Date: 4 March 2010
"Adobe® Stratus 2 enables peer assisted networking using the Real Time Media Flow Protocol (RTMFP) within the Adobe Flash® Platform. RTMFP is the evolution of media delivery and real time communication over the Internet enabling peers on the network to assist in delivery. Stratus was first introduced in 2008 as a rendezvous-only service that allowed clients to send data from client to client without passing through a server. Adobe Flash Player 10, which debuted peer assisted networking, has been adopted today by over 90% of all internet connected PCs."
With adobe launching it's RTFMP network called Stratus the first tutorials and beta reviews appeared online, only all of them were written for Flex. So here is a small tutorial on how to set up a RTFMP peer-to-peer connection using only Flash CS4 and the latest 10.1 runtime.
- Example (Connecting takes same time, be patient)
- Download source
Setting up
- Buy (or
download a trial) Adobe Flash CS4
-
Download Flash Player 10.1 SWC (scroll down)
-
Sign up for a beta developer key
- You might want to read
this article about Adobe Stratus 2
Read more ...
Date: 25 February 2010
A collection of self-made functions (aka snippets) to speed things up.
1. Check if an e-mail is valid
2. First character in uppercase
3. Random number
4. Shuffle an array
5. Does an element exist in an array
6. Remove an element from an array
7. The AS2 setRGB method
8. Reverse timeline animation
9. Get the file extension
10. Filesize
11. Hexadecimal to RGB object
12. Color to monochrome color
13. Crop a bitmap
14. Forces to run the garbage collection
15. Local to global position
Read more ...
Date: 22 February 2010
About 50% of all my flash projects I used dynamic textfields that resizes according to it's content.
And ofcourse my blog would not be here if textfields were unable to auto resize. Unfortunately the autoSize property is not working well in some cases. First of all take a small peak at the autoSize documentation here.
The problem most of the time occurs on multiline textfields.
Some glitches of the autoSize property
- TextField height is not accurate.
- TextField allows vertical scrolling.
- No trimming
So I started playing around with the textHeight, mouseWheel and scroll event and left the autoSize as it is and I came up some interesting stuff.
Read more ...
Date: 14 February 2010
With the birth of AS3, actionscript -and flash in particular- grew up and became more and more suitable for professional web and desktop based solutions. But like any scripting (or programming) languages you need to keep an eye on your performance. Building astonishing and complex projects is ofcourse very satisfying, but can be also a big pain in the ass when your client uses a machine from the early nineties.
What a client expects
Developing huge 3d projects with fullscreen videos won't render that well on machines that already have a lot of trouble with starting notepad. But as long as the client knows flash can achieve miracles, but it can't cure deseases, you're in the right zone.
Project cycle
Nevertheless always be on top of your game as it comes to performance. If you start new (large) projects and keep focussing on performance from the very first line of code you write and monitor your result alongside the entire process you won't get any unpleasant suprises once your client tests your final version.
Illustrated on the graph above, the further away you are in a project the more difficult it gets for the developer to add new functionality in it's code.
So if you could be warned in an early stage of the flashproject cycle that a particular update is using too much system recourses or the framerate is at an unacceptable level, you could take measures and therefor avoiding the 'last minute' adjustments. Which -we all know- will only decrease the quality of your code and the project itself.
This exactly is the reason why you need to keep monitoring and making your code use as little resources as possible. Click the 'read more' link below, to see a few examples and best practices in maximizing flash perfomance
Read more ...
Date: 9 February 2010
I've been thinking about it for a while. And finally I convinced myself to start my personal blog. For, ofcourse, sharing my flash knowledge and experimenting with different approaches. And alongside keeping the social media phenomen 'personal branding' in the back of my head.
After designing the blog and halfway through the development stage I started wondering; "I'm creating a blog (mainly) about flash, but the blog itself is in 'plain' HTML".
Why not make the blog completely in flash.
So that's exactly what I did. First I converted the design to a flash equivalent and after some headaches and (for me) new (read 'annoying') glitches in the HTML render engine of flash, which ofcourse isn't as half as advanced as the HTML render engines of the most recent browser suchlike firefox, safari or chrome.
Nonetheless I think a blog can be successful even with very limited HTML functionality available.
So every pixel you see on this blog is created with flash using ActionScript 3.0. Along the way I stumbled upon some fascinating and a lot of frustrating issues. The biggest one would be the HTML textfield, which is the heart of any blog. The current HTML capabilities in flash are limited, but at this stage I recon it's more then acceptable.
With the upcoming new Creative Suite release of Adobe, and Flash expanding it's professionalisation project I think in the nearby future HTML text rendering would become more flash suitable.
Anyway, I hope I'll be able to maintain and keep updating this blog on a regular basis so I'd be able to contribute in the growing flash / webdevelopment community.
And oh yes, don't forget to follow me on twitter and subscribe to my RSS feed.