Papervision3D Essentials

Jeff Winder and Paul Tondeur wrote a recent book called "Papervision3D Essentials"

Have you read it? Let us what you think in the comments.

Are you unsure about getting it? Get the sample chapter here.

Here's a demo of Remotely controlling a desktop AIR 2.0 app with an Android G1. The scene that is controlled is a Papervision3D scene and this is a featured example in the book.

Pretty cool ham?

AIR 2 Features and Enhancements

InsideRIA has a good overview of the AIR 2.0 features and enhancements. The new version will be deployed on Flash player 10 using Flex 4 SDK.

http://www.insideria.com/2009/10/air-2-enhancements-complete-ov.html

Compiling with mxmlc (using external libraries) on Mac OS X

Recently I set myself to compile an Actionscript3 project by hand using the mxmlc tool on the command-line and wanted to share that in case you ever need to do something similar. It's no biggie and it might be useful for a number of things (making automatic builds, building on machines without the Flash IDE or Flash Builder, etc).

1. Open a console and go to the directory of your project

2. Export the PATH to include the flex sdk binaries, e.g. run:

export PATH=/Users/youruser/Desktop/yourproject/flexsdk/4.0.0/bin:$PATH

3. Invoke the compiler to produce the swf, e.g. run:

	mxmlc -static-link-runtime-shared-libraries \
	-sp ../externals/externlib \
	-l example.swc ../../flexsdk/4.0.0/frameworks/libs \
			 ../../flexsdk/4.0.0/frameworks/locale/en_US \
	-output output.swf \
	-locale en_US \
	-use-network=false \
	-file-specs MyExampleClass.as

Note: For those of you that don't know it already, the Flex SDK is a free of charge Actionscript3 library that allows the development of Flex & Actionscript 3-based applications, without the need to purchase Flex Builder/Flash Builder.

Flash Player update available to address security vulnerabilities

A potential vulnerability has been identified in Adobe Flash Player 10.0.12.36 and earlier that could allow an attacker who successfully exploits this potential vulnerability to take control of the affected system. A malicious SWF must be loaded in Flash Player by the user for an attacker to exploit this potential vulnerability. Additional vulnerabilities have been addressed in this update. Adobe recommends users update to the most current version of Flash Player available for their platform.

More information about this security vulnerability is available at:

http://www.adobe.com/support/security/bulletins/apsb09-01.html

Follow us on Twitter: @morgadin, @tiagobilou, @lofih

Dreaming in Flash Art

If you want to link to us for some reason, we now have this fancy logos you can use.

It is our intent that anyone be able to use these images to represent dreaminginflash.com in a positive light so enjoy and let the world see them, if that is your wish.

MVC in Adobe Flex

Here's a set of different perspectives in respect to the use of the Model-View-Controller software architecture when using Adobe Flex:

"MVC considered harmful" [weblogs@macromedia]

"How Flex fits the MVC models" [livedocs@adobe]

"The Flex Show - Episode 33: PureMVC Framework" [theflexshow]

Update: The follow-up by Grant Skinner is also a good read on the subject.

Why I won’t enter the eBay Flex widget contest

After reading about the eBay Flex widget contest over at Doug's blog and seeing eBay changing the contest rules, to allow the use of open-source code licensed under the MIT or BSD licenses, I got curious and went to the site. I registered, got the API access keys and tried a couple of samples they have for download. Just like Doug said: "thought maybe I’d whip something together and enter".

While I was brainstorming today with Bilou about possible things we could do, I went over to to read the FAQ again and saw this clause:

The eBay Developer Widget Build Off Contest 2008” (the “Contest”) is open to legal residents of the fifty United States, the District of Columbia, Canada (excluding the province of Quebec) or the UK;

Since we're in Portugal, I guess we won't be entering this contest anymore. That's bad, why not open the contest for other developers?

Update: Sunny Li, from eBay, was kind enough to reply to us saying that the reason only US, CA and UK are allowed into the contest is purely legal. You can check his response here.

Metaprogramming with Actionscript3 Metadata in Flex Builder 3

I first became interested in metaprogramming and metadata in Actionscript3 after reading about it on Ely Greenfield's blog here. What caught my eye at first glance was the use of flash.utils.describeType():XML, a method I've never seen anyone use in the past year of programming and reading about AS3.

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FITC Amsterdam 2008

Via the Papervision3D blog I heard about FITC Amsterdam 2008. Here are some of the talks that caught my eye:

- Papervision3D Workshop (by the Pv3D core team)
- Building Red5 Applications
- Chop the Hydra!
- Kaboom!!! Flash Pyrotechnics (and other particle effects)
- AIR Conditioning
- Adaptable Interfaces
- Flex Solutions For Your Daily Development
- etc..

Seems a nice event to attend

Memory Leak Unit Test

(or Programmatically Detecting Memory Leaks in AS3 via Unit Tests)

I've been writing unit tests for a class that deals with the loading/unloading of different types of media files. One of the tests I would like to have is a check for memory leaks. This is especially important now that we have automated our builds, so we can known instantly if a new change in the code doesn't break the behavior we're expecting.

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