I'm just starting to develop an AS3/MXML application on Linux using the command-line Flex 4 compiler. When running mxmlc -source-path=. MyApp/Main.as, I get the following warning:
/home/andreas/projects/as3/MyApp/src/MyApp/Main.as: Warning: This compilation unit did not have a factoryClass specified in Frame metadata to load the configured runtime shared libraries. To compile without runtime shared libraries either set the -static-link-runtime-shared-libraries option to true or remove the -runtime-shared-libraries option.
Another SO answer says that the solution is to link to my preloader. I don't think my project needs a preloader as it's pretty small; can I just ignore the warning?
You should make a preloader, even if your file is pretty small.. the best if you have a preloader, because what's if the user has a very slow internet connection? Or lost the connection while loading.
If your project is really small (like less than a megabyte) and you don't think it will be used widely, a preloader isn't completely necessary. As Zhafur said people with a slow connection such as dial-up might be confused for a while but even so, small apps shouldn't take too long.
However, if you can be bothered, a preloader is probably a good choice for any Flash app embedded in a web page. And if it's small, you don't need anything fancy, just a simple percentage count would do the trick.
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I am at the point where I am running into incredibly long build times for my project and more projects to come. I would like to make a build server but I have not had any experience with them aside from downloading files from them as an end user.
My ideal setup is this: A GitHub where I can place my .fla file, classes and ANEs. The server sees this, compiles it, and allows me to test it remotely or hook into some debugger that lets me see stack traces and active variables at breakpoints and errors like Adobe Animate or Flash Builder.
Now I see there are GitHub plugins for Jenkins. I see there are questions referring to how to set one up with Flex/AIR. I come here with a few issues.
I am too far into my project to switch over from using Animate to something like Flash Develop or anything ADT related. The only thing I have found is how to take existing elements from my library in Animate and have them in a .swc for handling. However, this doesn't let me access existing elements in the Timeline and would rather not try to export/position/handle them in code (which is the only workaround that I see if this is not possible)
I run ANEs that are dependent on Google Play services and other Android specific libraries. Thus, I haven't been able to use the standard mobile debug launcher for AIR. I see Jenkins has some specific abilities for Android. Is it possible to somehow use this to give me a proper window for testing? I am thinking that I would need to run their emulator after compiling everything but I am unsure if there is a more efficient method or if it would even work.
I have never worked with Jenkins before or any other tools capable of automating tasks. Any step by step explanations is appreciated if you have the time.
I have created a Flex Desktop Application with Adobe Air.
I need to protect the application from being captured. By changing the window display affinity of the application, the application can be protected from being captured.
How to use win API in flex?
Is there any other way to protect the window from being captured?
First you have to make sure that the main window does not have the WS_EX_LAYERED Windows style. That style makes SetWindowDisplayAffinity fails with code 8 (ERROR_NOT_ENOUGH_MEMORY), at least on my machine (Seven Pro 64 bits). In your -app.xml file, set the value to false for the node <transparent> under <initialWindow>.
Second, you have to choose how to inject a regular C DLL in the application process, as the API will fail with error 5 (ERROR_ACCESS_DENIED) if you try to change the affinity of a window not living in the caller process.
One possible injection method is using the SetWindowsHookEx API. Google will give you many hits about that one. Feel free to ask for some details. You obviously needs cooperation of another process, here (and some Win32 APIs practice).
Another possible way is coding an 'ACTIONSCRIPT® Extensions for ADOBE® AIR®' (PDF).
The later seems preferable:
No collaboration from an external process needed.
Adobe AIR does the DLL loading for you.
C/C++ code much more simple.
I used the first technique, as I am more fluent in raw Win32 APIs about DLL, than I am with AIR and Action Script...
I successfully tested that first technique with a very simple "Hello World" AIR Desktop application, and get a nice "All Black" image after Print Screen.
Officially, BlazeDs can only be used "with Flex and AIR". This comment is puzzling in itself since Flex is a set of Actionscript development tools, while AIR is a "mode" in which Flash can operate.
Ultimately, I am starting a new project and I want to use BlazeDS for a Flash CS5.5 (or CS6)-based project. Is this possible? Has anyone used this combination in the past?
If you actually read the article you linked to, you'll soon find that it is absolutely okay to use BlazeDS with any technology that can communicate with a web socket - its message format (AMF3) is an open standard.
So yes, it can be used with Flash (or rather, pure ActionScript), but it is a little less convenient than with MXML, where everything is set up by the framework, because it takes more "under the hood" configuration to be able to run all the necessary parts for remoting. And you will still need the Flex SDK, of course - there's no getting around that.
Once you have the Flex SDK set up with your Flash IDE, you have to manually initialize the Flex remoting classes needed before you can access a BlazeDS service. There is a sample class that has all the required calls and some additional information in this blog post.
I have also written an extensive tutorial about getting RemoteObject wired up and working, as well as setting up a simple "Hello World" web service on my blog. The article series I wrote is intended for use with FDT and RobotLegs 2, but at least the first part (setting up a Java WAR project to deploy as web service) should be helpful to you, nonetheless.
Finally, I would recommend you rethink using Flash as your primary IDE - in my experience, it... well, frankly, it sucks (pardon my French) for anything but animations and setting up asset libraries. If you don't want to pay for a better IDE, you should consider using FlashDevelop (unless you're on a Mac - OS X is not supported). Or maybe give FDT a try - it is much, much more convenient for coding, even if you don't buy the Max license.
