIR, CS3, DreamWeaver, Fireworks, Flash Platform, Flex, Flex 2, Flex 3, Flex Builder, 0 comments
06
Nov
2007

creative-cognition builds a flash game

The makers of StarCraft need have no fear, but I finally got around to implementing my first Flash based game. A simple retro tennis style game, built as a brand building exercise and integrated by my client into a Facebook application.

CVL-Tennis thumbnail

This was a fun project to work on and programme. To initially build a pure AS3 application, and to later integrate that with Flash CS3 when the real graphics were ready.

It was also an exercise in use of MVC. Since we did not use PureMVC nor any other other framework, using this pattern loaded the initial development with some seemingly onerous complexity. However the time invested later paid off in allowing easy adaptation of that game engine to the various graphics and controllers tried through testing.

Some links:

Posted by creacog in ActionScript, Adobe, CS3, Flash Platform, Flex, Projects, Work, 0 comments

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