I have got an assignment in which I have to implement a AS3 wrapper for any FLV player and I have to expose actionscript functions (External Interfaces?) so that other can be used in other different applications via CallFunction API. I have few questions regarding this -
Are the tools for this are freely available? I know Flex SDK is but I want standalone swf (I means Flash Player 10) that can be used anywhere without any dependency and should contain FLV player embedded or should be able to load it from a particular location by supplying the URL.
Is it possible only with an ActionScript compiler (or any free tools?). My problem is that I don't have flash or flex builder and I don't want to spend money on these because I don't work on it.
As I have almost zero knowledge about it. Can you guys please explain me (if possible with details) that what I need to do. Any resoures on how to create and compile?
If any of you have ever done this it would be really great if you guys can share samples. I've heard that many people have done the same thing for video players.
I can share a bit of my setup
I use Flash (CS5) for creating assets
I use FlexSDK as the compiler
And do all the code in FlashDevelop
Flashdevelop is for PC only for now, it's free and comes since the last few versions now with a debugger
I use FlexSDK to compile and Eclipse with AS IDE or something along those lines, and then preview things in a web browser using an html page with the swf file embedded.
check out projectsprouts. its a pretty nice Flash (as2/3/Flex/AIR) generation tool that can help you stub out your project, compile it, and even create unit tests if you want. pretty simple ruby install (i am a ruby newb, and got is running pretty easily). It was a pretty good support base, and an active mailing list where people will be happy to help you along.
It is important to note that the FlexSDK has very little to do with Flex unless you are linking against classes that are Flex specific. mxmlc does not have anything to do with MXML even though it will also compile MXML.
Here is an article that describes Flash development on Linux. It is pretty old, but the principles are the same. With an Actionscript 3 Compiler (contained in the FlexSDK) and a text editor, you are off to the races. It is a lot easier with Flash Builder 4, FDT 4, Intellij IDEA, Flash Develop, etc ;)
I'm sick of waiting hours for Flash to publish. .NET / VisualStudio projects are WAAAAY faster - is that only compiling the classes that have changed?
Update: Does the Flash IDE re-encode all your sounds and images every time you publish? Can't it cache them somewhere?
In Flash CS4, disabling Warnings Mode speeds up code compilation by about 30% (still quite slow). Strict Mode also, but I'm not sure to what extent.
As for library assets, the optimal speed is achieved by setting JPEGs to "Use imported JPEG data" and PNGs/GIFs as "Loosless PNG/GIF".
As for sounds, I'm not 100% sure, but I think that ADPCM/mono-to-stereo/5kHz/2bit was the fastest.
The [Embed] tag might also help (it doesn't do any convertion) but it includes quite a bit of Flex code.
And as a tip, in Flash CS4 you can batch select assets in the library and apply settings, so you can easily set the optimal speed settings while on development and then change them for deploy.
Uncheck "Warnings Mode" in File > Publish Settings > Actionscript 3.0 Settings. This makes a huge difference. In a recent project I reduced my compile time from 1 min 20 sec down to 7 secs! Yeah, I was astonished too.
For me it turned out that I removed the character filter on my text fields. This seems innocuous, but in fact it has to embed every fracking glyph it can which resulted in a huge swf file that took forever to compile! Anyhow, definitely check that - I think a lot of people could easily overlook this.
You could try to split up your application to separate .swf files and then load them from the main movie.
Also it might be worth to look at your environment. Maybe your machine is running out of RAM, you are using an network drive or your hard disk is encrypted.
Also if the application is getting that big, is Flash really the right technology?
The compiler is just plain slow in the Flash IDE. I can understand the slowness if you have a lot of images in the library that have to be re-exported, but the compiler is inexplicably slow when only compiling code as well.
For example, I have a super basic Away3d scene that requires five full seconds to compile (no library assets). The exact same code compiles in Flex in less than a second. I don't know what's different between the two compilers, but doing any project with a heavy code base in the Flash IDE is just plain painful. As the project grows you'll have to wait longer and longer.
If you're doing a 3D project or something that requires a lot of code compilation, I recommend doing an Actionscript-only project in Flex/Flash Builder. Maybe CS5 will have a better compiler...
You might want to check your character embedding -- If you accidentally click Embed all characters it could embed 1000s of characters, it would significantly slow down your publishing speed
It all depends on your project. I know of some animators that use Flash for publishing broadcast content and that usually takes a long time to publish. There's no getting around it for them. Otherwise, if it takes hours to publish an SWF that will be viewed on the web, then you're probably not going about things the right way.
Additionally, a few obvious culprits that immediately increase the time that it takes to compile a SWF are embedded video and embedded sound. The more items the IDE must compress for output (this includes images too), the longer it will take to compile.
You can't make the Flash IDE cache embedded media (but images won't be reencoded if you import PNGs/GIFs and set the compression to lossless in the library). But if it's a web project you should be loading media from external files anyway, so you don't have to preload all data before anything shows up on the user's screen. You can either load (or even stream) the media files directly or embed them in a separate SWF and load from there, but I don't recommend the latter as it adds unnecessary complexity.
When compiling is too slow, I usually strip down the library - read load images (png, jpg) and sound via URLRequest.
Usually the thing that really slows down the compiler is importing illustrator (ai) files.
disable warnings in the Publish Settings > Flash > as3
If you're even willing to change languages you could use Haxe. It compiles to SWF and is incredibly fast at compiling. It's probably not worth it to change to a different language at the point where you have hour long compile times, but look into it when you are starting your next large project.